[1] As he felt called by God to go into mission work in later life, he expressed a desire to spend his period of service overseas, but this request was declined several times due to his usefulness as an instructor in England.
The first course of its kind in the UK, it was designed to equip prospective and current missionaries to better acquire proficiency in non-European languages.
[6] Unable to afford the residential fee for the course, he lived at his parents' house in West Norwood, cycling to and from the College each day and working on completing his theology diploma when he got home at night.
[8] With the help of his brother David, he also bought a motorcycle and side-car, which he used to travel around areas near London promoting the work of Wycliffe and searching for a location for the next year's course.
[11] As Bendor-Samuel had chosen the Jebero language of Peru as the subject of his PhD,[4] the newly married couple travelled to South America in 1955, where they would spend several years working with SIL International.
[12] After a year in Peru, collecting phonological and grammatical data on the language and helping to devise an alphabet, they returned to England, where John spent eighteen months working on his thesis.
In response to requests from various African church leaders, and following a particularly emotive plea from a Ghanaian language assistant who interrupted a Council meeting during the 1959 summer course, SIL president George Cowan decided that linguistic and Bible translation work should commence in Africa.
[2][4] A crucial part of Bendor-Samuel's work during his early years in Africa was making contact with key governmental and educational figures.
[2][13] When Wycliffe teams were forced to temporarily leave Nigeria due to the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, Bendor-Samuel used this as an opportunity to supervise the start of SIL work in other west African countries.
[1][2] From 1984, Bendor-Samuel held a number of important leadership positions, beginning with a seven-year term as Executive Vice-President of SIL International.
[1] During his term as Director, Bendor-Samuel introduced a number of initiatives, including a model for institutional funding for literacy and language development work; although this project did not have much of an impact in the UK, it was adopted successfully in other European countries.
[1] In 2000, he was appointed to the role of Wycliffe Africa Area director, to encourage African churches and organisations to support Bible translation in their countries and beyond.
[1] For the final few years of his life, Bendor-Samuel was working in SIL's Africa archives, conducting research into the development of the organisation in that continent.
[16] The executive director of SIL International, Freddy Boswell, asserted that "few people have impacted global language development and Bible translation over the last half century as did our beloved friend and colleague, Dr. John Bendor-Samuel".
[15] The Forum of Bible Agencies International wrote "Few others saw with such clarity and felt with such passion the challenge to render the Word of God into the heart language of the world’s people groups.
Bendor-Samuel's belief in the importance of training nationals in linguistic work was underscored by his experiences during the Nigerian Civil War, later writing: "Although from the beginning we had tried to train West Africans, particularly Nigerians, it was the difficulties that we encountered with the civil war and then later in the year following it with getting visas that forced us to give much greater attention and priority to this aspect of our work".