DALLAS (ABP) — People remember the stories, because with each retelling, moments come alive once again.
In largely illiterate cultures, such as many in southern Sudan, storytelling preserves hundreds of years of history for people groups dependent on oral records. It also gives missionaries a gateway to share the gospel.
“When I was young, everything was in stories,” Sudanese pastor Edwin Makola recalled.
“The [Southern Baptist] International Mission Board … and the larger evangelical community … discovered that orality was a good idea — to go back to Jesus’ day. He taught in parables. … It’s the right thing to do in southern Sudan.”
Makola arrived in the United States 13 years ago from Africa as a refugee from Sudan’s civil war. He now serves in Dallas, as pastor to the Sudanese congregation of Forest Meadow Baptist Church. The church houses four ethnic congregations — Anglo, Hispanic, Sudanese and Zambian.
Forest Meadow Pastor Tim Ahlen has taken groups to southern Sudan for four years to evangelize, but he uses a different kind of preaching than is usually heard in a typical stateside Baptist church.
“Expository preaching is meaningless to [the Sudanese]. They walk away with the stories and the illustrations — what they understand,” Ahlen said.
As Texas Great Commission Initiative coordinator, Ahlen works to create awareness among missionaries about how worldview affects a person’s reception of the gospel. The initiative — a collaborative effort involving the local associations of Baptist churches in the state’s four largest metropolitan areas — exists to equip church leaders for effective mission work.
“Storying” — Ahlen’s chosen method for reaching narrative-oriented people groups — incorporates as many as 50 Bible stories told in chronological order to create a holistic picture of God and his faithfulness.
Church member Lori Hoxie liked the storying method when she went to Sudan with fellow Forest Meadow members.
“We picked the ones we thought were the most appropriate for the culture,” she explained. “We did it at different times during the day, whenever they were available. You tell the stories, and then you ask questions about it to see if they got the facts straight — to see if they know what’s going on.”
Foreign missionaries have been using storying for years, Ahlen clarified, but he wants to see it used in the Western world as well. He currently works with Makola to apply it in ministry with Forest Meadow’s Sudanese congregation.
Makola arrived from Africa trained in expository preaching. But to become a better minister to Sudanese in the Dallas area, he attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a few weeks to learn storying.
The alternate method helps Makola communicate the gospel more effectively to people from his own culture, Ahlen said.
“The culture is a storying culture. When Makola got brave enough to start telling stories, people would tell him they had never heard preaching with such power,” Ahlen insisted.
But why would Makola have to come to the United States before learning culturally appropriate teaching styles?
The reason stems, in part, from a long history of Western colonization in Africa, Ahlen said. Many Sudanese Christians think expository preaching is the only correct way to spread the gospel — one effect of former colonial subjects’ strong association of Christianity with Western cultural norms.
This bias creates negativity toward other, more local, methods of evangelism, such as storying. Many established Sudanese congregations in the United States have reacted negatively to storying. Sudanese missionaries often opt against using the method in their own country.
“They don’t want to go back to southern Sudan to tell stories; they want to go back to preach,” Makola said.
It’s also a struggle to convince Sudanese people, once in the United States, to return to ministry in Sudan because of tough conditions they would face, Makola said.
Having just left “a mess … of poverty and torture,” most would rather stay in the United States, he speculated.
Navigating cultural mores in transition also complicates ministry to Sudanese in the United States.
“The Sudanese people in particular — they feel they have left that Third World background there. They are trying to cross over to the world they call civilized and leave behind the old systems, to shake them off,” Makola said.
Acculturation presents problems, Ahlen said, when value systems clash, especially with first-generation Sudanese Americans. Children often upset their parents as they embrace American culture at the expense of home-country traditions, he said.
But despite frustration, Forest Meadow’s Sudanese ministry — focused on evangelism and church planting — has been fruitful. Around 90 attend regular Sunday services. Special occasions, such as Christmas, attract as many as 800.
Makola remains optimistic about evangelism in southern Sudan. “It’s like water upon the sand. … You don’t see it at first, but slowly the sand becomes soaked. That’s how the gospel works in people’s lives. Time will come — you will see a change.”
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