In my travels to East Africa, I have continued to witness the power of story. Doesn’t everyone love a story? The people we work with in Africa are storytellers, and they love to retell stories and even write poems and songs about their stories. They are oral learners. In my research of how to share the love and message of Christ most effectively, I’ve come across various methods of something called Bible Storying. This is basically sharing the Bible narrative through telling stories and asking a series of questions. There are complex forms of Bible Storying, but I’ve become interested in a simple version that I could learn and then use to train volunteers and leaders. We desire to share Christ in any given opportunity through our outreach programs, and we desire to equip our leaders and others to share their faith.

We invite you to join us for a free Bible Storying/Orality training on Saturday, April 16, from 8:00am – 3:00pm, lunch provided. This training will help us all to see that story is a way to capture the attention and interest of our friends and neighbors who do not know Christ, drawing them into the greatest story ever told. Two representatives from International Orality Network (ION) will lead the training for us, sharing their experience and passion in this area. During the training we will learn: 

1. How to present God’s Word in an engaging fashion, learning how to share a passage from the Bible without reading it directly. 
2. About the tool of Bible Storying and what makes it an effective technique, particularly when working with oral learners, and also for all involved in evangelism, discipleship and church planting
3. How to share several Bible passages, practice telling the passages, and then “unpack” the story using questions that focus on observation, interpretation, and application.

The objective is that after finishing the session you’ll be equipped to tell the stories you learned and apply them in whatever context you chose: mission trips, local home groups, evangelistic encounters, and especially when interacting with people from different ethnicities and nationalities. Please contact me at [email protected] by April 10 to register for the free training!