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Content editors and reviewers: Willis Ott, Jenny Evans, Mark Anderson

About the author: Durk Meijer, born in 1958, is a Dutchman, who grew up with little knowledge of who God was. He mostly saw different church denominations fight for their own space, dominated by their own religious teachings and religious prejudges. Because of this kind of representation of God, he was not interested in God or the Bible. As a teenager, Durk was blessed with several friends who really reflected the love of Jesus and God used them to help him see the need for God in his life. When Durk came to know the Lord in 1978, he was training to be an airline pilot. He soon became involved in Christian service opportunities such as singing in the church choir, running a camera for the television ministry, and for many years he taught little children. During these years, Durk also served with an inner-city ministry by leading a children’s Bible club, delivering meals to the shut in and poor, and in summer Bible camps in the USA and the Philippines. Later, he also led a weekly chapel service at a local nursing home.

While working as a pilot, God burdened Durk to serve full time in missions. In preparation, Durk received a Bachelor of Science degree in Church Ministries and Missions. During this time, he served on multiple short term mission trips, including being mentored for three months under a national evangelist in the Philippines. While in college Durk met Sandy Beach, who shared his burden to serve God through missions. In 1987 they married and in preparation to serve as a pilot in missions, Durk became an aviation maintenance specialist at Moody Bible Institute. As such Durk and his wife Sandy joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1989. Durk soon ended up moving over from aviation to Scripture engagement. With a burden to help people engage with God and His Word, Durk started to serve projects around the world, while Sandy took on the ministry of homeschooling their five children.

Being a visionary, Durk has been part of starting various innovative initiatives, like Vernacular Media Services (now International Media Services) of JAARS Inc., the International Orality Network (ION), and Kalaam Media Ltd. He also served as trainer, consultant, audio and video recording specialist worldwide (working in more than 40 languages), as well as program leader and administrator. He has experience serving people in creative access areas, displaced people groups, as well as peoples from cosmopolitan to nomadic societies. His work also includes experiences in predominantly oral societies, highly literate societies, as well as deaf communities.

Durk has become an internationally known specialist in the area of media and orality, serving to increase the impact of the Scriptures. As ethno-communications consultant and trainer, he helps local ministry teams know and understand their community and the issues they face, so that the teams are able to choose Scripture passages, venues, and communication art forms that speak directly and effectively into their community's situation and lives. He helps partner ministries to do the same for the communities they serve in context of empowering local initiatives with Scripture engagement, development of the body of believers, and Bible translation. Durk has been serving together with many partners worldwide and as such is currently also a consultant with Spoken Worldwide. ‘Engaging with the Eternal’ is an outflow of Durk’s worldwide experience and one cannot miss his enthusiasm when he shares his passion of drawing people to the Eternal.