656 - Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus & Minnie Pearl

Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus & Minnie Pearl
By Tex Sample
Louisville, Westminster/John Knox, 1994. 100 pp. $11.99.

Tex Sample, Professor of Church and Society at the Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, has written another in a series of books about ministry to the "blue collar, living-in-hell or one step from it, traditional/oral people."

"Oral" people are not those who are unable to read and write but those whose world moves along and makes sense via "proverb, stories, and relationships." In many ways, these people stand over against the "literate," those who live out of a world of "discourse, systematic coherence and the writing of the discursive prose to withstand academic critique."

659 - Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus & Minnie Pearl

The scope of the book is limited to Anglo-European oral /traditionalist with the hope that "these comments may open conversation with those in other traditions."

Sample characterizes the traditional/oral as those whose life is "concrete based." People who are more likely to paint the church than to enter into a discussion about the church of tomorrow, more likely to "do devotions" than attend seminars. However, the major portion of the book is dedicated to suggestions for how the gap between the "literate" and the "oral" may be bridged. Suggestions abound. For example, to ask "oral" people How did that make you feel? only interrupts their story. A better question would be: What did you do then?

True to the "oral" way, many of the suggestions sample gives are not based upon abstract theory but are expressed in stories that could easily find their way into Sunday sermons.

Whether it is possible to divide people into such categories (many of us are probably a mixture of the "literate" and "oral"), this book should be required reading for all who hope to minister to "oral" people. While there great truth in Fred Craddock's words "the longest trip you will ever make is the one from the head to the heart," an equally long and difficult trip is the one from seminary to pulpit. At the conclusion of that trip, we always unpack our clothes and household goods, but too often we fail to unpack Barth and Tillich.

Lamar Potts
Spring Valley Presbyterian Church
Columbia, SC.