Larry Dinkins discovered, after trying a highly literate TEE approach for Bible study and a western approach to preaching, that the Thai were in fact “preferred oral learners” who responded best to the narrative sections of Scripture. Following a major fail during an orality workshop, he went on a quest to understand how best to communicate to concrete relational learners like the Thai. Dinkins has since been involved with one hundred Simply the Story workshops in ten countries, and has settled on a three-pronged narrative preaching approach that has produced gratifying results with the added benefit of being easily replicated.
Larry Dinkins
Dr. Larry Dinkins finished his ThM at Dallas Theological Seminary in 1979 and then went with his wife Paula to Thailand through OMF International and began a church planting ministry with leprosy patients. In 1987, the Dinkins transitioned into a Bible teaching ministry at the Bangkok Bible College. In 1995, Larry finished classwork for a PhD at Biola University, allowing him to return to Thailand to start a TEE program in North Thailand. Larry acted as a founding director of the newly formed Chiang Mai Theological Seminary (CTS) in 2000 before the family evacuated Thailand in 2002 due to a diagnosis of cancer in Paula’s bone marrow. After nine years of treatment, Paula’s struggle with cancer ended and she went into the Lord’s presence. Larry returned to Thailand in 2012 to resume his ministry of Bible teaching at CTS. Larry is the coordinator for both Walk Thru the Bible and Simply the Story in Thailand.
Mission Round Table 19:2 (May-Aug 2024): 20-28
To read articles in this edition, visit this post on Mission Round Table 19:2.
Mr. Itch was struggling. He had tried to follow the instructions for developing an exegetical sermon from the Epistles but as a leprosy patient with a fourth-grade education, the learning curve was just too steep. As Itch’s mentor, I breathed a sigh of relief along with the Thai congregation when he finished his homily with a heart-felt prayer. A brand-new missionary at the time, I wondered, “Surely there is a better way to train Mr. Itch as a preacher to his people.”
The main teaching tool of OMF in Central Thailand was a TEE program called Home Bible Seminary (HBS). I thought it odd that they chose “Seminary” for the instruction since few of the students had finished even high school. A senior co-worker instructed me to act as a mentor for Mr. Hit (the Thai miss-pronounced “Itch”) and teach him how to mark his Bible to a grammatical level of subject, verb, and object and then transfer his analysis to what ended up being sixty-six workbooks (one for every book in the Bible). Mr. Hit would sometimes labor over a paragraph in the Bible and then instead of transferring a critically analyzed summary to the workbook, would often simply record the verse references.
Once a month we would bring all the mentees together to train as a group on topics such as discipleship, church planting, and crafting sermons. For this training, we brought in a pastor from England who trained them in exegesis of the text as well as constructing an outlined sermon. When I asked the leader of HBS about such a Western approach, he replied, “Larry, we are using the cutting edge of a new trend in distance learning called TEE—Theological Education by Extension.” Like the HBS leader, I too desired that all of our TEE students could develop in literate processing of the Scriptures with a view to becoming solid exegetes of God’s word, but the reality was that most would remain at their core oral learners. At that time, I was a junior worker and had no answer for my very senior co-worker. However, more than four decades further on in Thai ministry, I can now give a much more informed answer, having seen clearly how hard-wired for stories the Thai actually are.
Journey into orality
My journey into orality began with the qualitative research I did for my PhD at Biola University.[1] By that time, I had labored among the Thai for twelve years and became acutely aware that my target group had only reached 0.3 percent Christian after 150-plus years of missionary work, a figure that had only gone up to 0.65 percent by 2022.[2] I felt that the traditional Western and literate approach to communication in Thailand was a factor in these statistics, but I needed to do research to confirm it.
After doing qualitative research on the Walk Thru the Bible method and field-testing it over a period of seven years in all four regions of Thailand, I was able to confirm that the Thai were indeed preferred oral learners who resonated with a concrete relational approach based on the narrative sections of Scripture. Like Mr. Hit, the Thai were often semi-literate at best and had trouble following a literate treatment of outlined points presented in expository sermons. Kirk Person highlighted this disconnect through a comparison of Dr. W. A. Criswell’s sermons and that of a popular Thai monk, Phra (monk) Phayom (see Figure 2).[3] Criswell followed the logical structure of a classical expositional sermon outline, while Phra Phayom used a thematic and free-flowing construction which included culturally relevant stories along a theme expanded and restated until culminating in a moral challenge to action.
