{"id":11019,"date":"2018-06-20T07:45:03","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T23:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jacksonwu\/?p=11019"},"modified":"2018-06-11T17:51:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T09:51:12","slug":"looking-back-orality-movement-tom-steffen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jacksonwu\/2018\/06\/20\/looking-back-orality-movement-tom-steffen\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back on the Orality Movement (Tom Steffen)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m thrilled to welcome Tom Steffen as a guest writer to the blog. I\u2019ve asked him to introduce some of the big ideas you\u2019ll find within his fantastic new book, Worldview-based Storying: The Integration of Symbol, Story, and<\/em> Ritual<\/em><\/a>. He is longtime leader in the orality movement. Teaching for years at Biola, he is the author of many articles and books, including Reconnecting God\u2019s Story to Ministry<\/a><\/em> and The Facilitator Era<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

This first post is historical, looking back on the orality movement. The next post will discuss some practical tools for discovering another\u2019s worldview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019re not going to bed until I hear about what you\u2019ve been doing in Palawan,\u201d I impetuously dictated to Trevor McIlwain in the New Tribes Mission (now ETHNOS360) guest home in Manila in 1980. Our conversation went deep into the night. What I heard was something that would change Christian communicators and their recipients around the globe.<\/p>\n

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The next morning, I talked to our Field Director, Dell Schultz, about the possibility of getting McIlwain on the agenda for the upcoming South East Asian Leadership conference in Thailand two months out. The agenda was amended. McIlwain took four hours a day to go over his (still unnamed) model that tied evangelism and follow-up seamlessly together using Bible stories chronologically, beginning with Genesis. No one knew at that time that a spark had been lit that would turn into a modern-day movement\u2014the Orality Movement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some Backstory<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

The McIlwains found themselves assigned to disciple a people movement among the Palowanos of the Philippines in which many were thought to have suddenly believed in Christ through the efforts of a missionary who communicated mostly through English. What the sincere but culturally na\u00efve missionary did not know was that the Palawanos had a myth that told them if someone comes carrying a black book, do whatever he says.<\/p>\n

That someone came. And they did what he said! Destroy your fetishes, get baptized, meet together\u2026 Contrary to expectations, the McIlwains soon discovered that most of the Palawanos had misunderstood the gospel. Destroying fetishes, abstaining from certain practices, and attending church services had become substitutes for salvation. Now what?<\/p>\n

To try to rectify the problem, McIlwain decided to restart evangelism from the beginning of the Bible, identifying salvation themes from the stories presented in Genesis to the ascension. This provided a foundation for the New Testament Jesus story while allowing time for the Palawanos to sort out truth from error.<\/p>\n

Chronological Bible Teaching (CBT)<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

He eventually called it Chronological Bible Teaching (CBT). It is now titled Firm Foundations<\/a>. Syncretism birthed the CBT and the Orality Movement that would follow.<\/p>\n

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Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over time, McIlwain developed a seven-stage story model that covered the entire Bible in a relatively short period, moving seamlessly from evangelism to follow-up:<\/p>\n