Last year in Bile study, we were treated to an experience of Bible study for oral cultures. Two missionaries who worked in South Asia displayed a narrative technique, where a Bible story is told by a narrator, then retold. The tellings are followed by discussion, centred around a few simple questions 'Wht did you like about the story? , What did you dislike? What does this tell us about God, What does this tell us about people.. (and another one I can't remember). After the discussion, the participants would then take turns at retelling the story, with the other participants making corrections where necessary.
It was a refreshing and eye-opening experience, and quite enjoyable.
Last week I was chatting with a Bible College student who is looking to plant a church in a very low socio-ecenomic area. He had some very interesting statistics saying that in Australia at least 50% of the population is functionally illiterate. That is, even if they can read, for the most part, they wont. Reading to learn is foreign to them, let alone for pleasure.
Which makes me think there may be a massive niche for christian study and training based around a narrative, oral technique. If we taught just 1 story well evey two weeks, that would be 26 memorised stories a year. 100 in four years. That would have to help people both to live as christians and to pass those stories on to others.
What Bible stories would you include in a one year program.
Heres some ideas I have already.
Jesus' parables
The usual biblical theology suspects, maybe even a cycle of stories for each Genesis 1-2, Abraham, the exodus, judges/conquest, David, Split kingdom, Exile
Jesus' Healing/miracles stories
Maybe models of the cross and resurrection, that is, picking up different ways of exploring what was going on and telling it in narrative form.. PSA, Christus victor, exemplar, trinitarian.
Joseph, Jacob, the ark of God (that's the one we did in Bible study)
Maybe a few from Acts?
Admittedly it doesn't work so well fo Epistles, but then, knowing the stories is helpful for understanding the epistles.
Wisdom literature is a bit tricky too, although some of the psalms could work well.
Cmon now, more ideas from you, and maybe some ideas on tha balance/order
The Echo of Easter
18 hours ago
5 comments:
Mike
I think this is what should happen in every church!
This is also the approach we have taken in Scripture at Katoomba High for the past two years. We covered many of the key narratives in the Old Testament in 6 months, and then Mark over 6 months. This year we have covered Jonah and some stories from Kings, and are now working through early Daniel.
It's basically 'read the story', fill in the blanks on the sheet (which also has a cool picture) and discuss as we go through it. It generally works very well, and all the truths we would usually present as 'systematic' propositions are contained in powerful contexts - as they were designed to be.
As I have probably ranted before, how many churches today could get through Esther in one lesson and cover all the important bases (background, interpretation, application)?
ALL churches should be tellers of the story, and I mean ALL of the story - a whole-Bible biblical theology that does not allow church to become either a lecture hall or a kindergarten. The church should be a gathering where the story is told, and told, and told. We should know it back to front. Then we Christians might understand who we are, and non-Christians might want to join this family that has the only true family tree.
But highbrow theology has rendered the story untellable - or made us nervous to just plain tell it without qualifications that pander to our gnostism - so hungry Christians end up with popular travesties like The Shack which I wouldn't hang on the back of my toilet door.
Less theologians! More Bible teachers!
A quote from Jim Jordan (again with the Jim Jordan - who somehow manages to be a great theologian and the best Bible teacher on the planet):
“The Bible was designed to be heard, repeatedly. That’s why scholarship is dangerous. That’s why theological seminaries are dangerous. That’s why an academic approach to the Bible is dangerous. Because it’s all silent, and the Bible becomes a thing...”
"Best is not a theological category."
Stanley Hauerwas
Being able to tell the scriptual metanarrative, and doing it well, is what we should be aiming to do: Creation (First Days), Fall (Dark Days), Israel, Jesus, Last Days, and Today.
I was actually quoting someone else referring to Jordan, but there you go. I like his direct style of communicating (once you get used to the southern accent). I like Wright too (what I have read and heard so far) but sometimes I just want to shake him and shout "What are you actually saying!!?" But that's me.
I agree with you on the 'metanarrative', but so often this gets watered down to theo-ideology (a new term!) and an excuse to avoid real biblical theology.
On the other side, when we do teach OT Bible 'stories' they are often disconnected from the metanarrative and presented as mere 'morality tales.'
Doing it really well requires all of the above, and a good dose of biblical typology - learning to see the New Testament (first century) process in all that went before.
I was just teasing you :p
But there is no place for gurus (1 Cor 3), and I'll be posting about this sometime soon, mainly for my own sake.
On the other side, when we do teach OT Bible 'stories' they are often disconnected from the metanarrative and presented as mere 'morality tales.'
That's a tragedy, and teaching like that is a caricuture of a good biblical metanarrative. You can't do the metanarrative without good biblical theology and nitty gritty exegisis, but too often we only do one and neglect the others. The danger for Sydney Anglicans isn't to teach morality but to teach ideas with no sense of application.
Back to task people, a structure for a years worth. I've found some stuff at the Chronological Bible teaching site.
As for theologians vs Bible teachers, I've mostly found that the theologians (at least the ones I've been reading) get their interpretation of the scriptures better than the Bible scholars who atomise everything. We really do need them because the good ones point out to our culture (and to us) how close and how far we are from the God of the scriptures.
Scripture at KHS is one of the inspirations for me for thinking about this, although I just missed the story stuff. Of course, narrative or not, I always found it amusing that the pagan kids could handle longer Bible teaching than the church.
What I'm hoping for is something that is easily reproduced. That is, not just that people would hear the stories, but that they would learn them by heart. You know, tell em to their kids, when they get up, sit down, that kind of thing.
As for teaching morality, well, I don't mind a bit of morality every now and then. As long as it is the wacked out, follow Jesus to the cross kind of morality. The Biblical Theology of Sydney Angs has been slamming morality based teaching for years now. One of the great joys I've had this year was reading Robert Alters "The art of Biblical narrative", which allowed me to view biblical characters as characters again, rather than simply typological foils.
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