A telling aspect of Person’s analysis is that when a message is broken down, analyzed, and put into an outline form, you end up with a 29 percent retention rate. But since 60 percent of Phra Prayom’s messages were made up of stories, the end result was a surprising 75–80 percent retention rate. The relevance of Person’s analysis is a recognition that Thai learning and preaching styles should be matched as closely as possible. Phra Phayom’s instinctive feel for the preferences of his Thai oral listeners to a more thematic and narrative-driven approach communicated at both a head and heart level. This basic law of education is one that my professor in seminary, Dr. Howard Hendricks, taught us often, “The way people learn determines how you teach.”[4]
My doctoral studies introduced me to the validity of oral communication, but my stress was on the metanarrative portrayed in the chronological treatment used by Walk Thru the Bible. I had yet to see a method that effectively used the individual stories of the Bible to communicate in a truly oral way. The answer came through an invitation to attend a Simply the Story (STS) workshop in Hemet, California. Hemet is the headquarters of both STS and The God’s Story Project (GS). GS is an eighty-minute video presentation from Creation to Eternity and has been translated into 459 languages.[5] My initial shock during the STS training was entering into an “oral zone” in which notebooks and pencils were forbidden. Another shocking reminder was just how prevalent narrative is in the Bible. Tom Steffen asserts that at least 55–65 percent of the Bible is narrative while only 10 percent is propositional.[6] Within that 55–65 percent are around 1,000 stories, which shows that God purposely chose narrative as the main medium to present his redemptive message. I also discovered that 70 percent of the world either cannot read or prefer to communicate using oral methods.[7]
Coming into this week-long seminar, my preferred approach to sermon preparation, and the one I had used since seminary, was an analytical, systematic, and sequential outlining of the Bible, no matter what the genre dictated. My preferred genre, of course, was the Epistles and other doctrinal sections. The motto of Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) is “Preach the Word” (2 Tim 4:2), and I had benefitted from that mantra throughout my ministry and continue to do so to this day. However, five days of STS training hugely challenged my preconceptions about how to best communicate with my oral target group using a less familiar genre—narrative. After being steeped in the principles of STS, participants were encouraged to present a narrative message to the group and be evaluated with a view to receiving a certificate. The Thai who invited me to the training had received their certificates and so I was confident that I could acquire mine as well.
I had flown through many academic workshops and thought this would be no different. At the end of my talk, a Thai participant asked the evaluator if I had passed. Her response was, “I’m afraid Dr. Dinkins didn’t pass. He violated too many of the basic principles of telling a Bible story.” At this point I actually became angry. The evaluator had the audacity to flunk the “Right Reverend Doctor Larry M. Dinkins!” I returned home to inform my wife of this perceived injustice and how I had “lost face” in front of the Thai. She replied, “That is the first academic assignment you have failed to pass since I have known you. Actually, it’s good that you flunked. You needed to be humbled. I suggest that you study this topic more since you don’t seem to understand it.” That challenge sent me on a quest to understand how best to communicate to preferred oral learners. That pursuit also resulted in helping to facilitate around one hundred STS workshops in ten countries as well as teaching a master’s level orality course ten times in various seminaries. Thus, I have had the opportunity at the local church level, in academic environments, and in personal ministry to test out practically many of the principles of oral communication and preaching recorded in this article.
The bulk of STS training takes place in small groups where a story is prepared through inductive Bible study, oral style. Then a volunteer presents the story to another small group following specific steps. Although STS lends itself best to small group interaction, I have adapted this approach to work with larger church groups when called upon to preach.
Three Approaches to Oral Story Preaching
1. Full Oral Model[8]
a. Introduce the story.
It is usually helpful to choose a story that is less than fifteen verses long and that has a significant amount of action, reflecting a plot structure that builds to a climax and then finishes with a resolution.[9] The story should be examined in its context noting how the setting, plot, and structure influence characters. The introduction itself should be brief and is used to orient the listener to where the story falls in the broader context as well as highlight anything that needs clarification. Special stress should be given to any unfamiliar terms or information that will help the listener understand the content of the story. During the introduction, a print Bible should be held closed in the preacher’s hands to indicate that what is being shared is related to the story, but is not the story itself. Ask the congregation to refrain from looking at the text for the duration of the sermon so that they can focus on the orally-told story and retain it better.
b. Tell the story.
