Tag: Madagascar

Crafting Bible Stories: Crafting

Before we started, I had someone pray. Rock One. Then, I wrote these six words on the blackboard:

  • Short 
  • Clear 
  • Understandable 
  • Repeatable 
  • Biblical  
  • Contextualized 

I didn’t explain anything about these words. I simply wrote them and then moved on to Rock Two. I played our Bible story, taken from Mark 5, in multiple dialects. Thankfully, we have two crafted Bible stories recorded from story-tellers we have trained. Plus, Wycliffe has been working for many years, translating the Bible into local dialects. I then had us read Mark 5 in the Bible. Think of this as them reading Beowulf. It’s an old translation and in a way of speaking that is predominant in the capital. I asked them if they could read that and it be understood by the farmer way off the road. They said no. And then, they all began to explain that the stories and Bible translations they heard before would be understood by people where they’re from. “It’s the way we speak,” they say. That’s the power of familiarity and contextualized communication.  

I started asking questions. Third Rock. Now these questions are different from the 6 we use to get people talking about the story. At this stage we ask them questions to help them analyze the story in the form they have it and then craft it in a way that will make sense to their audience. As we walked through the passage of Mark 5, Jesus casting spirits out of a possessed man, I asked what differences they noticed from the written text and the translation recordings or the stories. They’re quick to point out the story is exactly the same; the way it’s delivered at the words used vary. I asked them what do the words Decapolis and Legion mean? They didn’t know. How would anyone know these days? I pointed them back to the Greek New Testament. These are just Greek words brought over into English, Malagasy and so on, I explained. Decapolis just means “ten towns” (deka = 10, polis = towns). Legion was just a military expression. “We don’t have to repeat these words, how would you all tell the story in your own words?” I ask. “Oh! That’s why the demons say we are Many or we are Several Soldiers, or we are Uncountable.” Every story-teller or translation had a different way of expressing the same idea. 

I returned to what I had written on the board at the beginning. We have to tell the story in a way people will understand. It has to be short. They should be able to repeat the story. It should be contextualized to their everyday life. But we’re not changing the Bible; we’re telling the story clearly. I referred back to our discussion from the previous week about the pigs. It’s true that a barrier for people receiving the story in this culture may be the pigs. For one thing, there are tribes who do not eat pork. That might be a problem for them. Also, many people do ask why Jesus didn’t care about the loss of wealth the death of the pigs represents. However, as they had pointed out to me last week, that is the point of the story. So then, we cannot refuse to tell that part of the story in the name of being culturally relevant or contextual. The story must remain biblical for us to appropriately contextualize it. 

Two of the students practiced, on the spot, to retell the story in a way they thought would makes sense to others in their town (Rock 4). During this time we discussed the difference between story-telling and explaining. One of the students had begun explaining the meaning of discipleship as he told the part of the story about Jesus traveling with his disciples. I encouraged them to use the questions after the story to explore any further explanation. We ask questions to gauge what people understood and so they can ask us what they didn’t understand. At that point, we are free to go back and clarify the story from God’s Word without confusing people about the difference between our explanations and the story itself. We closed as I encouraged everyone to prepare to tell the story next week when we met again next week. 

Four Rocks

1

Pray

Ask for God to help you understand His Word.

2

Listen

Listen to the story being told by someone and then read it as a group. It’s even better if it’s told and/or read several times.

3

Ask

Ask several kinds of questions to help everyone understand the story.

4

Apply

Obey what God is saying in the story and share it with others.

Crafting Bible Stories: Four Rocks

There are a lot of aspects to crafting Bible stories. We often say it’s something you can’t explain, you have to experience it to understand it. I (Nathan) recently started teaching weekly at a local school for pastors. We thought it might be helpful to do a series of posts walking through the process of training others to tell and craft Bible stories. Would you like to see behind the curtain?

Continue reading “Crafting Bible Stories: Four Rocks” →

Why Bible Stories?

I was sitting in a Bible story-crafting group. Pastors and members from three different Baptist churches meet together weekly here in our city, slowly meditating, discussing, telling and retelling, and then finally recording certain passages of Scripture. These are the stories they then tell to others throughout the week, as sermons, in evangelistic conversations, and counseling one another. As we began our time, others in the group had already told about five different stories, just shooting the breeze and catching up on local news and events. Per usual, many of these stories centered on the use of charms.

One of the pastors spoke up, adding his own story:

There’s a group of huts near us I visit almost every week. The families that live there have such vulgar mouths most people can’t stand to go through there. I’ve even had people on the road question my motives. They’ll ask me, “Why do you keep coming over here? What are you looking for? Don’t you know these people have charms buried all over this yard?”

