Larry is currently serving as the Africa Director at Faith Comes By Hearing. He lived for many years in the Sahel region of Africa, where he was involved in Bible translation, Bible storying and various scripture engagement activities. In 2012, Larry completed a doctoral program at Fuller Seminary focused on fruitful practices in Muslim ministry.
Orality in Context: A Tool for Maximizing Scripture Engagement in Oral Communities
Abstract
According to the International Orality Network, there are 5.7 billion oral learners in today’s world—over 80% of the world’s population. When people think about orality, they tend to limit it to the communications process (how people receive, process, remember and pass on information). Oral communities, however, share much more in common. Not only are they unique in the way the communicate, but also in how they relate to one another and how they learn. In order to maximize the impact of our scripture engagement programs today, it is important to understand the key characteristics of oral communities and adapt our scripture engagement strategies accordingly.
The current research has evolved out of a doctoral study program, focusing on fruitful practices in a Muslim setting, sponsored by the Vision 5:9 network. The focus of the research was over 100 interviews from across the Muslim world, where practitioners told their story of how God had brought fruit to their ministry in a Muslim context. The goal was to look for themes of fruitful practice across the interview set. In the course of the research, three themes of fruitful practice emerged as the most important. What wasn’t immediately obvious, was that all three themes were core characteristics of oral communities in general. This paper presents a framework for understanding the core characteristics of oral communities and for developing scripture engagement tools geared toward maximizing potential impact.