Foundations of Orality
Module 1
Lesson 7 – Ways of Organizing
This lesson will focus on the cluster related to ways of organizing, namely the orality traits of time, change, and categorization.
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Time
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Frustrating
📔 Read this story.
Deal of no deal?
Tom: We need to get this deal done quickly because I must be at the Airport at 5 pm.
Mai: Why are you in such a hurry? We have all day.
Tom: Well, I have other meetings scheduled and must stick to my schedule.
Mai: But this is an important business deal, Tom. We need to take our time and make sure we get it right. We can’t rush through it just because you have other appointments.
Tom: I understand that, but my time is valuable too. We need to make the most of our time and be efficient with our discussions.
Mai: I see. However, we believe building relationships is just as crucial as making deals. We take our time to get to know our business partners and establish trust before we move forward with any agreements.
Tom: I appreciate that, but I have a tight schedule. Can we just get to the deal?
Tom felt frustrated. He couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just get down to business and finish the deal quickly. He felt like he was wasting his time.
Tom: I’m sorry, but I can’t stay any longer. I need to leave now.
Mai: I’m sorry to hear that, Tom. We were hoping to establish a long-term business relationship with your company. Still, I guess we’ll have to wait until you have more time.
As Tom left the meeting, he couldn’t help but feel he had missed out on a great business opportunity.
Tensions about time are cultural issues.1 It is not black and white like some people assume. It’s not about right or wrong, it’s just a different perception.
😃🤔🤯 Have you ever been frustrated over another person’s perception of time? Make a short recording of yourself reenacting the situation.
Time-sensitive
[Make] the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:16, ESV
Make the most of every living and breathing moment because these are evil times.
Ephesians 5:16, VOICE
😃🤔🤯 Spend 20 minutes meditating about the verse above and compare the versions. What are the differences in interpretation of the two versions?
Getting more done?
Listening to Western or Western-influenced sermons about Ephesians 5:16, one might think that Paul advises the Ephesians to maximize their productivity with the available time.
In this verse, Paul uses the Greek word kairos, which roughly translates to “the opportune moment.”
It’s not about maximizing the time; it’s about making the moment count.
HOR: People are event-oriented and live in the moment. Time is perceived as cyclic.
LOR: People are driven by the clock time and try to be productive as time is linear.
Would you rather have 5 agenda-driven meetings in a day or one meaningful interaction?
What to add?
You cannot add time to your life, but life to your time.
Both living in the moment and having a clear agenda are important. It’s essential to be sensitive to the time orientation of the culture we are in, recognizing when to prioritize the need of the moment and when to stick to plans.
😃🤔🤯 How can moments in time be filled with more significance in your ministry? Give clear examples of possible situations with the people you work with.
Change
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Change causes tension
Even during Jesus’ time, change was something that caused tension. He said:
And nobody takes freshly squeezed juice and puts it into old, stiff wineskins. If he did, the fresh wine would make the old skins burst open, and both the wine and the wineskins would be ruined. 38 New demands new—new wine for new wineskins.
Luke 5:37-38, VOICE
😃🤔🤯 List 3-5 more examples in the Bible of people resisting change.
😃🤔🤯 Find one example of change causing tension in your culture, whether it’s in politics, church, the workplace, or other areas of life. Now, talk to a few different people on both sides of the argument—some resisting change and some wanting it—and simply listen to their point of view.
Change is inevitable
Whether we like it or not, change is happening.
Some people and cultures are more resistant to change than others. Here are how both ends of the spectrum:
HOR: Change is often viewed as suspicious and not immediately embraced. People value the experience and tradition.
LOR: New is good. People actively involved in experimentation are open to new ideas and value innovation and progress.
😃🤔🤯 Record yourself reflecting on how change is happening in oral cultures if they seem to resist change.
How change happens
Comparing LOR and HOR cultures reveals that LOR people tend to actively pursue change by seeking new ways of doing things and experimenting.
HOR culture also changes, but in a more organic way. Change occurs by “selective remembering and forgetting.”2 Especially when things are not recorded, old ways and obsolete technologies are not transmitted to the next generation. Change happens by default.
Modern technology
In all cultures, modern technology (especially digital communication and social media) are accelerating change.
😃🤔🤯 Talk to 2-3 senior citizens in your culture and ask them how they perceive how social media is changing their ways of life.
Sometimes, people can be against change because it disrupts established cultural values. One study in Southeast Asia, for example, found that teaching English to children lowered the respect for their community’s elders as the younger generation suddenly surpasses the older generation in their English skills.3
Traditionally, one reason for respecting elders in their vastly greater life experience. However, now younger people have much more experience with technology, which can create tension between the generations.
😃🤔🤯 Surely, you can think of examples of change and technology causing tension in your culture. Record yourself pondering about how experience and experimentation can be brought together to bring these tensions.
