Training Storytellers

From SPARK

Brief Summary

Training biblical storytellers.

Introduction

In 1994 the founder of a large indigenous missionary agency in South Asia asked me to help equip mid-level leaders in his organization in order to make them more effective.

Key Factors

• I discovered that despite their schooling most were still oral communicators, not prepared to think in the propositional and abstract ways that are considered essential to Western education.
• The workers told us the rural people they are trying to reach could not understand their preaching or remember what they had taught.

What Was Done

I began experimenting with alternative training techniques. My wife and I then chose to develop an oral Bible pilot project using biblical storytelling. Our original purpose was to find a training model that would provide effective communication to non-literate people. We soon discovered the tremendous power the Word of God has when it is told as a story.

Results

Over four years, more than fifty men and women of all ages learned to tell significant portions of the Scriptures in story. Just as important was the transferability of their new knowledge, so program participants were required to teach these stories to others, most of whom were even lower on the literacy continuum.

By February 2006 we were ready to apply what we had learned in the pilot project. Sixty-two full-time Christian workers with no previous experience as storytellers gathered for their first training module in biblical storytelling. During four days they learned to tell twelve stories from the book of Genesis. Afterward they returned to their home areas where they were to tell each story no less than three times.

Six weeks later when they came for their second training event, 94% had completed their field assignment resulting in 32,386 story encounters (a story encounter is one person hearing one story). Despite being in areas with deeply entrenched resistance to Christianity, the participants reported that as a result of hearing one or more stories from God’s Word, 87 people had come to the Lord. Two of these were baptized and forty others were being prepared for baptism. Eighty-one individual Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists had attended a Christian worship service for the first time, and five new cell groups were planted.

The attached case study describes how these sixty-two Christian workers were trained and includes personal accounts by the new storytellers about their remarkable experiences as they told God’s stories. [Case Study of an Oral Bible Training Event.pdf]

Helpful Information from the Author

By: Storytelling Trainer

Date entered:

Date range of story:

Location: