Orality & Bible Storying

The people we work with are primarily oral learners. The International Orality Network defines an oral learner as “a person whose mental framework is primarily influenced by spoken rather than literate forms of communication and who therefore learns primarily or exclusively by speech, song, etc.” In other words, many of the people with whom we do Bible studies prefer to learn via verbal communication instead of written communication. They pass knowledge from generation to generation through songs and stories, not books or documents of any sort. This does not necessarily mean our people can’t read (though that is the case for many of them). It’s more a matter of preference, culture, and what’s ‘normal.’

Therefore, we try to teach Scripture in a contextualized manner. We try to simplify the stories of the Bible so they can be heard, memorized, and meditated upon. When I lead a Bible study, I will typically stand up with an open Bible in my hand. I will tell them that the story I am about to tell is a story that comes from God’s Word. Then I proceed to tell the story. To aid in memorization, the story typically gets told 6-8 times throughout the duration of the Bible study, which happens in any number of the following ways: (1) me telling the story from beginning to end, (2) me asking guided questions for them to essentially tell what they remember of the story, (3) them telling the story as a group with each person volunteering what they remember of the story, and (4) one person volunteering to tell the whole story from beginning to end.

Once they all know the story fairly well I close my Bible (to symbolize the end of the inerrant Word and beginning of Greg’s words!) and I start to ask questions probing at the meaning of the story (keeping in mind that for many of them, they are hearing the stories about Creation, Noah, Jesus, etc. for the very first time). I do not have a ‘sermon’ prepared or anything like that. Instead, using a somewhat Socratic method, I ask them questions to try to get them thinking about the story and making connections between the stories and to their own lives. Obviously the questions change from story to story, but, in general, we look at (1) how the new story connects to the last story, (2) what we learn about God in the story, (3) what we learn about ourselves in the story, and (4) how should we apply the story. I love these discussion times as they are putting things together for the very first time – many times their questions are as simple as, “Who came first, Eve or Mary?” or “How long ago did these stories take place?” (They are amazed that Jesus wasn’t walking on this earth within the last 20-40 years!).

Usually I close our formal Bible Study time by telling the story one last time (either I tell it or I have someone else do it if they were able to memorize it during this time). I do this so that – hopefully – they remember God’s Word more so than my words. I want to close on what is of eternal worth rather than my mere interpretation.

So why am a telling you all this? The answer is twofold. First, perhaps this helps you know a little more about what Bible studies look like in our context. We do not pull out our Bibles and have everyone turn to a particular passage (since most don’t have Bibles and even those who do prefer to learn orally instead of written-ly). We tell them the Great Story of Scripture by means of the great stories of Scripture. Second, I write this post as an introduction to a series I will be putting on here. I would like to share with you our Creation to Christ story set, what we call “The Hope of the Messiah.” You will notice these stories are very short. In order for the stories to be memorizable, I have done my best to keep the stories to 200 words or less. I’ll try to post our first story in a few days! Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about this process, I’d love to share more.