International Orality Network appoints North America Regional Director

International (MNN) — Missions cannot be effective if the way people learn and communicate is not considered. Perhaps no one can tell you better than Jerry Wiles of Living Water International.

If you’ve followed our stories about orality before, you’re aware of how passionate Wiles is about this mission strategy, and also how it is revolutionizing the way ministries function. If you’ve never heard of orality before, let us explain. In short, it is sharing the Gospel in non-written ways. It’s taking in consideration the fact that the majority of the world’s population learns orally either by preference or necessity.

We met up with Wiles at Missio Nexus, and he has this exciting announcement to make: “I’ve been asked to assume the role as the North America Regional Director of the International Orality Network. The International Orality Network has been around since 2004.”

International Orality Network (ION) is a coalition of agencies and organizations dedicated to making God’s Word available to oral learners.

In 2004, ION was made up of 30 organizations. But the success of orality method within missions has caught on—today there are about 2,000 organizations.

“It’s a pretty significant movement and a major breakthrough and paradigm shift in global mission strategy, church-planting, discipleship-making movements. We’re on a pretty amazing journey with this,” Wiles says.

Wiles has been involved in orality missions for many years, and for the past decade, Living Water International has seen the benefits of it — both practically in matters of disease prevention, and spiritually in the way the Gospel spreads through communities.

“Jesus didn’t say make disciples of all literate people groups. He said make disciples of all people groups. So we need to have a message and methods that will be transferable to all people and all people groups.”

That’s exactly what orality is aimed at — getting back to the basics of sharing the Gospel and doing it in a way that is accessible by all people groups.

From ION Network:

In this role, Wiles will facilitate the North American aspect of this global network of organizations and orality practitioners serving oral learners. Jerry is one of the early orality forerunners and has been a paradigm pioneer in the orality movement. In this new role, Wiles will be facilitating a number of initiatives to increase the understanding of the many applications of Orality methods, practices and strategies in the North American context. He will be leading a team to assist churches and ministries in the USA and Canada to implement Orality programs for more effective impact, locally and globally.

We’ll be sharing more about orality and what’s next for ION Network in the days to come.
For now, consider attending an orality training workshop. Learn more here.

And you can find out more about Living Water International here!