Tag Archives: Orality

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.

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Spaeglas: Luk Insaed

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Spaeglas COMA for VanuatuContextualising COMA for Vanuatu: Part 3 (background here)

So, the college term is moving on and I’m continuing to struggle through teaching Interpreting the Bible.  For the time being I’m running with the title ‘Spaeglas’ for what was once COMA.  Spaeglas is the Bislama word for telescope or binoculars, and so is a metaphor for looking carefully at the text.  The four points being:

Luk Insaed                        (Look Inside)

Luk Afsaed                        (Look Outside)

Luk long Stamba            (Look for the Central Message)

Luk long Laef                  (Look to Life)

Here are the steps for Luk Insaed that I’m teaching at the moment for you to have a look at and maybe contribute to.  It’s not a lesson plan – this would be taught over about three lessons with homework in between – it’s more the bare bones; things to work through in order to thoroughly observe a passage.  It’s pretty rough and raw at the moment with little editing.

Compared to COMA – Observe, I have tried to make the steps more concrete and to use strategies that will work well for oral people, including some things I’ve picked up in the comments from previous posts – thank you so much.

Below the outline, I will add a couple of questions and areas that I can see need improvement and a little lesson illustration that you could help with (even if you don’t have Bislama).  Below that, in the comments, you can fire away with your own input (please!).    Continue reading →

Biblical Interpretation for Vanuatu: Contextualizing COMA

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COMA for Vanuatu, Talking About Tanna

A puzzle for Bislama speakers

I’m wrestling with how to teach Biblical Interpretation at certificate level and have been trialing teaching students the COMA method with some (but limited) success. I think the method is really good and sound and I’m going to persevere with it, but try to further contextualize it in order to better support Ni-Vanuatu students and ministers. I’ll do this in Bislama. Want to help? I’d love your input. 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 →

Response to: Book Throwing and the Mission of God Part 2

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John Wilson was a resident missionary in Papua (Irian Jaya) from 1972 to 1991 and wrote his master’s dissertation on ‘Scripture in Oral Culture’ before orality was as trendy.  He was kind enough to add his thoughts to my application comments and I think they’re worth sharing.

Comments in italics by John D Wilson:

We must seek to understand the communication methods of our target culture; we need to have a good understanding of how the people communicate with each other and how their belief and plausibility systems are transferred. I think this point has been made clear by enough people in enough ways that we can no longer claim to be doing responsible mission if we don’t.

This does not mean that people are incapable of learning a different communication method. They may use it in a different way—in terms of logic and structure of thought.

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