more than letters on a page
I finally have something deep and philosophical to write about.
I am part way through reading an article called 'Making Disciples of Oral Learners', by an "Issue Group" on that topic at the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization, hosted by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
Right now I can't actually remember how I came across this article, but it proved to be very topical for me, because over the last few days I have been pondering issues related to 'written language' as opposed to 'spoken language'. It all started because my Language Studies lecture last week was mainly about writing systems, and it raised the fact that the Church has played an enormous part in proliferating written language and literacy. In fact, we were shown a map of which used different colours to represent the various orthographies used in the various regions of the world. It was amazing to see that the Latin alphabet (ie. the one you're reading now) covers not only countries where Italic languages and/or English are used, but also all of South America, almost two thirds of Africa, Indonesia, Greenland, Scandinavia, and a few parts of the Middle East. I thought this was amazing considering how many different languages exist in those places, but I suppose it's really a result of colonisation and... evangelisation!
I don't have any empirical data to support this claim, but I reckon most of the 'indigenous' languages in Australia, Africa, South America, South East Asia etc., belong/ed to 'oral' cultures, and the only reason they have writing systems at all is thanks to missionaries who wanted to give them access to the Word of God. That's a great thing, but I know from the time I spent with a family who were doing Bible translation and literacy work in a remote Aboriginal community, that "for the illiterate, written Scripture is not accessible even if it is available in
their own language." (Making Disciples of Oral Learners, p.14) This article has helped me to understand much more clearly why the kind of work those faithful missionaries were doing is such a struggle. Essentially, letters on a page mean nothing to people who were born and bred in an oral culture, so even once you've taught them to read that is probably not going to be the most effective way of communicating the gospel to them.
I highly recommend reading the article, if you are interested and have time. There's no real point my babbling on about what it says when they've already made the same points much more clearly and with much more evidence and experience! So here's a little bit to whet your appetite...
I was saved from a Hindu family in 1995 through a cross-cultural missionary. I had a desire to learn more about the word of God and I shared this with the missionary. The missionary sent me to Bible College in 1996. I finished my two years of theological study and came back to my village in 1998. I started sharing the good news in the way as I learnt in the Bible College. To my surprise my people were not able to understand my message. A few people accepted the Lord after much labour. I continued to preach the gospel, but there were little results. I was discouraged and confused and did not know what to do.
"In 1999 I attended a seminar where I learnt how to communicate the gospel using different oral methods. I understood the problem in my communication as I was mostly using a lecture method with printed books, which I learnt in the Bible school. After the seminar I went to the village but this time I changed my way of communication. I started using a storytelling method in my native language. I used gospel songs and the traditional music of my people. This time the people in the villages began to understand the gospel in a better way. As a result of it people began to come in large numbers. Many accepted Christ and took baptism. There was one church with few baptized members in 1999 when I attended the seminar. But now in 2004, in six years we have 75 churches with 1350 baptized members and 100 more people are ready for baptism.
"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 is 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. These members of a literate society then tend to communicate the gospel in the literate style that speaks to them.
"This does not mean that we discourage literacy or neglect literates. Experience shows that once oral learners accept the gospel, some will have the desire and persistence to become literate in order to read the Bible for themselves. The development of oral strategies is not a deterrent to translating the Bible into every language. In fact, the opposite is true. These burgeoning church planting movements that result from an oral proclamation will need the whole counsel of God. Requiring non-Christians to learn to read just so that they can consider the Christian faith puts unnecessary obstacles in their path.
posted by deborah @ 11:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home