I tell them I’m just interested in talking with the people there, getting to know them better. People tell me it is a waste of time. Many church-folk have made their way back there and they always stop coming after a while because they just can’t stand those people. It’s true, they disrespect people and berate them day in and day out, even they do it to one another.

But one day I was sitting with them. I usually don’t say much because you can’t possibly respond to all of the nonsense. They’re constantly trying to pull you into debates. But one of the girls sitting there attends the local Lutheran church. Her mother and her grandmother are well-known church-folk, and she goes to church every Sunday. She was telling everyone sitting there about the sermon from Sunday. It was about not serving two masters. The girl recounted, “The pastor said, ‘You cannot serve two masters. You will hate one of them and love the other one.’ But I don’t really know what he meant.”

I told her the story of Jesus’ temptation. Even after Jesus had his confirmation and was baptized, God led him into the wilderness to be tested. And the devil tested his spirit. When he couldn’t deceive him with food or possessions or power, he turned to the holy writings themselves to deceive him. That is how the devil tries to get you to serve two masters.

Haven’t you seen people who go to church and take off their charms. Then, once they returned, they put the charms back on again. And when people bury charms here, do they pray Jesus’ name over them? No. They know that the master of the charms and the master of the church are enemies. That is what your pastor means when he says you cannot serve two masters.

She went and got her family and they burned their charms right then and there.

Pastor

His story was, of course, a huge encouragement. Praise God for this pastor’s faithfulness and these changed lives! Also, though, our pastor’s story struck me as a poignant illustration for why we do Bible story-crafting in the first place.

Stories acknowledge and resource the local church

I’ll start with perhaps the subtext of this example. Our presence as foreign missionaries here in Toliara, or even in Southern Madagascar, is not the only Christian witness. There are many, many Malagasy believers and many Christian churches. True, their theology–the ways these believers understand and interact with God–is sometimes very different from our own. Yet many of these Christians show in the good fruit of their lives they are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Bible story-crafting is then a way that we can come alongside these Malagasy brothers and sisters and give them an additional resources as God’s primary witnesses in Madagascar. For example, this little community, vulgar and lost in idol worship as they may be, has a witness to God’s Word and love. However, even though there is a church in walking distance, even though they preach God’s Word, even though this young woman heard God’s Word proclaimed in that church, she still did not understand.

Our local team composes stories that allow people to hear God’s Word crafted to their daily life experience (missiologists call this contextualization). The stories are told in the dialect(s) they are used to hearing and communicating in every day. They do not use Christian lingo or Bible words. They do not include a lot of names or titles people cannot understand let alone pronounce. And because they are not crafted by foreigners but endlessly workshopped by indigenous believers, they are a faithful retelling of God’s Word from a Malagasy perspective. Essentially, stories allow people to bear witness to God’s continuing story in a way that is not foreign but very natural to them.

Bible story-crafting group meeting

People can understand and apply stories

The more overt lesson borne out in the pastor’s story is that people here (and I believe everywhere) simply understand stories better. The girl had heard someone preaching verses from God’s written Word, but still needed someone to flesh out the meaning before she was ready to apply it. If you don’t understand what God is saying (or why), you’re going to have a hard time obeying. Like Philip, whom God used to explain to the Ethiopian the meaning of what he had read from Scripture, stories equip people with ways to understand the Bible, even after they’ve read it or (more likely in our context) heard it read aloud (in a language not quite their own).

There is a lot that could be said about this principle, in terms of communication theory, culture, etc. However, suffice to say that content (what is said) is incomprehensible outside of context (how, when, to whom, and for what purpose something is said). “It hurts!” is a simple enough sentence to understand. But your reaction will vary greatly depending on whether it’s someone who just broke their finger, or your starved-for-attention four-year-old drama queen, or the character of Gollum as you host your annual Lord of the Rings marathon.

The girl in the pastor’s story did not understand the principle, “You cannot worship two masters” without the context of the story of Jesus’ Temptation, and then that story applied to her own context. I venture to say, if this article was simply the header above, “People can understand and apply stories,” it would make a lot less sense than it does when you understand the story behind that observation.

And don’t forget, this was story number six in our group. Stories are by far the most natural way people communicate here. Does that mean people cannot learn from a three-point sermon? It does not. But it is not the most natural way for people to learn, or communicate that information to others. While I have seen people listen to a story once to then turn around retell the whole thing perfectly, I have never seen anyone repeat a sermon after hearing it. Speaking of that, you might be surprised to learn that this particular pastor, who was telling this story, is an oral learner. The sermons he shares on Sundays are stories. He asks congregation members to read relevant passages aloud to the group, or memorizes key passages ahead of time with his wife, as he doesn’t read at all. And yet, through storying and story-crafting, he is equipped to bring God’s Word to bear on the everyday lives of the people in his community.

