ORALITY – speaking truth to the masses

By Steve & Carol, Bruce Renich, and Michael Sheldon

For millions of people – including many in North America – spoken language (orality) still trumps the written word in everyday life. Missionaries around the world are finding new opportunities to use orality as their primary means to share the gospel, as the following anecdotes attest:

From Africa - Steve & Carol
Books are not the primary source of new input for the Congolese and Tanzanians with whom I’ve lived most of my life. That’s not a big surprise, because tribal people maintain and communicate their history and lore through orality-- that is, through stories, songs and poetry.

So almost 20 years ago, we left the comfort of our linear, propositional gospel presentations and turned to narrating the story of God and man (starting with creation and progressing chronologically to Jesus’ ascension). The results? A biblical worldview, faith in Jesus and clarity of doctrine.

During our stateside home assignment another fact became evident: Books are no longer the primary source of news for Americans. As the flood of TV, movies and Internet moves people from literacy to orality, we’ve discovered that pastors, youth groups and home groups are turning to the Bible story as a means of presenting God’s truth.

Books are still with us. Our challenge is learning to speak “the language of story” to an oral world.

From Illinois - Bruce Renich
Last September, in a wild and remote part of Papua New Guinea, I had my first encounter with the orality method of teaching Scripture. John and Cheryl Fornelli (from the Evangelical Free Church in Naperville, IL) had trained a large group of pastors and teachers for seven weeks.

The word of God went like a bush fire around that district. Impressed by the results, I asked them to train a group of our church volunteers going to Kenya in July 2010.

This was taught with very positive results. One teacher was so excited with the method that he went home on the weekend and taught another Sunday school teacher all he had learned. This teacher joined us on Monday and had perfectly learned all the stories! The teachers there continue to work with this method with the word of God spreading rapidly everywhere.

From Oregon - Michael Sheldon
Staring at the confused teenaged faces caught us off guard.

“Who’s Jesus?” “God has a son?” “What is sin?” All legitimate questions, but when asked in rapid-fire succession, we were forced to rethink ministry.

This is the context in which the youth staff at Fellowship Bible Church had found itself— teens having no Biblical reference. Rather than bog them down with topical proof-texts, we agreed that we needed to start at the beginning and let God speak for himself.

God has been faithful. As we wrap up the first round, teens are curious about missions and leading narrations on their campuses.


Is your church or ministry using orality? If so, how and with whom? Post your comments or questions.