April 2, 2001
Huge number of non-readers
need to hear gospel in new way
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___PARIS--Non-readers may be the largest unreached people group in Texas, according to speakers at a conference on the missions challenge of reaching oral learners.
___A 1992 U.S. Department of Education survey opened the eyes of Warren Hart, director of missions in Red River Valley Baptist Association, and its findings inspired him to organize the March 17 conference at First Baptist Church in Paris.
___The National Adult Literacy Survey revealed that more than half of the population of Texas is illiterate (unable to read or write) or functionally illiterate (unable to read and write above the 8th grade level).
___While some of these individuals are highly proficient in a language other than English, a significant number are true oral-style communicators who learn in a way totally different than literate-style communicators.
___"Oral learners do not grasp and process information in the same way that literates do," Hart said. "For them, the gospel message is difficult if not impossible to process when it is presented in lists, outlines and expository messages."
___Oral-style communicators are in the majority in 147 of the 254 counties in Texas, Hart reported. He said he was shocked to discover that in his own part of Northeast Texas, literate-style communicators are a minority. In Lamar County, 56 percent of the people are oral communicators. In neighboring Red River County, the percentage jumps to 70 percent.
___"Oral learners who come to our churches have two choices. Either they stay and hide, or they just leave," Hart said.
___When they are called on to read in a Bible study class, asked to read the announcements in a church bulletin or urged to sing along to words in a hymnal, most will choose to leave, he observed.
___"We have slowly weeded out the oralists from our churches," Hart said. "Oral learners represent a vast mission population in our state."
___Jim Slack, consultant in evangelism and church growth with the Southern Baptist Convention International Mission Board, explained that for oral communicators, the story is the dominant communications style.
___"It has nothing to do with IQ. There is nothing the oral communicator cannot learn, if it comes to them in storying form," Slack said.
___Whether on the foreign mission field or in Texas, an effective way to reach oral learners with the gospel is chronologically telling the biblical story, from creation through the book of Revelation, he said.
___"I believe any church could double or triple its prospects if you were to target the oral learners in your communities," Slack said.
___Oral learners tend to use time markers, such as the birth of children or the passing of a generation, to process information in chronological sequence.
___"The key is telling stories chronologically so they can understand and remember them. As we story the Bible and dialogue with oral learners, we give them an ever-expanding oral Bible," Slack said.
___Oral learners have trouble understanding printed words on a page as conveying meaning, according to J.O. Terry, media consultant with the IMB. Instead, they rely on non-written visual images.
___"They prefer stories, proverbs and pithy, colorful sayings to detailed descriptions or lengthy technical explanations," Terry said.
___Whether they gather around a campfire in West Africa or a domino table in rural Texas, "they enjoy receiving information through informal exchanges in group settings that foster communal fellowship."
___Storying is an effective way of communicating the gospel message because the Bible is 60 percent narrative, said Grant Lovejoy, professor of preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
___"The Christian message begins with a story. The Bible is a long story of many sub-stories," he said. "Storytelling was how faith was transmitted for the vast majority of history for God's believing people."
___Jesus spoke in parables because not more than 15 percent of the people in Palestine in his day--and some scholars say as few as 3 percent--were literate, Lovejoy said.
___"You can be a biblically qualified Christian leader without literacy," he added. "A pastor must be able to teach. That is not synonymous with being able to read."
___Narrative preaching is a thoroughly biblical approach, perhaps more true to Scripture than expository, carefully outlined sermons, Lovejoy said.
___"If we are trying to reach oral learners, the more points and sub-points we have, the more pointless it becomes," he said.
___Lovejoy dismissed the criticism that storytelling is a childish and simplistic means of communication.
___"I would argue that it is more childish and simplistic to believe that the truth of a narrative can be summarized in three points and a poem and tied up in neat little package," he said.
___A key advantage to storying as a preaching style is that it reaches both literate and oral learners, Lovejoy noted.
___"Everybody who is literate has been oral. It is easier for a literate to learn orally than for an oral to learn by literate means. There is a kind of backward compatibility," he said.
___Storying also not only reaches illiterate and functionally illiterate people, but also those who view reality through the lens of postmodernism, Lovejoy added. Postmodern people may reject "your truth," but they are willing to listen to "your story," he said.
___"A story is not 'in your face.' It's not an attack on anyone's belief system. So stories get in under their defenses," he said.
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