If you want to know more about the Bible story-crafting movement, you should follow along with the podcast That Reminds Me of a Story. They do a good job of walking through the different elements of the process, explaining origins, and how methods have developed over time.

Seeing Culture

What you see is what you get. . . . .

The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across and hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

What do a sheep’s head, a crowded thoroughfare, and a hole in the ground have to do with each other? When you take your time to actually see your surroundings and meditate on them (instead of just looking at them), they begin to teach you culture.

Two days ago, I was running up a mountain in the early morning mist (training for a local trail run). At the top of this rocky slope is a viewpoint where you can see Toliara stretching out underneath, and just past that is a large hole in the ground.

It’s nothing special . . . just a hole in the ground with a lot of trash in it. Or is it?

The hole

On my way back from a Bible story-crafting group, I noticed a stand on the side of the road. A lady sat swinging a rag back-and-forth over a roughly constructed wooden table. On one side of the table was a neat mound of leafy greens, in the middle, boiled cassava root, still steaming underneath its plastic wrap. This lineup was then concluded by a severed sheep’s head, plopped prominently, if not unceremoniously, in a tin bowl. Let me just confirm, all these items were for sale.

I moved on from this to enter the clogged artery of rickshaws, people and freight trucks squeezing around each other on the main road. No one seems to be paying attention to each other. People cross the road with little more than a side-ways glance at the oncoming traffic. Both bodies and bicycle rickshaws are pressed as close together as possible. At the last minute, people and vehicles swerve ever-so-slightly to avoid certain collision. All this happens at such a pace and velocity of back-to-back snap judgements that I actually feel as if I’m entering into some kind of sentient organism. Is this hive mind?

The unpracticed eye might not make anything of these observations; they are events or arrangements of items that merely appear strange. If we’re especially not careful, we’ll start abstracting moral lessons from what we see: these people are trashy, not concerned with hygiene, unaware of proper social boundaries, etc. What we would be missing is the lessons these familiar scenes offer about Malagasy culture and the material reality from which their worldview arises.

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia

Take the hole. On my second lap, I stopped and did my best Sherlock Holmes impression: I tried to not just see but to observe.

Approaching the pit it is clear there have been many visitors to this place. Smouldered remains are scattered all around: ashy rocks, blackened sticks, dark spots where flames have flickered, makeshift fires started in darkness. There are bits of tattered clothing left behind; the leftovers of a rope tethered to a root hangs limp by the edge of the hole. That’s where they tied it up, I think. Sure enough, a quick scan reveals a horn, chicken feathers, and oily, crimson stains along the mouth of the shale cavity.

It’s not just a hole, this is a place of sacrifice. And that’s not just trash. True, the hole is littered with plastic bottles of various shapes and sizes. Yet the spilled-out innards of those containers reveal they are charms, filled with earth and seeds and hair: bits of life brought together to forever alter it with other-worldly knowledge. This place is a symbol of animism. Spirit and material reality are a unified entity and even at a place that, at a glance, looks like a trashy hole in the ground.

Then there’s the seller’s table with the sheep’s head. Everything about the seller communicates hardscrabble ingenuity. The table is made from leftover scraps of wood. The roots and leaves of the humble cassava are sold and eaten as food. Even the base of the plant is dried and stored away to be planted next season. The best part, the thick, potato-like root, has been boiled and wrapped in dusty plastic, plastic that once encased high-priced filtered water bottles. Now, salvaged from the trash and repurposed, the plastic traps the heat of this staple food, boiled in dirty water. Nothing is wasted. The epitome of this is the sheep’s head. It is not sitting on the table as a ghastly warning. It is prime food. Like the cassava, animals are harvested for every valuable piece. Hide, hoof, and head, yes, even down to tongue and cheek, will be sold and eaten. Nothing is wasted because choices are limited.

And the roadside manner. People here are used to living very close together. Personal space has not been invented yet in Madagascar. I joke, but in many ways that is true. There is a connection between poverty, limited choices, and closeness. Affluence grants distance, independence, autonomy, true. But people with many choices do not have nearly the social IQ, they don’t have to. There is a certain paradox seen in the street where raised in interdependence are both highly aware of their own responsibility and yet simultaneously aware of others’ as well. I will step off the road just before you run me over, because ultimately I have to fend for myself. But I also know you will swerve just before you hit me, because ultimately it behooves you to keep yourself disentangled from me and my problems (which of course will end the moment you crash into me). The careening sea of humanity is humming along to the song of interdependency: sometimes discordant harmony of expectations and roles. And the worst thing someone can do is step into the middle of that song and try to belt out a solo. Most likely they will get hit by a bus, literally and figuratively.

