February 17, 2003
Ellis Association speaks gospel to oral learners
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___WAXAHACHIE--Story telling might get a child in trouble with his mother, but it could be just the thing to reach many people missed by conventional churches.
___This kind of story telling doesn't involve lies, but rather is a way to speak the truth of the gospel so that it can be understood.
___Oral learners are people who learn best through hearing stories told. By some estimates, they make up about 50 percent of the nation's population. While some are illiterate, many more have either limited or functional literacy skills.
___Most churches, on the other hand, are geared toward people who are fully literate.
___This distinction has become a focus in Ellis Baptist Association, where leaders are developing a new strategy to reach oral learners. The association is writing narratives that will chronologically tell Bible stories along with visual representations. The visuals will add more memory hooks for the learners.
___Pastors in the association are supportive of the idea, Director of Missions Larry Johnson said.
___"They recognize these are the people they are not reaching through traditional churches," he said. "They may be members, but they are not in positions of leadership and are probably on the fringes."
___Grant Lovejoy, an associate professor of preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who teaches a course in Bible "storying," agreed that conventional churches are not geared toward reaching oral learners.
___"We have oral learners in our churches, so I wouldn't say we're missing them, but we do presuppose literacy," he explained. "We give them forms to fill out, bulletins to read, passages of Scripture to turn to and so forth."
___Oral learners should not be viewed as illiterates, both Johnson and Lovejoy agreed.
___"These are people who are able to write checks and that sort of thing, but their primary means of learning is not through reading something," Lovejoy said.
___"They remember things primarily through the telling of stories," Johnson added.
___Initially, the association has chosen to produce about 40 lessons that tell Bible stories with pictures.
___"The lessons are chosen because they are basic to understanding the framework of the Bible and salvation," Johnson explained. "The story of creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and so forth."
___The stories will be told chronologically because that will make it easier for oral learners to follow, he added. Initially, the stories will be told by a literate, but the goal is to have the leader also be an oral learner.
___For that reason, the stories also are being recorded on CDs so future leaders may study by listening.
___The association plans to create multi-generational Bible study groups that meet in homes. Johnson believes having children involved will help overcome one of the major problems with reaching oral learners in America--the stigma of being labeled illiterate.
___"The hardest part in reaching oral learners is to gather them together without somehow stigmatizing them," Lovejoy pointed out. "It's not too different from churches that might want to reach out to people with sexual addictions. You can't just put in the bulletin, "Everyone with this problem should come to church on Tuesday night," because no one wants to say they have that problem and be labeled that way. The important part, then, is to reach out to them in away that doesn't label them."
___The Ellis County Baptists hope to eliminate the stigma by promoting the family nature of the program.
___"These will be cell-style meetings that are very family-oriented," Johnson said. "Because we're telling stories, the children can be in there with adults, because everyone relates to stories regardless of their age. One of the problems with many house churches is, 'What do we do with the children?' We won't have that problem because they will be included."
___While he's optimistic about the new approach, Johnson doesn't expect a quick fix.
___"This is not something we can expect overnight results from," he admitted. "This is really following the International Mission Board's model of church planting. This is a church planting movement among oral learners in Ellis County."
___Lovejoy agreed that reaching oral learners requires an on-going commitment.
___"The question is not, 'How long does it take for people to learn these stories?' but 'How long does it take to have their lives transformed by them?' Just like literate learners, that is an ongoing process. Working with oral people is a lifelong process, not a 13-, 39- or 52-week curriculum."
The Baptist Standard
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