Blog
Storying isn’t just for those who can’t read
Author: Tricia Stringer
Date: 05.08.2010
Category: Orality
Translations
People often ask us what we do. We’ve learned to be simple in our response, so we most often say, "We tell stories." Then people ask us more questions, and as they do, the conversation almost always turns to illiteracy and the need for ways to reach the illiterate in ways that they can understand and reproduce. It’s a good topic, but it totally ignores much of the subject. What about the people who can read, who are highly educated, but still prefer to learn using stories? We live among the IT professionals in our country. Many of the Christians among them have ignored story telling because they just don’t see a need for the strategy among ’literate’ people. Some feel that by simply telling stories, they are downplaying the years, struggles, and resources spent getting a good education. Sometimes I’ve wondered if they are right. Then, I meet people like "Nadia." Nadia was born a Muslim and works for one of the largest IT companies in the world in a high position. She has a masters degree, has perfect English, and has continually progressed in her career over the years. She is intelligent, and thinks for herself. As a young woman, she defied her culture and married the man she loved, who happened to be a Christian. Over the years she has attended church with him and tried to understand what he believes and why. She sees that in the midst of trials, he has an underlying peace that she just can’t grasp. When I invited her to our storying group, she was willing to try anything to understand the Bible more---reading it just didn’t make sense to her. As we told the first story about Jesus healing the demon-possessed man and transforming his life, her eyes lit up with understanding. When we asked the questions after the story, she understood immediately what story telling is all about. We asked, "How will you remember this story?" She said, "I’ll tell it!" She already had in mind who she needed to tell it to. As weeks passed and she learned more through the chronological stories, she said, "Finally, I am beginning to understand what the Bible is about." She was transferred to the US just as we were finishing the Old Testament stories. The last night she came to our house, she asked us to tell her the rest of the stories that night before she left, because she didn’t want to miss out on understanding the Bible. So for the next two hours, she sat enthralled as we told the stories of Jesus, of his death, resurrection, and giving of the Holy Spirit. She’d stop us and ask questions, then listen patiently as we continued the stories. At the end she said, "I’ve been going to church for years, and no one has ever told me these things. I’ve learned more in these past few weeks than I have in years of going to church." Many of our Christian brothers and sisters in the IT industry would have said that Nadia needed an apologetics book, a seminar, or a Bible correspondence course. As a humble, genuine seeker, what she really needed was the Bible presented in a clear, simple, way. She needed to know that it wasn’t just another program or process (the things she is surrounded with every day), but that it was different; a relational, true story that could transform her life.
Keywords: literacy, professionals, education, story telling
Reach Map and Statistics
Views: 6749
Comments: 13
Recommendations: 3
One Click To Action
Connect me with people interested in this conversation:
Join related conversations
- Reflections on Preaching Noah’s Story Cross-Culturally
By Cody_Lorance
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | The Lausanne Global Conversation is powered by World Wide Open | What is World Wide Open?
Conversation Post Comment
United States
Very thought provoking. Especially interesting because it brings to mind how I am utilizing the disability services department on campus, (something I have never done on a college campus while I am working on my M’Div. I have not utilitzed such resources since the first half of 3rd grade in elementary school. I could have used such after that for better gradues because I was always just a mediocre kind-a girl. Over the last decade, or two, educators have finally come into the realization about the different types of learners; I am much better as a verbally instructed / phyiscally-visually instructed learner. Now that I have been getting more help and. Once finding out what type of a learner that I am, and learning of my skils, I have been able to work through many challenges learning situations. Given this information, I see this as a tool for helping others to become better listeners and learniners.
29.11.2011
Taiwan (ROC)
Thank you for pointing out that one of the biggest blocks to us even trying storying is that we consider it is only for oral learners or children...when I first heard it demonstrated I had these blocks + I was already a reasonable evangelist ...and didn’t want to learn another method that was going to take so long to learn. Thankfully the Holy Spirit just kept pushing me.
From the first story I learned it was the listeners who kept me going. There was a completely different dynamic with storytelling and people remembered it much better. Stories keep burrowing into people’s hearts. Our lives are tagged to stories. When I say someone ’was an ugly duckling’ -anyone who knows the story remembers the story with these 4 words and know that I’m saying that when the person was young they were ugly and overlooked but later turned into a beautiful swan.
I am so grateful to God for forcing me to learn storying. As a highly literate person I have gained more out of learning and telling ’simple’ bible stories than I gained from 3 years at a truly excellent Bible college. Elijah and Daniel ...now number among my friends and mentors. I find myself constantly chewing over scripture.
Next year there will be a book coming out from IVP-US entitled "Telling the gospel through story: Evangelism that Keeps Hearers Wanting More." This book came about because it was the seminar I was asked to give at Lausanne (then entitled -Evangelism Everyone Enjoys -Especially the Unbeliever." It is written to give an intro. to storying and then to practically help people prepare, tell, lead discussion ...in your context.