The best way, then, is to notice these curiosities. Store them away and ponder them, like Mary, in your heart. Take your cue from Sherlock Holmes and learn the picture between the pieces, that s logic. Or like Annie Dillard marveling at the gift of sight and how often we do not make good use of it, don’t miss the daily miracles surrounding you. If we can practice seeing the people and place around us, we will finally know where we are and what it means. And we may even start to understand if and where we can fit in among these strange new scenarios.

I believe in every place and in every culture God has already placed an invitation for us to accept and join him in his work. But if you do not ever slow down, you may never see it.

Malagasy Missionary Internship

Jonoro seeing the fruit of his ministry

For decades, a Malagasy pastor named Jonoro has been engaging people groups in southwest Madagascar with the Gospel. Jonoro has modeled personal sacrifice and a commitment to indigenous leadership, language and culture study, and advocacy for the most unreached. His example has inspired Malagasy Baptists as well as IMB missionaries working in the area.

Since January, Pastor Jonoro, with funding from Child Evangelism Fellowship, has hosted a group of 15 Baptist leaders from around the island—representing 8 different people groups—all passionate to learn to be Malagasy missionaries. Jonoro has worked with other Baptist pastors to put together this residential school for missionaries. These Malagasy missionaries-in-training have been immersed in the life and ministry of four local Baptist churches. 

Because of the longstanding relationship between IMB and these local leaders, we as IMB personnel were able to enter into this training as learners and co-laborers. We literally walked alongside the students as they practiced what they had learned about the missionary task (entering into a new area to evangelize, make disciples who then form a church, and investing in local leaders until such a time as the missionary can exit leaving behind new partners). We were not trainers only but students as well, learning from our Malagasy brothers and sisters, asking them how they did things and why, as all of us together learn how to make Malagasy disciples.

IMB Ministry Gifts of $150 were used to send these students to conduct an M-Task practicum among two local people groups (Masikoro and Mikea), one of which is still a UUPG. These students themselves represent 8 very different tribes from around the island. As they returned from 10 days of immersive hands on experience as missionaries, listen to what they were saying:

“I’ve never understood what Jesus meant when he said, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.’ Now I understand. There are so many people out there who are thirsty for Jesus. They are just waiting for someone to come and lead them. We have to send more leaders!”

Gaston, Sakalava tribe from Morondava

“It was very stressful to me the way the people lived. For 10 days we did not shower. I’m not used to that. But we were taught to enter into the life of the people, live as they live. So I think if we are missionaries we would not shower if we were working with them. That’s how we would show them God’s love.”

Lande, Bezanozano tribe from Moramanga

“We met with a young man who was ready to give up his charms. I told him the story of Legion about the demon possessed man. We asked him if he was ready to follow Jesus, and he said yes. We prayed for him and his stomach and legs were healed, no longer swollen. He said he wanted to follow us. But I told him what Jesus said to the man whom he healed. ‘No. Go back home and tell your family what God has done for you.’ So, the young man went back home and led his mother to turn away from her charms.”

Madera, Mahafaly tribe from Betioky

“I cried myself to sleep the first night after meeting these people and seeing the way that they live, the way that they eat, the way other tribes treat them. My heart is burdened for the Mikea people.”

Alex, Antanosy tribe from Tongobory

“It was hard for me to understand people and for them to understand me. Even though we are all Malagasy, I finally understood that we have to work very hard to understand one another. If we are going to take the gospel to other tribes, there is still a lot I need to learn about language and culture.”

Stephan, Betsimisarika tribe from Mahatsara

“I thought because I was a woman, I didn’t have much to offer on the trip other than to cook and to clean. But when I arrived in the village there were so many eager women. I asked them if they knew the story of Esther. They didn’t. So, I taught them the story of Esther, how we women must be like queens speaking wisely and protecting our family instead of protecting ourselves and leaving them to ruin. I told them we are to be like Mary, the mother of Jesus, bringing blessing to the world by raising our children well. I thought I didn’t know anything. But it turns out as I went to the mission field, I became a teacher.” 

