Living Water International Provides Training in 'Orality Storytelling' as Part of New Movement in Missions

By Michael Ireland
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

NASHVILLE, TN (ANS) -- A new movement is rapidly changing the field of missions.

Jerry Wiles at a school in Africa where Living Water International provided a drinking water well.(Photo Courtesy Living Water International)

According to Jerry Wiles, President Emeritus of Living Water International, the 'Orality Movement' is quite significant in the missionary world because it's changing the face of missions.

In an interview at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, TN, Wiles told me: "The new awareness (in missions) is that seventy percent of the world's population -- that's four point three billion people -- would be considered oral learners by necessity, or by preference.

"There are still 2,700 languages that don't have any written script. There's more than two-thousand languages that don't have scripture translated into their mother tongue yet. So overall, more than four-billion people would be considered oral learners."

Wiles said that throughout history, the majority of the people have always been oral learners.

"In the first century when Jesus was here in the flesh, scholars say roughly 90 percent (of people alive then) would be considered oral learners."

Wiles described for me what he meant by an oral learner. "An oral learner would be a person who can't, doesn't, or won't read -- or prefers to learn and communicate by means other than the printed page, or written instruction, or literate style of communication."

Wiles continued: "Well you know, I've had quite a bit of education and I can read and write -- know I've written books and all -- but I'm an oral preference learner. If I have a choice of reading a book or sitting in front of a computer screen or talking to the author or interacting with the author that wrote the book, I'd rather do it orally. So I guess, I would be an oral preference learner. But scholars have divided it up into two areas: primary oral learners and there are secondary oral learners. We have an increasing number of secondary oral learners in the western world -- North America and the industrialized world. So what we're learning from what we're doing in Asia and Africa and Latin America and areas where there's primary oral learners is that so much of that is transferrable to secondary oral learners.

"That means, for example, in the inner city of Houston or Los Angeles or in Peoria or a rural part of Oklahoma or Kansas, there's a lot of people that are oral learners or oral preference learners. They can read, they can get by in society, but having the ability to sit down and read a document like the Bible, to read the bible with comprehension, they either can't or don't do that. Now think about recent studies and a survey that was published says that 58 percent of high school graduates in America never read another book after they graduated from high school.

"Also 42 percent of university graduates never read another book after they graduate with their degree. So we've got a lot of secondary degree oral learners in America. Now due to immigration and the different languages in Houston for example we've got a hundred different languages. So 'cross cultural missions' and outreach really is applicable in the United States as well as it is in Guatemala City or New Delhi or Nairobi. So what we're discovering as we do the orality training workshops, and we're doing what we can, is an introduction to contextual Bible storying. Now there's chronological Bible storying, there's thematic Bible storying, there's topical Bible storying -- there's all kinds of different storying -- several different streams of storying. Storying is when one big story, one big stream in the orality movement; then you have technology -- there's lots of different technology -- and you have drama, you have poetry, poems, proverbs all kinds of song, all kinds of other oral arts -- that we want that we learn a lot fro m Africa and other parts of the world.

"So we're incorporating these methods and techniques. The key is to make it simple and reproducible. So what we're doing right now, what we've done all over the world, is five stories teaching in two days. We do bi-lingual training, so we do it in English and a gateway language. A gateway language for example, in Latin America, obviously it'd be Spanish. A gateway language in Ethiopia would be Amhari. In North India it'd be Hindi. We do it in English and a gateway language, but we do it in such a way that they can immediately learn and tell the stories in other languages and dialects.

 "Now I was just in India a few months ago, we were in two different locations where we had language groups in our in our training that have no written script. So this is really where the rubber meets the road if you think about these are totally oral cultures. But what the mission movement now has discovered (is that) not only can you present the gospel through oral means, you can make disciples, you can train leaders, you can train pastors and church planters, using a totally oral method. It's much easier to reproduce, and the rapidly reproducing church planting movement is primarily in oral cultures."

Do you need to have a good memory to learn five stories in two languages?

"That's the interesting thing about it because the Lord's given us a method and a technique and we've learned from a lot of other different sources," said Wiles.

"But one of the keys is the repetition and the retelling of the story. So we tell the stories, then we retell the story as a group, and then we talk about the story and we ask questions about it. We provide some listening tasks, some points to think about as you listen to the story. We ask them to put away their notes and their Bibles and their technology for this exercise -- we want them to identify with and enter into the world of the oral learner. One of the keys is the repetition group participation -- the engagement, the talking about the stories, and they hear the stories at least eight, nine or ten times in the process of learning it. And then we start asking questions. What do we observe? what does it mean? and how do we apply it to our lives? And we focus on teaching them a little, practice a lot, and they implement immediately. We want to make sure that the stories are biblical, understandable, and reproducible. So the Lord's given us some ways to do that from a lot of different sources that it really works and we're j ust and we're getting feedback -- wherever we go after we've done these trainings, we go back (and) they've continued to tell these stories. I'll tell you one example of that.

 "We did training in Southern Mexico about a year ago and we had one of our volunteers, a local national worker, go out go out to a Living Water project to do some work. There were five Mexican workers there, and two American volunteers. Well, our national worker suggested to our American volunteers 'let's tell them the story of the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well about living water.' So he told the story through the interpreter and he asked the question what do you think Jesus meant by living water? Have you received this living water? Do you think Jesus offers this living water today? Would you like to receive this living water? "So in the pre- and post- story dialogue they filled in the Gospel, shared the Gospel and answered some questions -- they talked about it, and so he led these guys in prayer (and) all four of these guys prayed to receive Christ. So all five of those Mexican workers learned the story of the woman at the well and they continued to tell the story in that community. About six weeks later, we go t word -- I was in Guatemala for a leadership summit of our Central American leaders -- and one of the guys said if those workers in that Mexican community continue to tell the story over and over again -- and they have -- in thirteen families come to Christ because of that one story.