Because storying is an oral method, there will also be a website developed for interaction.
In preparation for that these basic story sets have been developed and can already be accessed through Vimeo (all password protected but the password is listed below). The basic set of 14 evangelistic stories is also available on You Tube in Mandarin. I can post that up here too if people want.
YSIC,
Christine
Here are the links for the Daniel stories (only in English) -the password is EternalKing
http://vimeo.com/29210111
http://vimeo.com/29210854
http://vimeo.com/29211525
http://vimeo.com/29211967
http://vimeo.com/29212554
http://vimeo.com/29702436
Here is also the training video (password is ’training’) which explains how to prepare a story from the text.
http://vimeo.com/29210464
Basic story set (also available in Mandarin) uses the password -rescue
1) Creation http://vimeo.com/27904915
2) Rebellion (Gen 3) http://vimeo.com/27623595
3) Noah http://vimeo.com/27647314
4) Abraham http://vimeo.com/27648929
5) Exodus http://vimeo.com/27650160
6) Sinai http://vimeo.com/27894308
NT
7) Christmas http://vimeo.com/27896621
8) Miracle 1 -authority over sickness http://vimeo.com/27652306
9) Miracle 2 -Auth over demons http://vimeo.com/27905212
10) Miracle 3 -authority over nature http://vimeo.com/28218874
11) Miracle 4 -auth. over sin http://vimeo.com/28222261
12) Miracle 5 - auth. over death http://vimeo.com/28488944
13) Crucifixion http://vimeo.com/27896966
14) Resurrection http://vimeo.com/28491176
22.11.2011
United States
Thanks for this article! I honestly hadn’t really considered that we overlook story telling in our literate, "advanced" cultures. It seems to me that we are often guilty of thinking that, once we have an education and status in society, that we are beyond such approaches. Perhaps it’s even considered childish. Yet we know from the psychological and pedagogical fields that people learn in a variety of ways... including aurally!
14.04.2011
United States
What a great story. I think it’s sad that in the Western world we often forget that most people don’t really enjoy reading even though they can. Even if people do enjoy reading, they often don’t take much away from what they read. In working with a group of kids a few summers ago, I found that even though they could read the Bible stories themselves, they got more out of it when I told it to them in story form. I agree that we should invest more time in storytelling.
11.03.2011
China
Good conversation!
I think you are exactly right Trica that storying is not just for primary and secondary oral learners. It is for the literates too.
I am from China and I did not grow up with good reading habits. For the past 4 years, I tried my very best in learning English mainly through watching Movie, listening to music and sermons, and talking to English speakers. I heard the gospel from an American missionary who taught us English through the Bible. Though I enjoyed learning the Bible very much, the words do not seem to stay at all after I read a passage. The audio “Bible” is so much easier for me to learn and memorize.
Now I am pursuing my master’s in the US and though I speak English fluently, I am still an oral learner. Learning through oral means is still not only my preference but more efficient ways of learning. And I have been trying to learn more about God through reading all the books that are recommended by friends but the words and knowledge seem not to stay either.
In the contrary, a biblical story that I heard from a teacher of mine a week ago is still so fresh in my memory and I can easily retell it.
In addition, I just think it will be great if the Chronological Bible Storying advocates and experts can record more videos and audios of the the stories that they did, that will be phenomenal for the oral learners who are being discipled and learning to share their faith too.
15.08.2010
United States
@ WendyTian:
Wendy, many sets of Bible stories are being recorded. There is a set that was also done in Chinese. It is Following Jesus. It is over 400 Bible stories realted to evangelism and discipling. While we are also doing more in English, we prefer to have people to record them within the culture and language. Several organizations are proding digital equipment for replaying the stories. Though I am quite literate, I have learned to enjoy and learn from hearing the stories as well as reading them. I think that all of us still have some residual orality in us.
16.08.2010
China
@ storyer:
Thank you. I have gotten a set of following Jesus and I have started listen to some of it. As I am trying to evaluate if it is good and if I could use it with my future students, I am grateful for the people who did them.
You are right, there are some residual orality in all of us. Moreover, the heart language is irreplaceable and it is so much more effective when we use the native tongue to tell the story.
