Jesus' Stories for Us in Africa

I believe that as Africans, we have an advantage in understanding the stories of Jesus because we have storytelling as a part of our culture. We like to think in story, explain things in story and listen to stories. If one of the elders of your village wishes to explain something to you that is very important, he will likely use a story or a parable of some kind to do it. When a chief wants to tell his village something that is very important, he will likely use a story as a means of communicating it. Unfortunately, this advantage has not often been used. As Westerners came into Cameroon as missionaries, many of them found the parables of Jesus to be hard to understand and difficult to explain (since storytelling was not a major part of their home cultures), and as a result the stories of Jesus were not greatly emphasized or used in their teaching. While this mistake is understandable, it does not need to be continually repeatedly or emulated. Jesus was a good storyteller and the majority of his public teaching was done in stories. He spoke to a Middle Eastern context which, like our African context, thought in story. Let us use the cultural advantage that we have as storytelling people and study the parables of Jesus together. It is likely that as we do so we will gain many great new insights into understanding and communicating the Good News, as well as discipleship and the Christian life.