Madinger, Charles, and Danyal Qalb, eds. Connecting Points: Bridging the Orality Gap to Minds and Hearts, vol. 1. Manila, Philippines: OralityResources.International, 2025.
Charles Madinger, who leads the Institutes for Orality Strategies team from Manila, and Danyal Qalb, Research Director with Orality Collaborators, offer an important resource for understanding orality and its significance in today’s world. This first volume, available for free online (https://oralityresources.international/connecting-points-1), addresses the first five “Traits of Orality”: Stories, Symbols, Rituals, Memories, and Spaces. Contributors from various regions engage these themes, while the editors frame each chapter with a dialogue between Abebe, an orphan boy, and AIDA, an artificial intelligence “friend.” These dialogues raise significant issues, especially the impact of colonization on predominantly oral cultures and the missionary movement’s frequent lack of awareness regarding oral-preference learners.
Chapter One, by Tom Steffen, explores the vital force of oral tradition, story, and narrative. Steffen challenges the dominant Western assumption that intellectual maturity is tied to linearity, rationality, and writing. He reminds readers that worldview formation is always narrative-shaped. Scripture itself bears witness to this: from Genesis to Revelation, God reveals himself through the great, unified story of God and humanity. Humanity, the crown of creation, is naturally attuned to story and poetry, just as human beings are created for intimate relationship with God and one another.
In Chapter Two, Samuel Law highlights the importance of symbols and nonverbal language for Christianity in the present century. He reminds readers that the biblical stories began orally, told and retold across generations before being written down. Law also urges readers to recognize that symbolic language in Scripture was, and remains, central to the formation of God’s people.
Chapter Three, by Jay Moon, shows how deeply symbols and rituals are linked to the hearts of a people. Symbols are essential to ritual formation, and rituals can imprint teaching “in the bones.” Moon argues that discipleship must attend to these dynamics, shaping people so that the principles of God’s kingdom are embodied, not merely understood.
Chapter Four focuses on the “oral zone” of short- and long-term memory. Larry Dinkins observes that the Bible, though now preserved in written form, was composed in literary styles that aid memorization. Approximately 70 percent of the biblical books are narrative, and another 23 percent are poetry. These oral literary structures have shaped and transformed worldviews across generations.
In Chapter Five, Jay Mātenga emphasizes the importance of place and environment in communal formation. In holistic societies, stories are preserved through symbols, rituals, songs, dances, and cultural artifacts. Mātenga shows that people do not merely inhabit environments; they belong to the environments that shape them.
The book does not disparage Western writing or linear thought. Rather, it invites readers to broaden their understanding of the linguistic and cognitive diversity of human societies across time and place. Each chapter is highly accessible for everyday readers while still engaging significant scholarly voices, including John Walton, Brent Sandy, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce, Paul G. Hiebert, James K. A. Smith, Mikhail Bakhtin, Thomas Aquinas, and others.
One feature I found less compelling was the dialogue framework between Abebe and AIDA. At times, it felt somewhat trivial and unusual. Still, I understand the editors’ choice, since the dialogues help situate each chapter’s themes in concrete, on-the-ground contexts.
Overall, this volume clarifies the care church planters must exercise in discipleship, especially in the reinterpretation of symbols and rituals, so that Christian formation does not become mere religious syncretism. It also demonstrates the richness of stories, symbols, rituals, memories, and spaces in human formation and cognitive development. Such insights can help those who share the good news do so more effectively and faithfully. As Samuel Law rightly states, “We need only look to Jesus, God become flesh, to understand that written words are not enough but require a living, divine symbol of relationship” (93).
