Outlined Transcript:
Reaching the Oral Learner
Hi folks. I just wanted to share with you some things that I've been teaching in my classes recently. I was a couple weeks ago teaching a class called intercultural discipleship. And in that class I was unpacking the practice of discipleship for people who aren't strong readers. We call them illiterate people. They're not illiterate. It doesn't mean they can't read. It just means they don't read naturally or by habit. They don't take in content through reading typically. Usually it's through talking and song and memory and various other things which is one reason why around Christmas time I was asking for donations to buy the audio Bibles.
I wanted to show you—I got a bunch of them ordered and they came about a week or two ago and I've not charged them all, but this is what they look like. I think I showed you on a previous video what they look like. They're very simple. I didn't want something that was overly complex with lots of moving features on it. Sometimes the more simple they are, the less there is to damage or to malfunction. And so they have Thai and Black Lahu recorded on them.
Ministry Through Felt Needs
I have a plan to distribute them at our conference that we're going to hold, Lord willing, later this spring. It's going to be a Christian family and marriage conference for people in the church, people in the village. It's using the topic of marriage and family, which are sometimes taboo topics, things that people don't talk about much because there's just not much to talk about because they don't usually address their own problems. They don't talk about ways to improve or grow. They just kind of stuff it down and sweep it under the rug. And they don't really address glaring issues. And so they just kind of ignore them and then they percolate over time and it just sometimes it blows up or it's just a festering issue that's always there.
And so using the felt needs of a need for wholeness and health within the family and using that as a way to teach how a Christian family ought to work, how a Christian family ought to be strengthened. And so using this opportunity as a way to do what I called in my class that I was referring to earlier as pre-discipleship or pre-evangelism.
"Essentially influencing people to Christ with the word of Christ in the way of Christ by the spirit of Christ."
And so in the way of Christ, the manner both in his tenderness, but also in his toughness, in his kindness, but also in his strength and speaking strong words, but speaking words that are lifegiving and peace giving. Not laying on people a yoke that is man-made, a yoke that is lawful, but giving people a light yoke, a helpful yoke, a yoke that is garlanded in grace, the grace of the gospel. But also giving them authoritative words, not just personal reflections, not just personal proverbial sayings, but the words of Christ. And so we know that faith comes through hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.
The Great Commission: Unpacking Tereo
My goal is to plant seeds of faith in their soul through the word of Christ by the spirit of Christ. And so that is kind of how I think in terms of both evangelism and discipleship. But first of all just to lay the groundwork of discipleship. Probably the go-to text that all of you are familiar with is from Matthew 28, the Great Commission.
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age."
I was reading from the ESV, which is what I typically use. I'm just going to point out one part of the passage that I really honed in on during my teaching. And it's one of the ways that we make disciples is by teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. But a lot of times the way I hear this part of the passage taught or applied is people will often emphasize it this way: teaching them all that I've commanded you. Well, what's missing? It's the infinitive verb. Teaching them to observe or to keep or some translations to obey.
I'm using the ESV. It says to observe. I don't like that translation. There are others like the NASB I think use to keep and it's much more accurate. But the word is—not to get too technical with you, but it does matter, it does change the way you understand it—is the word: tereo. It means to keep post. It's a military term for guarding a deposit. Paul uses it in his letters to Timothy and says, "I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith. I have tereo-ed the faith. I have guarded the faith." It's the body of doctrine. When he says, "I have kept the faith" with a definite article, he's referring to the body of doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the gospel.
It's a very specific term and it's actually used in Matthew 27, a chapter earlier; it's the same verb that's used for the guards keeping watch over the tomb before Jesus is raised from the dead. It's the same exact word.
Discipleship Beyond Behavior Management
The idea of discipleship of entrusting the faith to people is not just teaching them what Jesus commanded. It is that, but it's more than that. It's teaching them—the infinitive verb is to keep all that I have commanded. And these aren't just imperatives. When Jesus says all that I have commanded, this is everything he has taught. It's thinking in terms of divine decree, divine edict, all the words of God. He wants them to guard, to keep, to brood over, to preserve all the words that he has decreed—all the indicatives and all the imperatives and all the interrogatives—everything that he has said: keep it, guard it.
Discipleship is more than just helping Christians become better Christians. Discipleship is teaching Christians to know what they believe and why they believe it and how to defend it. It's functionally apologetic work. It's the work of an apologist. It's even the work of a polemicist helping people know how to defend what they believe and why it's real, why it's verifiable, why it's true, but also helping people know how to tear down strongholds and how to use the word of Christ to take down false teaching and to take down false philosophies of the world.
It is essentially getting the Bible into the blood and the DNA of people. And so whether it's through teaching people to read literacy work or teaching people to use audio Bibles, memory work, whatever it is, it's word work and it's ingraining and depositing in people the word of Christ so that they would have faith because faith comes through hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.
In future lectures I'll kind of walk through the practicalities of how this is done especially for oral people, but for now this is one of the main things that I was teaching in my latest class. Thanks.