Oral Storying

A bunch of us just completed an oral storying workshop. I was involved as both student and teacher, and loved it! Many missions are involved in oral storying, or chronological bible storying, as it is a great way of taking oral groups through the message of the Bible from beginning to end, with lots of stories that communicate tonnes to them, perhaps more than they do to those of us from mainly literate societies.

Watch the above video to find out more about why oral communities respond so well to storying approaches. Here are some obvious advantages:

• People don't need to be able to read and write
• The stories are crafted orally, without pen and paper, so they tend to be much more natural than a written translation
• The stories are told in fellowship groups, which often turn into churches
• The method is designed to be reproducible - easily replicated by others
• It's hard for the authorities to repress an internal message (no books or media are needed, as people learn to tell the stories by heart)
• The story sets only take a year or two to craft
• The story sets are designed with the world view of the audience in mind

So how to people craft the stories? They listen to some audio recordings, look at some pictures based on the story, or watch a video. They then craft the story, which is 'anchored' - checked for biblical accuracy. It's ok to rephrase but not to leave things out or add too much extra information. The stories are then tested with non-believers or young believers who haven't heard the story previously. This takes time, but not as much as producing a print Bible or New Testament. Eventually churches will be planted in a region, and they may ask for a print Bible, but that comes later, and of course members of Wycliffe Bible Translators and others are ready to respond to that need, once it becomes established.

Here are some example story sets, one of which is the training set we used (in English)

onestory-media.org