The actual story begins when you open the Bible and begin with “Now this is a story from God’s word …” Tell the story with culturally appropriate actions and expressions that reflect the passion and drama of the story. At this point, I often descend from the pulpit and draw closer to the congregation. The story should be internalized to the point that it can be given in your own words but in a content-accurate manner. A few of the pronouns used in the prose text will need to be changed to proper names for clarity’s sake. After a sentence or two, lay the open Bible down as you tell the story, but at the end of the story you should close the Bible, showing the sacred story is finished.
c. Retell the story.
Ask a volunteer to retell the story as best they can for the whole group. Give the volunteer the first sentence of the story so they will start properly. Be sure to affirm his or her efforts when they finish. An alternate method is to have the congregation find a partner to share the story with. In this way, everyone is able to participate in the story.
d. Step through the story. Before asking Socratic questions of the congregation concerning the story, it is necessary for your listeners to hear the story told accurately at least two times. This time the preacher tells the story leaving blanks for the congregation to fill in. He may also choose to let his listeners complete a thought or phrase as he reviews the story from the beginning to end. It is helpful to insert a word or phrase that is “opposite” or contrary to what is actually found in the story in order to make sure they are listening well. (Be sure to only use one such “opposite” so as to not overly confuse your listeners).
e. Find the spiritual treasures.
Retell a short portion starting at the beginning of the story so the participant will know where to focus. The goal is to design questions that help the listener discover biblical truth for themselves. These questions highlight how God is working behind the scenes in peoples lives.
Our stress is on “what” happened, more than “why” it happened. Why questions tend to result in too much speculation. In smaller congregations, questions posed by the preacher and answers given can be easily heard. In larger congregations, I have had ushers take microphones into the congregation so that responses can be heard by all. The ushers should not relinquish the microphone in order to control the question-answer process.
During this step, participants gain insight into the character and actions of both God and the characters involved. It is helpful to start with a situational question that will help the listeners identify with the character(s). For the story in Mark 4 that tells of the paralytic, one could ask, “How might the paralyzed man have felt as he was being let down from the roof?” For this character-centric question, have the participants pair up and share their thoughts.
Next, you can ask the entire congregation a question related to what various characters do or say? Then ask yourself: What can we learn spiritually from what the character(s) do or say? You can also ask what key choice(s) characters made in the story, but also be sure to ask what we can learn from the other choices/options that could have been made.
The next set of questions emphasizes the results of the choices that central characters made and the impact those choices might have had on others. There are a number of observational questions that can be asked but the ones above are easy to remember and are helpful in unpacking the key principles and lessons within the story. Be sure to ask what we can learn about the person and attributes/actions of God from his interaction with characters and their interaction with each other. By telling the story from the beginning in sections and applying these observational questions to the story, the listener is now prepared to make applications from the story to their daily lives.
f. applications. In the previous step, the emphasis is on how God is working in the lives of people in the biblical story. In the next step, the goal is to discover the spiritual truths that apply to our lives and ministry today. As the preacher asked observational questions regarding the story and the congregation answered them, various spiritual principles and lessons surfaced. The pastor should remind his listeners of a principle or lesson by saying something like the following. “In this part of the story, we learned that the four men who carried the paralytic were acting as a team. Today do we see such teamwork in the church or in our family, work, school, etc.?” The congregation will respond positively, which allows the pastor to ask, “Have you or someone you know experienced such teamwork?” The pastor can acknowledge those that respond and allow them to share a personal testimony. Usually there is time for people to respond to three or four such applications. To end, it is helpful to ask, “Is there any other application from this story that might help you in the future?” Finally, the preacher should end with a closing prayer.[10]
2. Rhetorical Question Model
The full model is different enough from a typical western style sermon that your congregation may not be prepared to use it at first. In such cases, I suggest that you follow the first four steps above. But if your group is overly skeptical, you can read the story before telling it orally. Alternatively, instead of having to vocalize the story to a neighbor, a preacher could have the congregation tell the story silently in their head. When it comes to asking questions of the congregation, the preacher should simply ask observational questions, pause, and then answer them himself. By this method, the church has at least a chance to reflect on the type of answer they might have offered. After going through the story from the beginning using such rhetorical questions, the preacher can then begin to expand on areas of application from the story.
