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>> We are that you are here with us and for the GlobaLink sites that you are there learning
together with all of us here. I would like to introduce for us this afternoon our orality
team for this multiplex. My name is Samuel Chiang and I have a team with us here. We
have Steve Evans, Bramwell Musya, and Grant Lovejoy. And on top of that we have a working
partnership with all the translators at the back and we really appreciate what they are
doing to help to bring this alive to different parts of the world. Will you indulge me
just a little moment? Could you take a look what's on the screen? There is a power point
up there. Will you take a look at it? You see this power point, would you indulge me
and name these items? Say it in your own language or say it in English, what are these? You
say circle, square, and triangle. But in many different parts of the world oral speakers
look at them slightly differently. They may look at them as a flat bread, a box, and a
hut. Or if you were maybe in Egypt, they may look at that and say oh, yeah, this is the
bread that we have regularly, it's round. They would say oh, yes, our children play
with these boxes, and then they will look at that triangle and they say that's the pyramid.
If you were in Armenia, they would look at the triangle and say oh, yes, Mount Ararat.
They would say oh, yes, we recognize this, that's a box of some sort, and they may look
at that other shape and they will say that's an apricot. Different cultures, oral learners,
learn very differently and their thinking process is very different and very concrete.
There are 4 billion 350 million oral learners across the world. Allow me to say that again.
There are 4 billion 350 million oral learners across the world. Well you look at that number,
you say that's huge. If we were to break it down a little bit you saw in this morning's
plenary, Paul Eshleman talked about 350 million oral learners who does not have a single verse
of the scripture in their own heart language. They are dispersed among 2252 people groups,
unengaged and unreached. But if you look at that stat, 4 billion 350 million oral learners,
they could be broken down something like this. From 0 to 8, there’s approximately 900
million children, and then from 8 to 15, there are approximately 450 million learners in
school. And then via courtesy of the U.N. statistics, we were able to sort of piece
together along with various surveys around different countries, we are able to piece
together there are approximately 3 billion oral learners who are adults. We add those
numbers together, it's approximately 4 billion 350 million oral learners. The question
for us is how will we come along and minister to them? We could be using, for example, storytelling,
drama, songs, visual arts, poetry, chants, music, so that they could be reached. But
we are also vitally interested to reach them not only in the villages but also the cities,
the various global cities, and the different domains or the spheres in society. Our afternoon
this afternoon here is to explore together how do we reach the 4 billion oral learners
around the world. I'm going to invite grant Grant Lovejoy to come alongside and present
some of the thoughts he has. Grant, please join us.
>> We are inviting you this afternoon to join us on a journey. All of us here and many who
are at the Lausanne meeting are on a journey seeking to learn to communicate well with
people who may be quite different from ourselves. And as we talk about this, there is as much
unlearning as learning that is involved. Because so many of us are products of systems that
have taught us ways to communicate, taught us ways to think that have served us well
and yet as we seek to reach out to those oral communicators in the world, we find that many
of them have not had the same educational experiences, have not become steeped in our
familiar ways of communicating, and so part of what we are about is to seek to understand
better how they do communicate. The title of our multiplex refers to the 4 billion oral
communicators. Within that number, about a billion of them are oral communicators out
of necessity. They do not have enough education to be able to read and write, so of necessity
they communicate through the spoken word and not through the printed page. The other 3
billion plus that we regard as oral communicators have been to school. They may have some level
of educational attainment. They may, in fact, read quite well. But by matter of preference
they choose to pursue oral communications. So that instead of looking things up in
a book, instead of going on the internet and Googling for information, they are far more
likely to turn to a person and look to a person. And the things that transform their lives
are not lists or outlines or printed pages, but they are the stories that they hear and
tell. The music they listen to, the proverbs that are passed to them by their elders in
the community that teach them wisdom, and these other oral communication forms that
Samuel’s already referred to. We are inviting you on the journey because it involves change.
