Orality in Your Tool Kit

Oral or literate methods -- which is most appropriate and most effective in communicating the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa? While I don't intend to try to answer that question in this post, I do want to point out a couple of resources.

When our organization began talking about orality several years ago, there was some misunderstanding of the purpose. Some assumed that one would only use oral methods with illiterate people. Not true. The terms orality and literate refer to learning styles, not the ability to read. There are many, many people who have very high reading skills but are still oral learners. (I wish there was a better term for non-oral methods rather than literate -- I think the term itself leads to huge misunderstandings.) Steve Evans says that stories enter the heart and affect change and that's precisely what we hope happens when we share the Gospel.

While I'm quite sure there are many resources available, here are a couple of websites that might serve as a starting point for learning about orality:

Lausanne Movement Conversation on Orality -- blog by Steve Evans
Oral Strategies -- resource website hosted by IMB

• Do you have stories of how oral methods effected change when other methods did not?
• What other orality resources do you know about?

For the Kingdom,
Bob A