3. Half-and-half Model
Many preachers have a clear paradigm for their literate-style preaching and have never asked questions from the pulpit expecting direct responses from their congregation. I was asked as a guest preacher to give an oral style sermon, but when the pastor realized I would be asking questions of his congregation, he forbade me from doing so. This pastor was very afraid of the potential “messiness” of such a practice. In that case, I reverted to following the first four steps above but then simply “preached” a narrative style sermon in a way I knew the pastor would approve. At a minimum, the congregation was able to participate and engage in the story orally by following the first four steps, while not being shocked by the perceived “messiness” of the last two steps. Probably the easiest way to make a less jarring transition to oral preaching is to start with the Half-and-Half Model, move to the Rhetorical-Questions Model, and, as the congregation increasingly engages God’s word in an oral fashion, experiment with the Full-Oral Model.
I am under no illusion that the suggestions above will come easy to pastors and congregations that have a clear paradigm and expectations about what a “proper” sermon should look and sound like. STS was birthed within a small-group context and moving it into the sermon arena is more apt to work in smaller churches, but less so in large bodies of believers. Established churches often have a long-standing standard format (as opposed to church plants or house churches) and thus there may be much hesitation about veering away from the norm. Other churches might be willing to accept an occasional oral sermon on a Sunday but not as regular fare. Still others will think of a story approach as suitable for children, but not for adults. Understandably, a typical sermon fits a comfortable lecture mode and so the idea of allowing the congregation to answer questions aloud is perceived as just too “messy”. For all of these reasons, it is advisable to propose some incremental models that include more narrative treatments in order to ease a group into a more oral style, rather than introducing it “full bore”. There is no one preaching method that is best in all contexts, so the preferable approach is the one that both fits the target group while honoring the Scriptures. One thing is for certain, you will never know the potential or advantages of a more narrative/oral approach unless you try.
Difficult paradigm shift
Once sailing in a small skiff, I saw how easy it was to make sharp turns as we tacked into the wind. However, a naval battleship needs several minutes to change directions. Making a major paradigm shift into a more oral approach to communicating will not occur in minutes or days, but will more likely require a period of years. One of my DTS ThM students, Mick Zubel, expressed a similar feeling after taking one of my orality classes:
Your class was unlike any other class I’ve taken at DTS. I’ve never been told not to take notes in any class. Initially it freaked me out, but it was one of the most beneficial and eye-opening experiences I’ve ever had. At my program at DTS we are taught to read Koine Greek and Classical Hebrew. I know the Bible inside and out and I can tell you the story of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. But when you asked us to share just one story with 100% content accuracy, I didn’t think I could do it. I was convicted and sat there. I could have summarized a story but I wouldn’t be able to tell it accurately and I am a fifth-year student![11]
I totally understand Mick’s sentiments, because in 2006, before my exposure to STS, I could not have told you one of the 1,000 stories recorded in the Bible in an accurate manner. I could have summarized a number of them, and if you had given me a chance to thoroughly review a story, then I could have told it adequately. Due to my previous training, I could have exposited most any Bible narrative, but I could not have told it in a oral manner.
My norm when preaching was no different than that of my peers in that I was used to preparing extensive outlined notes, interspersing illustrations and cross-references into the outline and applying the text at intervals during the sermon or tacking a few applications on at the end. I used this basic approach with a few variations for most all the genres of the Bible. The difference now is that I continue to use my time-tested expositional method but reserve it primarily for the didactic and epistolary parts of Scripture. For the narrative sections, I have accumulated a database of over one hundred stories that I have used not just in preaching situations but also leading small group Bible studies, counseling opportunities, and in evangelistic encounters.[12] I also draw upon a list of 296 stories compiled by STS that are the basis for their Oral Bible Schools which are presently being taught around the world.[13] Through experience with these stories, I am able to list eleven advantages related specifically to oral preaching that I believe will at least nudge preachers towards more story-oriented sermons.
