CHAPTER 70

International Orality Network

International Orality Network (ION) is a network of organizations that work together to influence mission organizations, churches, and individuals to make disciples of all oral learners through Bible storying and other culturally appropriate forms of communication. It promotes making God’s word available to all oral communicators, including unreached people groups, in order to facilitate church-planting movements everywhere.

From Making Disciples of Oral Learners, a book by a study group at the 2004 Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization consultation in Pattaya, Thailand, jointly published by ION and the LCWE.

From the time of the Gutenberg Bible, Christianity “has walked on literate feet” and has directly or indirectly required literacy of others. However, ironically, an estimated 90 percent of the world’s Christian workers presenting the gospel use highly literate communication styles.

Making disciples of oral learners requires communication forms that are familiar within the culture: stories, proverbs, drama, songs, chants, and poetry. Literate approaches rely on lists, outlines, word studies, printed pages, and analytical expositions of God’s word. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for oral learners to hear and understand the message and communicate it to others.

How Learning and Communicating Take Place in Oral Cultures

By “oral learners” we mean those people who learn best and whose lives are most likely to be transformed when instruction comes in oral forms. Oral cultures tend to be face-to-face, highly relational societies. Oral cultures transmit their beliefs, heritage, values, and other important information by means of stories, proverbs, poetry, chants, music, dances, ceremonies, and rites of passage. The spoken, sung, or chanted word associated with these activities often consists of ornate and elaborate ways of communication.

The difference between oral and literate learning is much more than superficial forms or styles of communicating. Even the way oral learners process information is different. The ways of processing information involve concrete (rather than abstract) notions, sequential (rather than random) expression of events, and relational (as opposed to individualist) contexts.

Those who have grown up in highly literate societies tend to think of literacy as the norm and oral communication as a deviation. That is not so. All societies, including those having a highly literate segment, have oral communication at their core. Oral communication is the basic function on which writing and literacy are based. When literacy persists in a culture for generations, it begins to change the way people think, act, and communicate—so much so that the members of that literate society may not even realize how their communication styles are different from those of the majority of the world who are oral communicators.

Oral learners find it difficult to follow literate-styled presentations, however, even if they are made orally. It is not enough to take materials created for literates and simply read them onto a recorded format. Making something audible does not necessarily make it an “oral” style of communication. Not everything on a CD or audiotape is “oral.” Some of it is clearly literate in its style even though it is spoken or audible. The same is true of other media products created for literate audiences. They may have literate stylistic features that confuse oral learners.

Making Disciples in Oral Cultures

To make disciples of oral learners, it is critical that we focus on five important aspects of communicating the gospel in oral cultures.

1. Use Appropriate Oral Strategies to Make the Word of God Available

We wish all peoples had the written translation of the Scripture in their heart language. But, for the illiterate, written Scripture is not accessible, even if it is available in their own language. On the other hand, a Bible translation program that begins with the oral presentation of the Bible through storying and then continues with a translation and literacy program is the most comprehensive strategy for communicating the word of God in their heart language. It offers a viable possibility of making disciples of oral learners while at the same time providing the whole counsel of God.

A systematic, sequential approach with a society of largely oral communicators might begin with oral Bible storying. It could then possibly begin to involve audio and radio presentations of these same oral stories. Other audio and radio products of a broader array based on translated biblical material could also be used.¹ In some cases primary visual forms may complement, such as illustrations depicting scenes in Bible stories. Of course, films and videos can be an important complement of an “oral Bible.”

2. Use Oral Communication Patterns to Convey the Message of the Gospel

Consider how to help entire communities of oral learners hear the gospel message so that they understand clearly, respond deeply, and pass on the message to others easily. In almost any oral culture, conveying the stories of the Bible in an oral, sequential pattern helps people to comprehend, remember, and retell them. The communication of stories in this way has come to be referred to as “chronological Bible storying.”

A “storying” approach to ministry involves selecting and crafting biblical stories with the help of local leaders. The stories are faithful to the biblical text, and at the same time, they are told in a natural, compelling manner in the heart language that resonates with the worldview of the receptor society. When chronological Bible storying is done well, the various stories are expressed in forms that the receptor society regards as being true and treasured. Often the way that stories are conveyed involves the hearers processing the story in a culturally relevant way while also interacting with the storyteller and discussing the stories themselves.

3. Equip Relational-Narrative Communicators to Make Disciples

Many people accept the idea that an oral approach like chronological Bible storying may be appropriate to initial evangelism, but they wonder whether a storying approach is viable for a sustained, indigenousled church-planting movement. Is it adequate for sustained discipleship between second, third, and successive generations and for leadership development in the church? Those working in face-to-face, relational societies have found that not only is storying a viable approach to meet these needs, but it is a preferred approach to ensure reproducibility. Whatever is reproducible is usually sustainable in indigenousled church-planting movements. New believers can readily share the gospel, plant new churches, and disciple new believers in the same way that they themselves were reached and discipled.

4. Use Oral Means in Making Disciples to Avoid Syncretism

If the church is going to avoid syncretism, then the gospel needs to be communicated in the mother tongue of the people we are trying to reach. Both evangelistic as well as discipleship materials cannot be generic but will need to be developed with the worldview of the intended audience. The stories chosen and the manner in which they are communicated will have to transform the worldview of those who are seeing or hearing the stories. A recorded oral Bible will help serve as a standard to ensure that the transmission of the stories remains accurate. These methods will help ensure that the church remains true to the historic beliefs of Christianity and does not mix traditional beliefs in its doctrines or practices.

5. Use Orality-Oriented Approaches to Reach “Secondary Oral Learners”

There are millions of people who choose to learn and communicate by oral methods instead of literate ones in spite of their literacy. These people are known as secondary oral learners. Secondary oral learners are people who have become literate because of their job or schooling but prefer to be entertained, learn, and communicate by oral means. Oral strategies are also necessary in reaching people whose orality is tied to electronic media. The explosive increase of electronic media has contributed to the global emergence of secondary orality, that is, orality that depends on electronic media. As nonprint media like radio, film, and television become widely available, oral societies can become multimedia societies. Their lives continue to be heavily influenced by the stories they learn and the songs that they hear. However, those stories and songs increasingly come from electronic media rather than traditional face-to-face communication. Villagers go from listening to elders telling stories around a flickering campfire to watching stories on the flickering screen of a television. “Functional illiteracy is still big here,” says Muniz Sodre, professor of communications at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “In many ways, Brazil went straight from oral culture to the electronic age, passing right by the written word. Television fills the gap.”

Secondary orality is also a significant influence in cultures with a strong tradition of literacy. Millions of people may be able to read well, but they get most of their important information (including beliefs and values) through stories and music coming through radio, television, film, internet, and other electronic means. This phenomenon is causing many people to think, communicate, process information, and make decisions more and more like oral peoples. Oral strategies are an essential part of bringing about gospel movements.

RETURN TO LESSON 10: How Shall They Hear?

Notes

1. Examples of some of these sorts of audio and radio presentations in vernacular languages include Global Recordings Network’s various Scripture resources; the JESUS Film audio versions; Lives of the Prophets, Life of Jesus, and Lives of the Apostles audio versions; Faith Comes by Hearing dramatized recordings of the New Testament; and Trans World Radio’s Radio Bible, which consists of 365 fifteen-minute broadcasts of stories from the Old and New Testaments.