Tina, Tanalana tribe from Toliara

Many of the students returned with a vision for reaching the tribes in their own backyard. The students from the east now have a plan to work together to reach the outlying tribes in their area. They will be casting vision with their local churches in the East. Two men from the Southern region have a plan for starting with their local church and cell groups to expand outward. They now have a plan for how to work through the missionary task with the goal of raising up more indigenous leaders. The impact of this practicum will continue to reverberate around the island. And it would not have been possible without the trust and relationship with indigenous, local churches founded by the gifts of Southern Baptists, who have now not only sent out American missionaries to cross cultures to fulfill God’s mission but now indigenous, Malagasy missionaries as well.

Mahafaly Bible Stories: Priests

It’s me, the Traveler, and I have a story to tell you. It’s a story from a book of holy writings called the Bible. This book is a collection of many stories, and they have all been brought together to tell the whole story. It is the story of our ancestors, and our story. Let me tell it to you.

This story is called, Priests . . .

When the Prince of Creation chose Moses to be the leader for those tribes of Abraham, he also appointed Aaron, to be a a sacrificer, the one to carry the curse of those tribes of Abraham to the Prince of Creation. So then, the Prince appeared to Moses: “Mosesy! Say this to Arona . . . ‘When he will do this work, let him shower. He will have one male zebu secured. It will be killed by him in order to cleanse by blood the his own curse because of the curse upon his household.

After, he will have two male goats secured. And the one, slit the one’s throat, in order to cleanse by blood the curse of those tribes of Abraham. And the blood of this male goat and the blood of this male zebu sprinkle around that taboo place of sacrifice there. After, one male goat will be taken by him, the second. This male goat, do not kill this one, but there on the head of this male goat his two hands will be placed, the curses of those tribes of Abraham, all of them then and there, will be narrated by him. If that is done, this male goat will be thrown out by him to wander far away out there. With that their curse will be far away from them, and with that will be their relationship with the Prince.

But this also will be a rite that must be done by them, year after year after year that they may pass down this work through the generations, the tribes of Arona will pass it down through the generations, that’s down through his household.'”

“Yes,” said Moses. And so, you see, Moses went, the Prince’s decree was narrated to Aaron by him. Aaron also did what followed the rite made by the Prince.

But those tribes of Abraham, they grew and they became many. And the wrong they did became even greater still. So, Aaron sacrificed year after year and his offspring also passed that work down through the generations.

That is the story taken from there in the Holy Writings, so that the Prince had relationship with those tribes of Abraham.

The Famine in Madagascar

For those who haven’t yet seen it, David Muir from ABC did a special on the famine in Madagascar. We can personally attest from our own experience the situation in Southern Madagascar has worsened throughout the last ten years. To hear it from the locals, rains were more frequent, dried-up rivers still running, and fields much more productive 20 to 30 years ago. Something has changed. What ABC captured is not just “political.” It also isn’t recent. Obviously it’s getting publicity because of the recent UN summit, but because this situation has been building for a while, the solution will also not be solved by bandaid aide or ideas.

In 2018, we had two days of rain in the South. Two days! Crops have failed year after year when the Malagasy plant their fields after the first rain only for them to burn up in the withering sun with no follow-up rains. COVID-19 just made things worse. The villages we know in the South had already come to depend on the supplemental food handed out by World Food Program, USAid, Red Cross, and many others working in Southern Madagascar. But as soon as COVID-19 hit, those Non-Profits pulled out. Only one or two returned. So, at the same time COVID-19 lockdowns restricted access to shipped-in food, the organizations who have been handing it out haven’t been handing out as much, leaving many, many villages to flounder.

Most people are surviving off of cactus leaves and fruit, like this.
Even harty cactus wilts in the blistering heat.
Where fields once were, there is now only sand.

We are not in any way experts in weather or climate change. From what we’ve seen, this is absolutely driven by deforestation and sudden weather changes in the past 10 years. The foreign food aide has helped, but it misses the need for water that only massive infrastructure development could help offset. Unfortunately, the reality of this drastic situation is that any solution will only be a drop in the bucket.

People are suffering and dying in Southern Madagascar, and no matter which way you slice it, we have a responsibility as humans, first, and especially as Christians, to do something about it.

Please pray for the Malagasy, especially the Mahafaly and Tandroy tribes that are most heavily affected by the drought and famine. Learn more about what caused this famine and how to help. Pray for the efforts of local, Malagasy churches who are working to get food to their churches in the middle of all this (one trip is scheduled for next week). And let’s ask God what our drop in the bucket should be.

New LMCO Video

Since Christmas will be here before you know it, we have our yearly Lottie Moon update:

The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO) is the yearly offering that Southern Baptist churches take up every year to support thousands of IMB missionaries (like us).

Thank you to all of you who support us and others like us!