Archive
Violence Against Christians in Africa Is Increasing
How do you see persecution? According to Open Doors, 1 in 8 Christians worldwide experience persecution for their faith. That’s 1 in 8 of us whose faith can come at great cost — in some cases, even at the cost of life itself.
Orality Breakouts – Epilogue
Walking down Baghramyan Street in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, I was reflecting on how the Scriptures first arrived in Armenia. How strange it might have been to hear them read in Greek or Syriac, but it was translated into Armenian orally. The oral for...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 19 – Orality, Storytelling, and Values Preservation in Bhutan
As the jetliner flew past eight of the ten highest mountains in the world, I knew I was in for an adventure. To my left I could see Mt. Everest towering high above the other mountains. It seemed close enough to touch. The plane turned north, into the mighty...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 18 – Evaluations and Oral Cultures
A Christian ministry’s quarterly newsletter arrived in the hands of its donors in July 2008. It profiled, complete with pictures, a training initiative launched earlier that year in rural India. One month later, a third-party team arrived to evaluate the pr...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 17 – The Crescendo of Local Arts in Orality
Since it was already March in this Siberian town, the beginnings of spring could be felt in the air. The sun again shone brightly after several months of somnolent hibernation, and the frigid temperature outside the one-room log church had risen to a tolera...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 16 – Stories for the One Child Generation
Stories are priceless. They can bring joy and a sense of appreciation and arouse creativity. They stimulate our imagination and develop new thought patterns. They can be especially useful in helping a child to develop good behavior and a healthy personality...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 15 – On Mission with God
Christ’s desire and intention is to reach the lost by changing each person’s heart and habits according to His salvation plan and message. Every ethnic people group in the world is included in His purpose and is distinctive in its language and culture. In o...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 14 – Lessons Learned
Christ’s desire and intention is to reach the lost by changing each person’s heart and habits according to His salvation plan and message. Every ethnic people group in the world is included in His purpose and is distinctive in its language and culture. In o...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 13 – The Forgotten Majority
It is a sweltering day on the African Atlantic coast. A searing afternoon sun burns the white sand and a hot wind sifts through the silver waves. There is no shelter as several Peular-speaking women are baptized in the tepid salt water. Afterwards, there is...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 12 – The Potter and Mass Media
Bright futures! That’s all one could imagine while watching fifty children converge on a muddy floor to listen eagerly to Bible stories. We had traveled by ferry across the Mekong River to Kok Dack Island in Cambodia. There, the children displayed nothing b...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 11 – Practices in Orality
Christ’s desire and intention is to reach the lost by changing each person’s heart and habits according to His salvation plan and message. Every ethnic people group in the world is included in His purpose and is distinctive in its language and culture. In o...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 10 – From Storytelling to Church – the Heart of the Matter
Whenever people ask me why I am so passionate about orality, I tell them that I am not passionate about orality—I am passionate about reaching people with the Gospel and unleashing others to do the same. I tell them the story of a woman I’ll call Pemba. I m...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Section 3 – An Unfinished Story
Is there a collective consciousness about orality within your organization already? Are there colleagues you know who are using orality strategies and are seeing fruitful results? Will you consider learning from them or supporting them?
Orality Breakouts – Chapter 9 – A Church Was Born
In early 2006, the Oral Communication Strategy team at e3 Partners Ministry began to consider where we could start our first project using Chronological Bible Storytelling as our primary strategy. After approaching our directors in several countries, God ma...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 8 – Media that Transforms Nations
Small roadside fires lit our way as we walked dusty cobblestone lanes in the foothills of India’s Himalayas late one cold winter night. As we passed villagers squatting around steamy pots of rice and lentils, and women selling meals to local passersby, we s...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 7 – Stepping Stones to Reaching Orissa’s Oral Culture
In one day, seven families listened to the story of the resurrection. Through the story, they understood who Jesus was and openly committed their lives to Him. The following week, they started a new house church in their own village. Today, they continue to...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 6 – Living Out a Visual Story
Sometimes we think of communication mostly in terms of words. Oral communication then brings to mind the spoken word, or perhaps preaching or teaching. This is the idea we envision when we think of taking the Gospel to the nations. However, we have also hea...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 5 – Oral People and the Spoken Word
“How do you say this in Kahani?” It was about midday. I sat on our shaded concrete porch and watched determined villagers, wearing worn flip flops, trek along dusty paths that crisscrossed the surrounding foothills of the majestic Himalayan Mountains. At...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 4 – Breakthroughs
“How do you say this in Kahani?” It was about midday. I sat on our shaded concrete porch and watched determined villagers, wearing worn flip flops, trek along dusty paths that crisscrossed the surrounding foothills of the majestic Himalayan Mountains. At...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Section 2 – The Word Became Fresh
Ideas take time to spread and embed. They yearn for a nest to grow and a climate to flourish. To prevail, they must address today’s questions and make a difference—and they need a culture that will stay with them until crucial tipping points are reached and...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 3 – What God Hath Wrought: The Electronic Breakthrough that Revived Orality
The invention of the electric telegraph in 1835 and the transmission of Samuel Morse’s code in 1838 compares as a breakthrough with the invention of Gutenberg’s movable type printing press in 1436. A telegraph wire was installed from the U.S. Supreme Court ...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 2 – Three CEOs Leading Change
One of the biggest challenges for the leader of any organization is to face problems head on and deal with them. One of those problems is demanding increasing attention: the majority of the world’s unreached peoples are oral learners. And our conventional l...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Chapter 1 – The Passion for Orality
We listened intently to a description of how children’s soccer teams were trained. It was June 2009 and Rev. Dr. Sameh Maurice, Senior Pastor of Kasr El-Dobara Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt, was speaking animatedly. At the end of our coffee shop conver...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Section 1 – The Back Story
Bagel, roti, cornbread, pita, bun, chella, baguette, injera, paska, mantou, white bread, tortilla, croissant! Bread, by any name, is a prepared food enjoyed across the world. In some parts, it actually serves as the knife, fork, and spoon, and not the meal ...
Read MoreOrality Breakouts – Foreword by Avery T. Willis Jr.
The room was abuzz at the 2000 Amsterdam conference on evangelism, sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Six hundred of the ten thousand participants were hard at work discussing how to finish the Great Commission in the next ten to fiftee...
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