Tag Archives: communication

Book Throwing and the Mission of God: Part 4

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Tom Richards, Vanuatu, Tanna, 2014, Man with MegaVoice

Tanna man using a MegaVoice, a solar-powered audio device loaded with a vernacular New Testament – one way in which someone might ‘receive’ or take in the Bible.

Interaction with Don’t Throw the Book at Them by Harry Box, Chapter 3

If you want to get the main idea and avoid the detail, jump to ‘The Written Elephant in the Oral Room’ (Click ‘read more’ and then scroll down ).

I should say right from the outset that if there is one chapter in this book that I am inclined to disagree with, it is this one.  It’s a great book and no doubt beneficial for learning to better communicate with oral people, but perhaps the case gets overstated here.  The chapter is worth reading, and in fact, I think when we think through the way in which Jesus’ disciples interacted with both written and oral texts, we notice some very important (and encouraging) things about engaging oral people with the scriptures.

Continue reading →

Book Throwing and the Mission of God: Part 3

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Tom Richards, John Frum, Storytelling, Noah and ark

Tannese Noah and the ark story retold through song and dance at Jon celebrations (John Frum), Feb 2016

Interaction with Don’t Throw the Book at Them by Harry Box

Chapter 2

To live on Tanna is to live in the land of stories. Perhaps this is a familiar experience for other westerners living within oral societies. All people love stories; it seems we’re wired for them. But here, they carry out functions that are foreign to us. For example, stories can function somewhat like a title-deed for land ownership. Stories are also fundamental to all Tanna’s religious movements, conveying and reinforcing their ideals and values. When someone came to our closest village promoting a new movement, he came telling a story.

Box’s fundamental question in this chapter is: ‘Do oral societies have a system of communication that is adequate for receiving and passing on the Christian message?’ Box’s answer is, unsurprisingly an emphatic yes. I will summarize Box’s chapter and then add my own thoughts as to how we might answer Box’s question in relation to any particular oral culture with particular reference to oral communication on Tanna. Continue reading →

Book Throwing and the Mission of God Part 2

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Vanuatu, Tanna, Oral communication, Unity Movement, Tom Richards

Oral Communication: the Unity Movement, Tanna, Vanuatu

Interaction with Don’t Throw the Book at Them by Harry Box

Chapter 1

I was surprised the first time that I supervised ‘homework’ at college by a low and constant whispered murmur. What was it? Was everyone just chatting rather than getting on with their work? Where they collaborating? No, what they were doing was reading aloud to themselves.

Now, I could put that down to the students only just developing literacy skills, like children who have not yet learnt to read silently, and to an extent that may be true in the sense that they are not ‘literacy people.’ But on the other hand, it indicates a difference in the way that they think about ‘text’ and words, and it is this difference that Box discusses in this chapter.

Surely Box is right when he says that ‘…there are many possibilities for misunderstanding and miscommunication between oral and literacy-oriented people’ (p19), and this chapter is foundational to the book in that it seeks to help us to better understand oral (non-book) people. What I will do is summarise the chapter first, and then offer some of my own comments by way of opening a discussion. What I really want to question is the degree to which the difference between oral people and literacy-based people separates us and how we can best think about those differences and (perhaps) similarities. Continue reading →