Is Google Making Us Stupid?
"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly ...view article"
Stupid’s Not Quite The Right Word…
"It’s unfortunate Nicholas Carr’s new article in the Atlantic is titled Is Google Making Us Stupid?, because the headline ...view article"
EGYPT - Youth Ministry Study Helps Outreach
"Egypt is one of the places in the world where technology is really changing a whole generation of ...view article"
Secretary of State Rice, An Aural Learner
We can apparently count Secretary of State Condi Rice among those who prefer conversation over reading. Writing in the June 2007 issue of The Atlantic, David Samuels reports that Rice sometimes chooses to learn aurally even though as former Provost at Stanford University she is very much at home in the world of books and academia: Read more
A Bad Report Card
An Exercise to Help Literate People Think in Story One of the hardest things to train literate Bible Storyers to do is to "think in story." Read more
StoryTelling at SEBTS
Southeastern Seminary's trustees have approved a new track in orality studies for their Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies Degree. read more
Telling the Stories of Scripture
Historicall, the Bible has been told as a story. Storytelling has a powerful roll in affecting people's lives. A story influences worldview on basic beliefs, values and actions. A story can engage us, address the whole of human experience, have a strong impact on judgments and understanding, and can be used to illicit change within people. What an opportunity for meaningful faith conclusions to be reached after hearing the stories of God. Read more
An Exercise to Help Literate People Think in Story
One of the hardest things to train literate Bible Storyers to do is to "think in story." Read more
Storying-based Approach to Dealing with Alcoholism
Plans are being made for a project to teach the prevention and treatment of alcoholism among tribal peoples. Because these tribal peoples are oral learners the use of storying will be the avenue by which the classes will be taught. Read more
The Sound of Scripture Is Still Significant
In his classic History of the Christian Church,the renowned historian Philip Schaff claims that "the most important and useful work" of Martin Luther's life was translating the New Testament. Read more
Making Your Business Message Stick If there is one piece of advice the Heaths have for managers struggling to breathe life into their ideas, it is this: Tell a story. Read more.
Why Identify A People's Worldview? Why should we take the time to identify a people's worldview? Can't we just preach the Gospel to a people and let the Holy Spirit do His work of wooing and winning? Read more.
Stories from Storytellers "A Mad Man Healed and a Broken Heart Mended"
In one village there was a mad man. I went there with some other believers and asked permission to tell the stories from the Bible. I told the story of the man who was living among the tombs and was possessed by an evil spirit and was shouting. They were so eager to hear that story. Read more.
"Can I go to heaven when I die, too?" by David Sills
Baptist Press
David Sills is an associate professor of Christian missions and cultural anthropopogy and director of the Great Commission Center at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He recently made a trip to Peru to train national leaders. Read more.
Stories from Storytellers
The Storyteller Who Won a Nation for Christ. Read more.
God's Entourage Last January, in the parking lot of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, Robi Reed had a moment that propelled her career toward evangelism. After the Sunday service, Reed, a veteran casting director walked up to fellow churchgoer Denzel Washington and exchanged pleasantries and casually mentioned her latest project. "I'm producing and casting an audio Bible with an African American cast. It's the Old and New Testaments."
Reed remembers that Washington interrupted her, saying, "I have to do it." The Oscar-winning actor didn't talk about lawyers, money, agents or publicists. Read more.
Orality and the Post-Literate West
by Dr. Orville Boyd Jenkins
Communication skills in an oral culture are alien to the highly-literate, well-educated westerner. Most technical specialists, who go to "developing" countries tend to be this type of westerner.
The natural human oral orientation has usually been lost to them, due to the literate and analytical focus of western educational processes. This puts westerners at a terrible disadvantage for meeting the highly developed, sophisticated oral cultures they unwittingly find themselves within, in the majority of the world's cultures and countries. Read full article.
Missions, Orality, and the Bible
by John Piper
Thoughts on Pre-, Less-, and Post-literate Cultures
November 16, 2005
There is significant discussion today about oral cultures and how they learn and how they should be evangelized and built up in faith. The discussion ranges from pre-literate to post-literate—from cultures that have never had their languages written down to Western groups that no longer read but only watch images and listen to iPods. Of course, awareness of orality is not new, since virtually all cultures before the modern period and its printing press learned orally. Read full article
Winning the Oral Majority
by Dawn Herzog Jewell
Mission agencies rethink outreach to the world's non-literate masses
03/17/2006
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus and his band of disciples proclaimed a revolutionary message through stories, parables, and proverbs. Although few members of the early church could read or write, the message of the gospel took root, owing partly to its method of proclamation. Today, a number of mission leaders are calling for a return to Jesus' oral method of communicating. The majority of the world's people, they say, won't be reached any other way. Read full article
Partnership Churches
Reported by John Shepherd of Calvary Road Ministries
Introduction: In the fall of 1998, the Lord led John Shepherd to retire from his 40 year SBC active pastorate and at the age of 60 to form Calvary Road Ministries. During this time John Shepherd, David Crane and Bob Calvert formed the partnership of Calvary Road Ministries. Shepherd has been working with the IMB missionaries that make up the Maasai Team in East Africa. Read full article
Transitioning into Storying Methods
Can you trust oral learners to draw their own conclusions from a Bible story? Here's one report. Read full article
Adapting Teaching approaches to Varied Spiritual and Educational Situations in Brazil
By Timothy Brennan, Jr.
We are in a Christo-pagan society in Brazil. Yet, the immense variety of walks of life (learning styples, social levels, working classes, the rise of the universities, Kardecist spiritism, Candomble, Umbanda, lots of Eangelical churches that teach works salvation, Tribal beliefs, etc.) have led us to make some major changes in our material. My father developed the first phase with the title, "Deus Revelado nos Contextos" - "God Revealed in the Contents." Read full article
The Ministry to Muslim Women in West Africa By LaNette Thompson
I took the chalk in my hand and turned to the blackboard prepared to write the answers I expected the students to call out, but only silence greeted me. We were in the second week of a course on Chronological Bible Storying at a country in West Africa. There were 32 students taking this summer course, ranging from first-year seminary students to a Women’s Missionary Union leader to senior pastors. They had come from all over the country to attend the course that Marvin and I as well as a member of a major missions agency were co-teaching. Read full article.
What Do You Think, Mr. Gutenberg? The Challenges Print Evangelism Ministries Face in Meeting the Needs of Oral Cultures
By Avery Willis and James Greenelsh
The year was 1488. A young boy accidentally left a wooden shape dripping with dye on a piece of parchment overnight. In the morning he discovered an image remaining after removing the wood. It was an “aha!” moment that led to the invention of the printing press. That one insight changed the world in which we live. The boy’s name was Johann Guttenberg and his idea lit the fuse on a literacy revolution that supercharged the field of knowledge. The Bible finally came within reach of the common man. Christianity in Europe flourished. For the next five hundred years the Church in Western societies trumpeted the superiority of literacy. Read full article.