I live in a county where only 65.6% graduate with a High School diploma. But even those who get their diploma and technically can read are less and less likely to read.
Colson writes:
Today, missionaries in non-literate societies reduce the native language to writing and teach people to read by reading the Bible. But here in the West we are in danger of coming full circle: The visual media, and our increasing reliance on images in everyday life, may ultimately undermine literacy, transforming us back into an image-based culture.
If that happens, will biblical faith still flourish?
Colson suggests, for example, reading a book as a family. I have been doing that this summer with a fictional book the we enjoy.
But in response to his question, I ask this...
What of the people who were never biblically literate in the past? It's not a new problem, just a new population being affected?
With those who couldn't read or read well in the past, we were content to let them sweep the floor or do manual chores around the church. But because they wouldn't read our books, we concluded they couldn't be discipled, so we didn't and kept treating them as spiritual dwarves until they got fed up and went to the Baptist church or someplace that didn't keep throwing big books at them they couldn't understand and where at least the preacher told some stories (however unbiblical the point of them that the people could understand).
But now that the rich and middle class kids are losing their literacy, it's suddenly a "crisis".
It was always a criss, we just wrote everyone off as lazy or too stupid to disciple. We certainly never would have chosen fishermen as apostles - too illiterate! They liked too many visual images, too many stories, and weren't too up on their Greek exegesis!
The good news is that Bible Story Telling can address both audiences the never could read and read enough to get a diploma people.
Learn Bible Story Telling - get ahead of the curve!
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