Advantages of story sermons with preferred oral learners
- Holistic engagement. If I was restricted to one short description of my goal in preaching in the West or especially in Thailand, it would be making a direct connection with my congregation through engagement with the listener. I want them to connect with God through his word and with me as his messenger. R. C. Sproul is an unusually systematic and propositional pulpiteer, yet he sees the value of engagement through narratives, “I’m big on preaching from the narratives because people will listen ten times as hard to a story as they will to an abstract lesson.”[14] Beginning with a Bible story and then stepping down from the pulpit to maintain constant eye contact creates an engaging environment with my congregation. Using open-ended questions in a “give and take” dialogue further adds to that connection. As Joseph Webb asserts, “Getting rid of notes heightens the possibility that a real conversation about God’s truth will take place.”[15]
- Eye contact and body language. Being freed up from notes or a manuscript means that one can keep uninterrupted eye contact. Far too often I have listened to sermons that felt like seminary lectures in which the preacher either basically read from a manuscript or at critical junctures diverted his eyes to make sure to read a key phrase or quote properly. My homiletics professor, Haddon Robinson, ranks eye contact as “the single most effective means of nonverbal communication … because eye contact can hold the audience’s attention effectively.”[16] Robinson also referred to a study that determined that 7 percent of a sermon’s effectiveness was due to content, and the other 93 percent was due to body language factors.[17]
- Personal discovery. I have been hugely blessed by expositors who have discovered deep truths from a biblical text and effectively communicated the meat of God’s word to the congregation. However, little room is left for the congregation to discover truth for themselves. Asking insightful Socratic questions gives laity who often lack academic advantages an opportunity to experience discovery-learning as God reveals deep truths through his Spirit. I’ve also seen critical thinking and analytic skills improve as a congregation digs into a Bible story and is given a chance to interact personally with the events and characters in the story.
- Replication. As a church member leaves the service, I want to know that they have not only grasped the meaning of the text covered and are ready to apply the lessons learned in their lives, but also have absorbed the sermon so that they can share it with others. Unfortunately, I’ve found that many preachers as they exit the pulpit would be hard pressed to recite all the points of their sermon without referring back to their notes. I have not sensed that there is any real expectation that the congregation would share what they learned with others. A key feature of a narrative sermon is to package it in such a way that everyone can repeat the story during the following week and be able to report on the responses they received the next Sunday. This fits with Paul’s admonition to Timothy to pass down what he has learned generationally (2 Tim 2:2). I’ve never forgotten a mantra that a mission teacher repeated often: “Don’t teach anything that is not immediately replicable.” This admonition is applicable in the West, but especially relevant on the mission field where the multiplication of disciples using readily conveyable training approaches is vital to the expansion of the church.
- Improved literacy. My experience is that when an oral person becomes excited about biblical narratives, they often show a desire to learn more stories. At that point, they realize that literacy is a means to gain access to more of God’s word and their interest in reading and biblical education is heightened.
- Other Scripture genres can be oralized. Each genre should be honored and treated in a manner that fits that genre. If an epistolary section is heavy with propositional doctrine, then it should be treated in a more didactic manner. However, there are “narrative-like” sections even in poetical and epistolary literature. In STS training, we give examples from the Epistles, like James 1:22–25, as well as Psalms 1 and 23. The Major and Minor Prophets are full of images, parables, acted out signs, and short story lines that can be orally told and dramatized.
- Reflects the Jesus model. Jesus was the consummate oral storyteller of all history and the ultimate model of a contextualized methodology in which he carefully selected stories that fit a culturally-relevant parabolic form familiar to his listeners. Matthew noted that, “Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the crowds; he did not speak to them without a parable” (Matt 13:34 NET). Jesus used stories and parables with both the common people and also with the most highly educated scribes and Pharisees. As a rabbi, Jesus was particularly adept at asking questions. He was frequently asked all kinds of questions but most often chose to answer them obliquely by using a parable, a story, another question, or simply not answering the question at all. The benefit of using stories and unpacking them with dialogue and discussion through questions serves as a reminder that you are using a proven method that the master teacher used extensively.