"So you think about telling the story, asking questions, and there are probably forty questions you can ask about the woman at the well. What was the woman's life like before she encountered Jesus? Why was she so amazed when Jesus said will you give me a drink? She said you're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan and a woman how can you ask me for a drink? What did Jesus mean when he said God is Spirit they that worship God must worship him in spirit and truth? Why were the disciples amazed and surprised when they came back and discovered this woman that Jesus was talking to this woman? What about the Jews and the Samaritans, why did they not get along?

"So all these questions you can ask, and the people engage, you can tell a story in about two minutes and they'll spend hours talking about it. And then you start asking what do we observe? What does it mean? How does it apply to our lives? Do we have a problem today with racial conflicts or tribal conflicts different people groups getting together? What's God's attitude toward different groups? So what are the lessons we learn? Why did this woman leave her water pot and go back to town and tell people come see a man who told me everything I ever did? Could this be the messiah? And there was many Samaritans that believed because of the testimony of the woman. So all these questions (are considered) and then they engage, they learn the story, and then they can tell it and retell it with explanation, and we teach them about how the difference in the story and our opinion about the story or our comments.

"We (also) have something called 'oral bookends.' So we start the story by saying 'this is the story from the word of God.' So when we finish, we say 'that's the story from the word of God.' In between those bookends we make sure that it's true to the story -- it may not be word for word from the text -- but it's crafted in such a way that the main message is in the story. So they learn the story true to the account of the scripture so that they can retell it and maintain accuracy. So oral people learn in community (and) you've got the collective memory of the group which is a safeguard from getting them off into error. The repetition and review and retelling it keeps it true to the word."

Where can people find out more information about this?

Cover artwork for Jerry's book 'No Greater Joy.'

"There are two places -- you could go to our website which is www.Water.cc/orality . And then of course the new book that Whitaker House has published 'No Greater Joy.' I'm the author of that book, 'No Greater Joy: Power of sharing Your Faith Through Stories and Questions.' So it's about sharing the gospel as we go in different settings and then also about principles of making disciples and really looking at how did Jesus make disciples. And when you really ask the right questions, how much does a person need to know to come to a relationship with Jesus? how much what do they need to know? and what's the best delivery system? The next question is how much and what do they need to know to become a reproducing follower of Jesus and bring others to a relationship with Jesus? What we're seeing is the power the simplicity and reproducibility."

How did Wiles stumble upon that?

"Well I'll tell you just a little of my personal history (which) goes back to 1983, I came across a book at the US Center for World Missions by Herbert V. Klem, who is a veteran missionary in Africa. It's called 'Oral communication of the Scriptures: Insights into African Oral Art.' That caused me to begin to think how can we reach the people, the non-reading people of the world, illiterate people -- now we call them oral learners. So that kind of started me on the journey and I did a little concept paper and started speaking on the subject at mission conferences and everything in those days back in the eighties. And then I reconnected with it about four years ago with a group of people doing this and discovered that there was this International Orality Network that was doing this and all these different groups that were doing in some fashion, in some form of 'orality storying' had come together in this movement that we'd learned. So I got re-engaged four years ago."

According to its website, Living Water International exists to demonstrate the love of God by helping communities acquire desperately needed clean water, and to experience "living water"-the gospel of Jesus Christ-which alone satisfies the deepest thirst. Nearly 21 years ago, LWI set out to help the church in North America be the hands and feet of Jesus by serving the poorest of the poor. More than a billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

The website states that, for all practical purposes, these statistics refer to the same people; around the world, communities are trapped in debilitating poverty because they constantly suffer from water-related diseases and parasites, and/or because they spend long stretches of their time carrying water over long distances.

In response to this need, LWI implements participatory, community-based water solutions in developing countries. Since they started, LWI has completed more than 10,000 water projects (and counting!) for communities in 26 countries.

The book by Herebert V. Klem was published in 1981, but is currently out of print. However, Jerry Wiles' book "No Greater Joy" is available on Amazon.com.

For those who are interested in learning more about the special training, Living Water International is holding an Orality Training Workshop and Introduction to Story Training on August 13, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the southwest Houston area. To register go to: http://www.water.cc/orality 

**ANS would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

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** Michael Ireland is Senior Correspondent for ANS. He is an international British freelance journalist who was formerly a reporter with a London (United Kingdom) newspaper and has been a frequent contributor to UCB UK, a British Christian radio station. While in the UK, Michael traveled to Canada and the United States, Albania,Yugoslavia, Holland, Germany,and Czechoslovakia. He has reported for ANS from Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel, Jordan, China,and Russia. Michael's volunteer involvement with ASSIST News Service is a sponsored ministry department -- 'Michael Ireland Media Missionary' (MIMM) -- of A.C.T. International of P.O.Box 1649, Brentwood, TN 37024-1649, at: Artists in Christian Testimony (A.C.T.) International where you can donate online to support his stated mission of 'Truth Through Christian Journalism.' If you have a news or feature story idea for Michael, please contact him at: ANS Senior Reporter