În atenția misionarilor și a candidaților la misiune:
O nouă abordare asupra prezentării Evangheliei în triburile care încă nu au o traducere a Bibliei, este metoda „povestirii”. Acest comunicat de presă al Comitetului Lausanne ar trebui luat în serios de toți acei care vor să cunoască modalități contemporane eficiente de împărtășire a Evangheliei în alte culturi. Sunt sigur că în anii care urmează se va vorbi tot mai mult despre „Oral story”. Există deja materiale tipărite, DVD-uri și situri care aprofundează această metodă. Am auzit și câteva mărturii din partea unor misionari care au folosit-o.
The old story needs still to be told
Why would a Muslim woman be re-telling a Bible story to her father?
The Third Lausanne Congress was hearing about new strategies for telling the ‘old, old story of Jesus and his cross’. As a gathering of evangelicals world-wide, this should hardly be surprising. Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s Church, Oxford, had reminded us in the morning Bible exposition of the need to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4). Paul Eshleman, founder of The JESUS Film Project, urged us to remember we still need to take the story to the hundreds of peoples and language groups who have never heard the good news.
When it comes to method, evangelical Christians are essentially pragmatists. In nineteenth-century industrial England, many women were employed as Scripture Readers to bring the story to the mass of people now gathering in the new emerging cities. The principle is adaptable, and it gathers pace when applied into a global context. Lausanne is definitely global.
Today’s story-telling team stand in that same tradition, relating the narrative orally to those around them who have not heard it. The story is still the same, the unchanging story of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As the story-teller relates the story, so it is passed on from daughter to father, from mother to children, from colleague to colleague, and so it spreads.
Perhaps the old Scripture Reader of the nineteenth century and today’s oral storyteller can learn from each other. For the Christian, the text of the story is important. Bible translation, Bible training and Bible distribution are urgent tasks, and we cannot rely on oral retelling alone. The oral storyteller reminds us also of the importance of oral transmission and the essential contextualisation of the ‘old, old story,’ in the modern and global age.
The principle of Lausanne remains that of getting the truth of the gospel to those who have never heard it before. The method of doing that has to be adapted in every age. Today is a global age of communication and yet, if the gospel is to be contextualised, it must move from global transmission to local application. This is the role of both the local church and the modern missionary.
So we circle back to our Muslim woman. For once the Muslim woman hears it – a Muslim woman in whose heart the Spirit is working – she will be retelling a Bible story to her father. This is local application at its strongest; the very heart of the work in our globalized world.
Richard Turnbull
Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford
22nd October 2010
Editor’s note: for more information, or for media access to photographs, news releases and audio/video clips, email media@capetown2010.com, or go to www.lausanne.org/news-releases or www.lausanne.org/conversation