- Provides a database of sermons. On more than one occasion, I have been asked to give a sermon without any prior notice. Once I told my host the topic I planned to preach on and she informed me that the congregation had already heard that sermon through a video that had been prepared for the denomination some months before. I did not have my computer with me and needed to preach in the next few minutes. Fortunately, I was able to quickly review a story from my database of Bible narratives and entered the pulpit without undue anxiety.
Photo by Dean Koh - Matches teaching with learning style. Of the over 8 billion people in the world today, 5.7 billion are oral-preference learners who depend on aural, or oral-visual means to receive, process, remember, and pass on information. About 70–80 percent of the world does not depend on textual transmission and, of these, more than half are among the unreached. There are around two thousand predominantly oral unengaged, unreached people groups that do not have a single verse of Scripture in their heart language.[18] Oral learners are hard-wired for stories and resonate with a narrative sermon that unpacks the life-and-blood experiences of Bible characters that often mirror their own joys and struggles and as a result allow them to deeply identify with those characters. Thus, desired doctrinal and theological truths that are embedded in the stories are absorbed effectively by the listeners in a form that fits their preferred learning style.
- Gives immediate feedback. When a typical message is finished in a church context, the speaker has no idea of how the people processed or understood the material. The nature of story telling means that as you unpack the story and ask open-ended questions, you get immediate feedback. You can promptly tell whether the group is tracking with the story or are confused. With their relation-based culture, the Thai appreciate the chance for such group participation and interaction. Be aware, however, that in a honor-shame culture, it may take a while for people to feel safe enough to share, especially if the only style they have had in the past was a lecture approach. One needs an oral skill set to handle a group in this way and it may seem “messy” at times. Even so, adult learners appreciate and respond best when they sense their opinion is heard and valued.
- Small group discipleship. Looking back at my spiritual journey, God’s word exposited from the pulpit combined with a strong discipleship group were the two most transformational factors in my early Christian life. As impactive as the preaching hour on Sundays was in my life, the weight of my growth came from the small groups that I met with during the week. I find this to be a common experience among most believers I have met. The focus of this article is on how oral sermons can be used effectively in formal preaching times, but the main thrust of each oral workshop I have been involved in has been on small-group dynamics. Preparing a Bible story and helping participants retell the story accurately takes place best in a small group and allows each participant to make more pointed personal applications to life. Avery Willis believed strongly in preaching and taught it in seminary as one means of discipleship. Yet preaching is not the only means, an assertion Willis highlights when he states:
You don’t make disciples through preaching. Trying to make disciples through preaching is like spraying milk over a nursery full of screaming babies just hoping some of it falls into their mouths. That is about all you are doing when you are preaching. You make disciples as Jesus did—in face-to-face relationships in small groups.[19]
Thus, the starting point for introducing oral story telling in a church should begin at the small group level. When people see the spiritual benefits at a personal level it will be much easier to introduce a more oral method in the pulpit.
While highlighting certain advantages of an oral method, it is important to affirm the strengths of a more literate approach. Tom Steffen has sought to compare and contrast an oral and textual emphasis through Table 1.[20] Steffen uses a continuum to analyze the respective values held by each. He recognizes the strengths of each and affirms a grammatical-textural hermeneutic. Each should be used in a complementary fashion, yet when dealing with narrative genre, one must honor and employ a more oral hermeneutic and delivery system.
Dissecting the butterfly
One of the most impactive apologetics for oral preaching I have ever heard came from a story trainer explaining the dissection of a butterfly. After grabbing an imaginary butterfly from the air, the trainer began to symbolically tear off the wings, antenna, and legs and put them into neat piles. He then asked, “Isn’t my butterfly beautiful?” The trainees were appalled and said, “Yes, the parts are in neat piles, but the butterfly is dead!” The beauty of a butterfly is when all the parts function as a whole. The beauty of a Bible story occurs when the “life” of the story is preserved by telling it in its entirety and allowing the congregation to repeat it. After everyone has absorbed the story, then one can help them unpack the story and apply it through questions. The problem is, a typical sermon on a narrative passage breaks the story into various points. The first part is exposited and then an application is suggested. The rest of the story is treated in a similar way as the respective parts of the story are analyzed sequentially and applied to the present day. The congregation must move cognitively from Bible times to the present day in rapid succession.
