Skip to main content

How to Run an Oral Gathering of Believers (Church)

Recently we visited a church and tried to run a meeting without printed words, or rather a meeting with oral worship. Here's some advice on how to run such a gathering:

  • Sing songs that everyone knows without printed or projected words
  • Any videos used need to have audio as well as subtitles, or better still no text or subtitles for the audio
  • Bible stories are told from the heart - not memorised from a Bible but crafted naturally (try listening to several audio versions, or watching several videos to help you remember all the points, then retell it in your own way and record yourself on your smart phone as you do so)
  • Get people to retell the story in their own way in pairs (if someone is really talented at this they might volunteer to tell it to the whole group?)
  • Ask people who they are planning to tell the story to by the next gathering
  • The sermon doesn't use a PowerPoint, or if it does make sure you don't have any words in it
  • If you're in a liturgical church stream try to use only parts of the liturgy that people know from heart
This may seem to be a bit artificial but there are several benefits:
  1. It helps us imagine the way church works in much of the two-thirds (developing) world
  2. It makes our gatherings more attractive to those within our society who are oral-preference rather than highly literate (being handed a pile of books as you enter church is largely a thing of the past, which is a good thing, but we still have printed notices, or banner notices on screens, and project words for most activities) i.e. it provides a bridge for people to cross to greater understanding of the good news - which is what it's all about
If you would like extra help with this try contacting someone in Wycliffe Bible Translators for some advice. Or reply to me below:

David

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Flow Chart for Bible Translation (a Relevance Theory Approach)

One of the current theories behind modern translation work is Relevance Theory. [1] Here is a flow chart that explains the process often used to produce a draft when using such an approach: *Make sure your translation committee makes the decision as to what kind of translation they want. A domesticated translation is one that submits to dominant values in the target language [2] whereas a foreignized translation is one that is happy to import foreign terms and ideas from Hebrew, Greek, or the language of wider communication such as the Greek term baptizo . The chart looks something like this: Text                                   Communicated Ideas                  Context A sower went out to sow  A farmer went out to sow grain   People scattered/threw seed etc. The text has very little information, but behind i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Asset Based Bible Translation (ABBT)

Many of you will have heard of asset-based community development (ABCD). How can Bible translation programmes be asset based, rather than deficit based? The best way to look at this is a comparison table: Deficit based Asset based Driven by outsiders Driven by the community Outside funding Community funded Done to meet a need Done to help the community grow Quality control done by a consultant Community checked and approved Control from outside-in Lead by stepping back Products not accepted? Products are accepted Little engagement Engagement with products Scientific Organic Not sustainable Sustainable Of course many translation programmes these days are neither one nor t'other, they are somewhere between these two extremes. Nevertheless, this illustrates a point, and shows that the current ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Problems and Pitfalls of Proof-Texting

Why is it wrong to proof-text when making an argument?  Proof-texting is when someone simply quotes a verse from the Bible, out of context, to make a point. This can be in a book, a conversation, an essay, or a sermon, to give some examples. I just did a quick read of some other blogs on this topic, and none of them wowed me, so I thought I'd write my own. Then I had an even better idea: why not get you to tell me why proof-texting is problematic? In other words, I want to crowd-source the problem, and get lots of input. Since it is my suggestion, and I already did some research, let me get the ball rolling. Proof-texting is problematic because: It ignores the original context of the verse. There are actually two types of context: The literary context of the verse, that is, the verse is situated in a passage (that might be making an entirely different point) of Scripture that has a certain genre. For instance, the book of Acts is narrative, which means it is descriptive of what hap...
3 comments
Read more