It means leaving the known and familiar and many cases moving to something that is less
familiar for us. But it's a big journey. The journey is worth it because the issues at
stake are huge. You see, the Fruitful Practices research project that was conducted in recent
years has found it makes a dramatic difference in effectiveness in ministry, whether we use
appropriate communication approaches. As reported in the book "From Seed to Fruit,"
edited by Dudley Woodberry, they gave the results of extensive survey from a variety
of mission agencies working with Muslims around the world. It started with surveys of 58,000
fieldworkers and then was processed as the research evaluated 94 different ministry practices
being used in work among Muslims. The question they were asking is what really contributes
to effectiveness in work among Muslims, and they defined effectiveness in terms of planting
multiple churches. As they sorted through the 94 factors they found there was a three-factor
combination that better than anything else, explained why and where the fruitfulness was.
Those three factors were these. One, the use of the local language rather than a regional
or national language for ministry. The second factor was that the Christian ministry team
had at least one person who was fluent in that local language. And the third factor
was that the team understood the communications preference of their people group. And they
reflected that in the communication approach that they, themselves, used in ministry. In
the absence of all three, 92% of them planted no church. In the presence of all three, 82%
of the time they got at least one church planted. 41% of that time they got multiple churches
planted. So, the researchers concluded that wherever you find people using an appropriate
oral communication strategy, they showed 340% more congregations planted. That means they
had four times the fruit. That's huge. When you think about four times as many people
who come to know Christ as their savior, who live the abundant life, who have hope, you
know, this journey is a hugely important one, and we are joined by people around the world
who are on it. I want to show you in a moment a video of one grassroots church planter who
is on this journey. You need to know that he had grown up in a village. He had trusted
Christ as a boy through hearing stories of Jesus. Then he went off to Bible college.
He graduated from Bible college, he went into ministry as an evangelist, and he used the
tools and the approaches that he had learned in Bible college. After two years as an
evangelist, he reports that I had seen no one come to faith in Christ. There had been
no baptism, no churches planted. He was wondering about leaving the ministry. But then someone
helped him to learn about the things we are discussing today. I want you to see his story.
Let's roll the video. [transcript of video] >> I want to tell you of my experience as
I come from village culture. I was born in a village and I lived my life in a village.
Village people take interest in stories and music and in drama. In the village in the
evening time people meet in the street, tell stories and sing village songs. They learn
lessons from these stories and they put them into practice in their lives. They never read
a book. They never have been to school. People listen and then they learn. They are not literate,
but they hear and learn. >> We all know the challenge of the great commission is to
share the gospel with every people everywhere, to get the word out, make disciples, plant
churches. The question is, what will it take to finish the task? Someone will say the word
of God in every language. Absolutely. Unquestionably. But how do you share the word of God with
people up close and personal who are not literate learners? With people who don't have a Bible,
who can't, don't, or won't read, or who may not have a written language. Not only that,
how do you disciple new believers who are not literate learners? And how do you train
nonliteral Christians to teach, to lead, to train, to plant churches, and most of all,
to reproduce? How do you share the Gospel and disciple two-thirds of the world's population
who are oral learners? The way is to unleash the power of God's stories among oral learners
by igniting in the lives of hundreds of thousands of storytellers the desires to tell the life
transforming stories of God among their own people. >> I am now training many mission
workers through Bihar. The training is going well. Every month, many people are accepting
Jesus Christ. Each month 500 to 600 people are taking baptism and 50 new churches are
being planted every month. Through the cooperation of several ministries, a church planting movement
[end of video] >> Did you notice the statistics? In two years, no people following Christ,
no baptisms, no churches planted. We could understand if he had concluded these people
are hardened, they are resistant, there's no use continuing here. The issue was not
their heart. The issue was using an appropriate communication approach that they could understand,
they could respond to, they could embrace fully, and use it themselves successfully.
And when he shifted to that, instead he is seeing 5- to 600 people coming to faith in
Christ monthly and 50 churches planted monthly. The issues and the possibilities are huge.
The opportunities God has opened are wonderful. So then the question, obviously, is how? How
do we make this switch? This afternoon we offer you a taste.