A pastor working with international students in the US attended an STS workshop and made this observation of this dissection process:
The difference between this STS approach and a more literate approach is that with the former we treat the Bible less as a book to be deciphered and dissected, and more as a record of events lived out in the framework of historical reality. In this STS framework, we begin to see events as live, with undercurrent of parallel realities (such as the emotions of the people involved, the spiritual connections, etc.) to be discovered along the way.[21]
The type of dissection this pastor refers to is suitable for didactic and epistolary genres, but narrative needs the unity of the pericope to be preserved. Sidney Greidanus summarizes this dissection process, “A little too much ‘preaching’ quickly destroys the inherent force of the narrative.”[22] Joseph Webb adds that
I have heard many a sermon from narrative texts that reported on the story rather than telling the story. Like an autopsy on a dead body, the preacher gives a technical theological analysis of the story. But narrative texts are best preached with the telling of the story along with theological interpretation and application.[23]
J. O. Terry, a pioneer in orality within International Mission Board circles, passed on to me a comical illustration that he shared often with fellow missionaries using not butterflies, but eggs.[24]
You go to the market to buy some eggs. You tell the clerk that you’d like a dozen eggs. The clerk brings your eggs to the counter. You are expecting him to put the eggs in a bag or container so you can take them home. But surprisingly the clerk cracks open each egg and spills its contents on the counter! When he has finished cracking all the eggs he says, “I hope you enjoy your eggs and feel free to share them with your friends.” What obviously was needed was a suitable container for the eggs. Each sermon needs an appropriate container depending on the genre you are preaching and the audience you are addressing. The sermons that I have remembered over my lifetime are sermons that are containers for the eggs of truth. The ones I remember best have been contained within a whole story sermon.
Butterflies and eggs are fragile items and so it is important to handle both carefully by preserving the life of butterflies and by placing eggs in a proper container. With narrative sermons, the unity of the story needs to be preserved and then packaged in such a way that they can be enjoyed by the listener and then repackaged to share with others.
Hammers and tweezers
A good carpenter does not arrive at the job site with only a hammer in his hand. I arrived in Thailand fresh out of seminary with a number of tools, but the main one was a literate/Western mallet that I used in all my preaching, seminary teaching, and local church training. My oral/story communication skill, however, was the size of a pair of tweezers. I noticed that my fellow cross-cultural workers were carrying their tweezers as well, since they had been trained in a manner similar to myself. I still carry my hammer and continue to pass the same hammer along to the Thai so they will know how to wield a propositional tool for the expository messages they give. But when treating the narrative portions that make up the bulk of the Bible, I pack an oral tool and want to make sure the Thai own one as well. With my literate hammer in hand, I used to make sure people mastered certain subjects and topics in a lettered way. Now I see my calling is to teach not just content, but teach people, and oral-preference people at that. To teach our present generation we need: (1) a variety of tools in our communication belt,[25] (2) the knowledge of what tool to use for what type of learner, and (3) skill plus diligence in using those tools. The communicator who possesses such a homiletic tool chest of approaches will be well prepared when called upon to teach “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).
Vic Anderson studied the homiletic tool chest of Ethiopian preachers and in the conclusion to his dissertation, he added implications from his research to our postmodern culture:
When is a sermon a really good sermon in the western postmodern culture? Does a sermon need to be expositional to be effective? If so, does exposition need to look like traditional exposition? Perhaps homileticians must learn to expose the meaning of the text without the audience feeling like they have reasoned their way through a carefully prepared exposition. Perhaps standards for sermon outlines must be adjusted so that rigors of logic are not applied so rigorously.[26]
Anderson’s challenge, it seems, is how to affirm “traditional exposition” while being flexible enough to apply its strengths in a culturally sensitive manner to this age of modernity.
