Incompetence can be useful!

A couple from the UK went to a country in the sub-Saharan region. The husband discovered that if he sat out in public and opened a portion of scripture written in Arabic that people would come and say, “What are you reading?” In fact, he couldn’t read Arabic and he’d say, “I can’t read it.” The local would immediately say, “I’ll read it for you.” Their tradition was to read out loud. As he started reading a group would gather, sometimes up to 20 people. They would hear a story from the scriptures.

Then this could be combined with story techniques. That is, you could ask anyone to retell the story. Then could go through it line by line and have the people discuss using 4-6 questions. Finishing with the question “who could you tell this story to today?”

Used with permission.