Most of the Borana do not read. We have found that people with an oral preference learning style, may not read words in books, but learn and function in other ways. They know how to keep up with which year they were born without assigning numbers to years. Every year is given a name because of some significant event that happened that year. The elders of the tribe decide what the year will be called. For example, if you know that you were born "The year the big tree fell in the river", then you can go to the elders and they can go back year by year by name and count up how old you are.

They know how to keep up with large herds of animals and are able to find food and water for them in the middle of the desert. They know how to take the roots of a tree and weave it so tight that they can make a container that holds milk without leaking. They know lots of things we don't know.

People who do not read are referred to as oral communicators as opposed to being literate communicators. Therefore we will distribute the Bible to them in oral form. We will do that through a method called Chronological Bible Storying. We will tell them stories from the Old Testament beginning with the creation of the spirit world and the creation of the physical world and proceeding through the fall of man and God's provision for restoring the relationship. We will continue through the Old Testament and through the life of Jesus to the crucifixion and resurrection. We will try to communicate 7 basic concepts throught these stories.

1) Where the angels and demons come from.

2) Where all the rest of creation comes from.

3) How sin entered the world.

4) God's judgement for those who sin.

5) God's OT provision for the forgiveness of sin

6) God's NT provision for the forgiveness of sin.

7) Jesus' birth, ministry, death and resurrection.

When we get to the end of the "Evangelism Tract" those who make a committment to Jesus, will then hear a series of stories to help them build the qualities of a disciple. Some Borana peole will decide that they want to learn to read and then they will be able to read the Bible for themselves. But especially for the Nomadic Borana, the opportunities for them to learn to read are very limited.

Chronological

Bible

Storying

A MORE IN-DEPTH DESCRIPTION OF

CHRONOLOGICAL BIBLE STORYING

We will bring the Bible to the Borana people through Chronological Bible Storying (CBS). When we do CBS with them we do not tell the whole Bible from beginning to end in chronological order, that would take a very long time. What we have are 5 CBS tracts.

1) The Evangelism Tract, designed to lead someone to Christ.

2) The Discipleship Tract, teaches them what they need to do to be a faithful follower of Christ.

3) The Church Planting Tract, teaches them to go out and plant other churches.

4) The Characterization Tract, is a more in-depth discipleship tract for more mature Christians.

5) The End Times Tract, teaches them about the second coming and other End Time issues.

We will make a list of stories for each tract that are particularly important to the Borana people. For example in our Evangelism Tract for the Borana people we include several stories that include information about the O.T. sacrificial system. We do this because the sacrificial system of the Borana people is almost identical. So stories about sacrifice are called "bridges" to the gospel for the Borana people.

On the other hand their are stories that we avoid when we are teaching the Evangelism Tract because these stories would be offensive in some way to the Borana people. Therefore these stories would be a "barrier" to the gospel for the Borana people. One example is the story of Isaac and Ishmael. Because the Borana are members of a religion that consider Ishmael as the son of promise. However, Christians believe that Isaac is the son of promise. This particular story is a very important story, yet it can be a “barrier” to the gospel. We don't actually skip this particular story because of it's extreme significance. However, we make sure that we tell enough stories before hand that the people trust us and will be willing to listen to the story. We also don't dwell on the issue. We present it and move on.

So the first thing we do is tell the Evangelism Tract of 25 stories. The first story is the “Creation of the Spirit World” and the last story in our Evangelism Tract is the “Resurrection of Jesus.” Those who become saved are candidates for the Discipleship Tract, though they are also encouraged to hear the Evangelism Tract as often as possible so that they can learn the stories so that they can tell them to others.

When we start teaching the Discipleship Tract we use the Evangelism Tract of stories, that they already know as reference points. For example, one of the stories in the Discipleship Tract is “Jesus’ Disciples Do Not Walk In Darkness”. In chronological order this story occurs right after Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. The story of the woman caught in adultery is one of the stories we tell in the Evangelism Tract. So when we come to the story in the Discipleship Tract (Jesus’ Disciples Do Not Walk in Darkness), we would start be reviewing the story of “The Woman Caught in Adultery” and then we say, “the story we are about to tell happens after the story we have just told and then we tell the new story, “Jesus’ Disciples Do Not Walk in Darkness”. This helps our listeners to place the story in chronological order with the stories that they already know.

In the 5 tracts that I mentioned above not every story will be included. What happens with the rest of the Bible? Some of the rest of the Bible will be taught when people come to you with problems in their life that they do not know how to handle. For example the problem of using fetishes. Fetishes are gernerally small items that are believed to have magical powers. They are very common in the religion of the Borana people and once they turn to Christianity it is very hard for them to give them up. If we encountered a believer who was using a fetish we would tell them the story of “The Golden Calf” in Exodus 32:1-6. In the Evangelism Tract the story that occurs before this incident would be “The Crossing of the Red Sea”. We would review that story and then tell them the story of “The Golden Calf”. Then we would ask stories that would help them connect the use of fetishes with the worshipping of the golden calf in the story.

At the end of every story we have a question and answer time. As the storytellers we ask questions that help us to know if the people hearing the story understood it. If they don't get the answers right, then we don't just give them the answer, we go back and retell the part of the story that is confusing them, so that they eventually get their answers from the story, not from us.