Classification
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Different categories
📔 Read John 4:1-42 and pay close attention to the 🏔️place of 🕍worship, 💦water, and 🥖food.
😃🤔🤯 How is Jesus, and how are the other people categorizing the 🏔️place of 🕍worship, 💦water, and 🥖food?
Jesus’ way of seeing it
Jesus saw things differently than the women or His disciples.
For example, He saw worship as an attitude of the heard, not a place.
Print, draw, or write the names of 10 different animals (🐎🐕🦈🐋🐧🦇🐢🦎) on a sheet of paper and cut them out.
😃🤔🤯 Take the pieces of paper and let a few different people group them together. Did everyone group the animals in exactly the same groups? What are their reasoning for their categorization?
There are many ways to group the animals: scientific, edibility, ritual purity, Biblical categories, etc.
Not just one way
How would you group a 🔨hammer, a 🪛screwdriver, nails, and screws?
🔨 & 🪛 in one group and nails & screws in another?
❓
🔨 & nails in one group and 🪛 & screws in another?
How you group the above items is an indicator of how you think.
HOR: People group things according to function. They classify space depending on significance.
LOR: Things are classified following theoretical and conceptual properties. They categorize space according to utilization.
In the Philippines, no proper meal is complete without rice. This categorization is even reflected in language.
Kids coming from school will ask: “What is the ulam (side dish for the rice).”
That rice is in a category by itself is also apparent in the word saing (cooking rice). For all other food the word luto (general cooking) is used. However, Filipinos do not use luto for rice.
Another example from the Philippines is papaya. Most of the world knows it as a fruit. For Filipinos, it can be “used as fruit” when eaten ripe. However, when “used as a vegetable” (cocked unripe), it is also categorized as such.
In the market, ripe papayas are sold at fruit stands, while green ones are sold by vegetable dealers.
Why it matters
What is a day?
24 hours? ☀️Sunrise till sunset?
Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish, as the Son of Man will spend three days and three nights in the belly of the earth.
Matthew 12:40, VOICE
As we know, Jesus was in the grave from Friday evening until Sunday morning. That is just 1 day and 2 nights.
Did Matthew make a mistake? Surely not! For Jews at the time, any part of a day counts as an entire day.
Bible interpretation
While Western cultures distinguish between 💃🏾dance, 🎸music, and 🎤singing, some cultures don’t. In fact, in some languages, people cannot differentiate because one word is used for all 3 activities as they all belong together.
📔 Read James 2:14-26.
Western thinking separated works and faith. Many theologians, including Martin Luther, have problems interpreting the passage of James. However, many oral people have no problem at all with James as faith and works cannot be separated. The Lisu in China, for example, cannot imagine faith without works as they belong together.4
Miscategorized?
In Western cultures, life can for example be categorized into relationships, work, leisure, and religion.
Animistic cultures, however, do not have religion as a separate category, as belief in the invisible spirit world is part of their relationships, work, and leisure activities. Animism is not a religion but affects every aspect of life.5
Let’s look at a final example of different ways of categorizing and why it matters to understand how the culture we are ministering to classifies things.
Confirmation, communion, baptism, and marriage are sacraments for a Roman Catholic.
However, in an animistic culture, spells for illness, death rituals, magic, communion, and baptism are grouped under sorcery.
Sacrament or sorcery? Religion or magic?
Religion is the attitude of dependency and submission to higher powers.
Magic is the conscious manipulation and conquest of such powers for own purposes.
Both religion and magic can be mistaken to each other.6 They are not two distinct things but rather the opposing ends of a continuum.7
😃🤔🤯 What Christian rituals & symbols can be misinterpreted in your ministry? What must be done to counteract it?
Footnotes
- 📖 Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin Mayers, Ministering Cross-Culturally: A Model for Effective Personal Relationships (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2016), 25–38. ↩︎
- 📖 Jack Goody, “Oral Culture,” in Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-Centered Handbook, ed. Richard Bauman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 16. ↩︎
- 📃 Berit Ingersoll-Dayton and Chanpen Saengtienchai, “Respect for the Elderly in Asia: Stability and Change,” The International Journal of Aging and Human Development 48, no. 2 (March 1999): 113–30. ↩︎
- 📃 Aminta Arrington, “Reimagining Discipleship: The Lisu Life–Rhythm of Shared Christian Practices,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 42, no. 3 (July 2018): 220–28. ↩︎
- 📖 Lothar Käser, Animism: A Cognitive Approach, trans. Derek Cheeseman (Nürnberg: VTR Publ, 2014), 31–32. ↩︎
- 📖 W. Jay Moon, Intercultural Discipleship: Learning from Global Approaches to Spiritual Formation, Encountering Mission (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2017), 114–15. ↩︎
- 📖 Paul G. Hiebert, R. Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tiénou, Understanding Folk Religion: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1999). ↩︎
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