20.08.2010
India
Great observation, Tricia! Indeed “cultures are all about stories”. Growing up as a Hindu, my earliest lessons on my religion were when my mother would walk me around our village temple, telling me the god-stories that were painted on the inside walls and roofs of the temple. The temple had long corridors and on each wall were several rows of small paintings, just like in a page in these days cartoon storybooks but minus the script. Mother would begin the story at one end of the wall, and we would move along as she tells me who the beautifully painted characters were, what they were doing or saying to one another and why, and when she finished one row of painting we are at the end of the corridor, then I would run back to where we stood first to begin the second row. When one story finished, the paintings merged into another story. We could not finish the entire wall in one visit, and so when we walked back home after a story or two, I was already thinking of what next occasion would bring me back to the temple. My father was a learned man but it was my non-literate mother who taught me my religion, through stories and the symbols in the rituals of our countless festivals related to those stories. Getting inundated with stories from all around, stories that are reinforced through use of symbols and performance-learning, is in fact an ancient way that has stood the test of time; our postmodern interest in this method is just another proof. Cultures are stories deeply believed in and lived out. The method is already there; our task is only to give the people new stories that are worth living out.
12.08.2010
United States
Tricia, you mentioned art. When I was a boy my church that met in an early 1900s building had eight stained glass windows depicting the stories of Jesus. One in particular I always remember was the one with Jesus holding a sheep and captioned The Good Shepherd. While we have moved away from using Bible teaching pictures in recent years due to cost and the fact that this is not a reproducible adjunct to Bible Storying, I miss that as the pictures I used back in my early storying days were an attraction to the people. They wanted to look at all of them. For teaching I would put up a line between two trees and hang the pictures in chronological order. I still laugh because I used plastic clothes pins to hang the pictures and the local ladies wanted to keep some for their washing! But people would come and stand before the pictures studying each one. Sometimes they would ask, “What is happening in this picture?” which then gave occasion for a story. I remember one dear Bengali lady Mala who was a school teacher. She attended one of my story training sessions and was so motivated that I gave her my set of teaching pictures. Later I saw her again and she told of having difficulty getting any of the local women to listen to her Bible stories. So she posted the crucifixion picture so the women could see it. Many came to her saying that pictured bothered them. So Mala would say, “There is a story about that picture and the person in it. Would you like to hear it?’ In this manner Mala had been able to tell the Creation to Christ stories eleven times since getting the pictures.
Another group of women that I developed a deep appreciation for were the Bible women. Most were nonliterate. They came to the training sessions and listened attentively. In the practice storytelling sessions most did better than the men, especially the pastors who tended to preach a bit. I finally decided to use some booklet-sized clear files into which I could insert the booklet-sized color teaching pictures from Global Recordings Network to make up a manageable number of stories. The women loved the books as they could “read” the books by looking at the pictures which reminded them which stories to tell. And they could hold the books open for the people in homes to examine as they told the stories. My burden was for the literally thousands of women Sunday school teachers, also nonliterate, who could have benefited from similar resources. One dear lady attended a puppet workshop where the participants made their own Muppet style puppets. I later saw this lady hold that almost child-sized puppet in her lap while letting the puppet help her to tell the Bible stories. It was amazing the skill she had picked up and was now using.
Many years ago the grandson of Hudson Taylor worked among students in Taiwan. With their help the group prepared artwork depicting the stories leading to salvation. Then they took the artwork to a public park and set up easels to display their pictures. As people paused to view the pictures each student would tell the story illustrated in that picture. Later the large pictures were reduced to artwork and bound into presentation books. Taylor and the students would board a train in Taipei bound for the south and scatter up and down the train. Whoever they sat next to got stories as they viewed the pictures. Then the group did the same thing on the return journey.
I could go on about missionaries studying Balinese dance so they could tell and dance the Bible stories to the delight of the Balinese. In other places those like myself encouraged putting the stories into the local folk media so the stories could travel freely throughout the culture and at the same time reduce the foreignness of the message. Even those hostile to the Christian message enjoyed the media events as they were “cultural.” Thanks for stirring up these memories.
12.08.2010
United States
I am greatly encouraged by this conversation. I believe the text-centered West in particular must grapple with the new reality that most of the individuals in their pews or within their spheres of influence are more orally-inclined than textually inclined. Perhaps the best summation I have found is from the unlikely source of author Phillip Pullman, writer of The Golden Compass, “Thou shalt not might reach the head, but it takes Once upon a time to reach the heart.”
We are called to love God with not just our mind but our heart and soul. It behooves us to consider both in our reaching and teaching strategies but without diluting the power of the great epic as Tricia called it or forgetting that the heart is just one aspect of persons that must be transformed. It is through the "renewing of our minds" that we come to know what is "the good, acceptable and perfect will of God." Story is both a door and a means to that end.
Seeds of this epic are sown throughout the cultures of the world. Perhaps it originates in an ancient collective memory of pre-Babel times when there was truly a single narrative and has subsequently been reinforced by various diasporas. Where head to head theologies may throw up deep battlements, heart to heart stories create bridges. This is as true in America as it is in Asia.