Conclusion
Walter Ong, who some claim coined the word “orality”, famously acknowledged the steep learning curve that many highly literate ministers face as they try to relate to preferred oral learners: “We—readers of books such as this—are so literate that it is very difficult for us to conceive of an oral universe of communication or thought except as a variant of a literate universe.”[27] The classic confession in this same vein must be the statement by the editor of the journal Missiology, J. Nelson Jennings, who had to collate articles on the topic of orality for the journal in 2010: “As a wirelessly connected and lettered human being living in 2010, I find it next to impossible even to conceive of—much less interact with—those people living in 2010 who are embedded in oral societies.”[28] We are now in the year 2024 and the challenge of reaching both primary and secondarily oral learners has only increased over the years. David McClellan’s questions are questions that I ask myself often and leave as a final challenge to us all:
What would it look like if orality was allowed to permeate the homiletic air? What if in preparation and delivery, sermons were to take on the not-insignificant advantages of oral construction and thought patterns?[29]
[1] Larry Dinkins, “Adaptation of Walk Thru the Bible Pedagogical Method to Thai Audience” (PhD dissertation, Biola University, 2000).
[2] “Thailand People Groups, Languages, and Religions,” Joshua Project, https://joshuaproject.net/countries/TH (accessed 15 September 2022).
[3] Kirk R. Person, “Preaching in the Shade of the Bo Tree: A Comparison of Thai Buddhist and American Evangelical Expository Technique” (MAM thesis, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1994), 38–50.
[4] Howard G. Hendricks, Teaching to Change Lives (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1987), 15.
[5] See http://oralbibleresources.com/shopcart/.
[6] Tom Steffen, “My Reluctant Journey into Orality.” Address at the Fourth Conference on Reaching Oral Communicators, Anaheim California, 13 July 2005.
[7] Avery Willis, “Following Jesus Making Disciples of Primary Oral Learners,” audio CD (Laguna Hills, CA: Progressive Vision, 2003), cited in Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, “Making Disciples of Oral Learners,” Lausanne Occasional Paper no. 54, 2005,
https://lausanne.org/occasional-paper/making-disciples-oral-learners-lop-54 (accessed 18 August 2024).
[8] See www.simplythestory.org (for download of full STS handbook).
[9] A list of 296 optimum stories can be found at Oral Bible School 296 Stories, https://oralstoryteller.org (accessed 5 September 2024).
[10] For full treatment of this STS model using the story of Namaan in 2 Samuel 5 and the Widow and Oil story in 2 Samuel 4, see Tom Steffen and Bill Bjoraker, The Return of Oral Hermeneutics (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2020).
[11] Heart Pocket, “HPP0202 DTS Student Overcomes His Fear,” Heart Pocket Podcast, 23 August 2022, https://heartpocket.libsyn.com/hpp0202-dts-student-overcomes-his-fear (accessed 18 August 2024).
[12] 105 Old and New Testament Stories, https://biblestoryteller.org (accessed on 12 August 2024).
[13] Oral Bible School 296 Stories, https://oralstoryteller.org (accessed 5 September 2024).
[14] Steven Matthewson, The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 20.
[15] Joseph M. Webb, Preaching Without Notes (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2001), 11.
[16] Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Message, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 211–12.
[17] Robinson, Biblical Preaching, 193.
[18] Lausanne Movement, “Orality: An Infographic,” 4 December 2018, https://www.lausanne.org/content/orality-an-infograph (accessed 19 August 2024).
[19] Avery Willis and Mark Snowden, Truth that Sticks: How to Communicate Velcro Truth in a Teflon World (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2010), 87.
[20] Steffen and Bjoraker, The Return of Oral Hermeneutics, 18.
[21] Dorothy Miller, STS Handbook: Exploring Scripture Through Discussion, Listening and Responding, Ed. 6 (Hemet, CA: The God’s Story Project, 2022), 98.
[22] Sidney Greidanus, Preacher and Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 153.
[23] Webb, Preaching Without Notes, 153.
[24] Personal correspondence with J. O. Terry, 17 August 2024.
[25] In today’s cybernated age, there is an increasing need for communicators to master digital approaches.
[26] Vic Anderson, “Implicit Rhetorical Theory of Preachers in Wolaitta Ethiopia with Implications for Holiletics Instruction in Theological Education” (PhD dissertation, Biola University, 2008), 305.
[27] Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Routledge, 1991).
[28] Jennings J. Nelson, “Editor’s Notes,” Missiology: An International Review 38, no. 2 (April 2010): 107.
[29] Dave McClellan, “Recovering a Sense of Orality in Homiletics,” Evangelical Homiletics Society 6, no. 1 (March 2006): 11.
