I am often asked about our involvement in sharing the message of the Bible with oral learners through Chronological Bible Storying. I would like to share a bit about this in that it is an important part of what Marlene and I are involved with at this stage of our lives. We are committed to the vital need of sharing the Good News in this way with the millions on earth today that do not learn through reading.
About two thirds of the world’s population are oral learners. They can’t, won’t or don’t learn through reading and writing. The printed page does not shape their thinking to any significant degree. Their cultural perspective is primarily oral and event-oriented. I prefer the term ‘oral learner’ over terms like ‘illiterate’ and ‘semi-literate’ since these terms often carry a negative idea from our Western perspective. There can be an assumption of either intellectual or cultural inferiority among such people. The fact is that oral learners can handle most of the thoughts, ideas and concepts that literate learners deal with as long as they are presented in an understandable way that can be retained.
Among the world’s least evangelized people groups at least 70% of them are oral learners and communicators. Many of these people live in major urban centers throughout the world a well as in rural villages. Here in the USA about 50% of the population desires a non-literate approach to learning and decision making. They are probably the least evangelized group in the nation. If we are serious about reaching the people of this generation who are not yet Christians we must give ourselves to understand how they communicate and learn and develop skills for bringing the Message to them. It is estimated that over 90% of all preachers of the Gospel have been trained to communicate only to literates using an analytical format which oral learners find nearly impossible to relate to or remember. Outlines, steps, principles, lists and similar constructions assume literacy. Within oral cultures people do not learn and retain their understanding of truth and life in these ways.
University professor Walter Ong, a scholar in the field of orality and literacy, said, “Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but normally even when it is composing its thoughts in oral from.” Writing and print allows us to restructure the way we think. Visual print makes possible isolating individual words or ideas so we can analyze each word or idea.
Within a purely oral culture words are sounds that do not have a visual presence. Words have little meaning until used in a sentence or paragraph associated with a life event or a story about a life event. Therefore truths are not isolated from the story but understood and held holistically within the story. The story is the point. Proverbs, which are distilled stories, are also used in this way. A literate culture tends to condense stories into ‘bottom line’ statements, principles, outlines or a list of steps in a process. I have heard comments like this from literate learners regarding Bible storytelling as a means of teaching. “We don’t need whole stories; just give us the ‘gist’ and move on into the teaching.” On the other hand oral learners have commented about our analytical teaching approach. “When I begin to hear lists of points and principles in the teaching after awhile my head becomes so tired trying to remember it all that I give up and just space out.”
Oral learners carry with them what they know in stories, proverbs or mental pictures of life events, which they can remember and use as necessary in dealing with the situations of life. They depend on their memory for understanding. They often have a remarkable ability to memorize long stories and treasure them if they are perceived as authoritative or part of a heritage. Literate learners tend to think of their knowledge in terms of what they can recover from their files, materials, notes, or hard drives. As literate skills develop they tend to shy away from memorization and the ability is diminished through lack of use.
People in oral cultures tend to learn together in community. They depend a great deal upon the feelings and opinions of their peers. What they are together and the heritage they hold is a very strong influence in their lives. Therefore they often focus on doing acceptable things in acceptable ways within their community. Those from a literate culture can tend toward individualism and often move away from a highly relational approach to learning. Reading is most often done silently and in private. In a literate culture there is often a tendency toward demanding personal rights rather than acknowledging the groups’ rights.
In sharing these things I am not demeaning literacy. As a result of becoming a Christian I have moved toward literacy in my own life. I began to read more because I wanted to learn more about Jesus through the written word. That is why the spread of Christianity has tended to move cultures toward literacy. But we must not inadvertently make non Christians feel they must be good readers in order to live effective Christian lives.
Since oral communicators depend upon their memory for learning they like to hold things in tack through remembered life experiences or stories. If we are going to effectively bring the Gospel to those in oral cultures we must become effective storytellers and enter their culture in a relational way which usually requires dialog and listening to their stories as well. Understanding their worldview will inform us in selecting the stories that best bring the Gospel across to them.
Chronological Bible Storying is a plan to share the panorama of the Bible through telling key stories of the Bible in chronological order within an oral culture. In the process of telling these stories there is a strategy to evangelize, plant a church among them and train workers and leaders who will be capable of continuing in this work of bringing the Gospel to their own people as well as reaching out to others. Within this process an 'oral Bible' will be brought into the life of their community.
Telling the stories of the Bible chronologically linked together, rather than in isolated or unconnected ways, helps the hearers understand individual stories in the light of God’s Big Story. Oral learners describe people by telling stories about them. For these people to learn about God and Jesus they need to hear the stories which characterize them. They need to hear the stories that characterize God’s community, the church. Finally they must hear of the glorious finale of the history of this present age with Jesus coming again to gather his beloved Church to himself forever and ever. What a magnificent Story to tell!