12.08.2010
United States
Tricia, in the early days several of us who were pioneering in the developing Bible Storying methodology were guilty of overstressing the value for nonliterates. In fact, we heard a number of almost comical but really tragic comments from nonliterates who were put down by well-meaning but foolish comments that someone was going to tell them Bible stories "because they couldn’t read." Some workers who had highly uccessful literate-style evangelistic ministries and results were told they must now change to orality methodology. For me orality was always one of the factors, but not the only one, or really the main one. It was reproducibility that I was seeking for the people I began to work with. What did I need to do in order to help the people teach their own. How must I teach them what was do-able for them? A colleague then serving in Peru wrote a paper on Third Generation Thinking raising the question about the perspective of teaching as we have always taught without regard of reproducibility. Then we began to teach people how to teach, but we were teaching them to teach like we preferred to teach. Finally it has dawned on us to teach the first generation as best we can in the same way they will in turn teach another who then will be empowered to teach still a third generation and so on. I think we’ve come a long way toward coming to grip with orality. I was hearing a lot of comment about historical or classical orality and the memory exploits of the ancients. But I was working among those with folk-orality--those who needed to hear things several times in order to remember them accurately. Then we needed to refresh the teaching from time to time due to fading or contamination from culture or prevalent religion. In the process we had to become students of their orality, learning to learn as the people learned, so we could effectively teach the way they learned best and would be likely to in turn tell/teach others. While we may generalize on the characteristics of oral learners, I have found that in real life they are highly variable in abilities to learn, remember and recall. In the process of doing this I found that though I test high in a literacy preference and skill self-exam, that I had a residual orality that woke up and in time served me well. I found that I could teach in the dark without an open Bible or in the flickering light on a oilcan lamp, or from my own oral Bible in my heart when it was not wise to have a visible Bible with me.
The joy for me now is not a pride in what I can teach, but in seeing the listeners’ faces and response to the Bible stories, and the joy of people learning to possess these stories in their hearts just as I have. And then hearing how they have in turn shared the stories. I was fascinated by a report from a friend serving in a large south Asian country. He is training Bible storytellers as he calls them who are literate pastors. They in turn go back to their churches and people to tell the stories. My friend has asked those he trained to keep track of how many might have heard the stories. In one report he added up all the reports sent back to him that indicated as many as 5,000 people had heard the stories that came out of his training session. That is the kind of publishing I like to hear about. I found some time back that I had been greatly honored--actually a story set that I had many years ago prepared as a model for Muslim women had been "pirated" and republished in a country and was being sold in book stores. Wow! What an honor. Later I had an opportunity to buy a copy of my own story set from a man selling them. That just made my day!
11.08.2010
United States
@ storyer:
Thanks for this response! We as well are most concerned about reproducibility and appropriate communication methods in all we do, rather than just saying that storying is the ’best way’ or the ’silver bullet.’ I too consider myself a ’literate’ learner and thinker, but it’s amazing how the oral ’side’ of me is so helpful in situations when I don’t have a chalkboard, outline, notes, or a Bible in my hand. I am beginning to feel like storying is also a way to infiltrate an entire culture with the Gospel, making the stories their ’own.’ We live in a country where the predominate religion is a part of everyday life to the extent that many cartoons, serials on TV, and most art reflects stories from their religious epics. Children are inundated with the stories everywhere they turn. I like that you mentioned that many oral learners we work with today need to hear things over and over in order to remember them. That’s the convenient thing about having a culture in which the religious is so intertwined with every day life. In this culture, people ’hear’ the stories over and over, even as they walk down the street and see murals painted on the sides of the road. As I watched a cartoon featuring a religious character the other day on a television in a restaurant, I was struck with this thought: What if a culture were instead inundated with the stories from the greatest epic ever told? What if those were the stories that filled people’s hearts, and lived inside them and transformed their thinking and actions? Cultures are all about stories, and the people in them are affected by their culture’s stories whether they are literate or oral learners. I think that it’s possible that story telling (in many forms, including art, TV serials, movies, dance, as well as what we call ’traditional’ story telling) isn’t just a way to communicate in reproducible manner, but maybe even a way to infiltrate an entire culture with life-transforming Truth.
12.08.2010
United States
Great post Tricia! It is easy for us to think of storying as only being for those who are illiterate. As you have pointed out we must take into account the preferred learning styles of our listeners. We cannot try and make everyone learn the way we do. This is something that happens in many arenas not just storying. People will bring a message to someone without taking into account that what they are saying will make no sense because of the manner it is being presented. If we are going to truly bring God’s word across all cultures we must understand how a group will understand it best and adjust accordingly. This was a wonderful story about how storying is for people who learn better with this method not just for the illiterate.
11.08.2010
You must be logged in to post a comment. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up now (it’s free and easy!).