Home | Living Words April 2011 | Time for a Story

Time for a Story

by Katy Hopkinson

“Please help! We’ve trained these men to study and preach the Word, but their congregations can’t understand their preaching or remember what they are taught. What can we do?”

This was the cry of the founder of a large missionary agency in India in 1994. The abstract Western approach to teaching God’s Word was simply not working for people who learnt in an oral manner. It was time for a new approach – so ‘new’ that Jesus used it 2000 years ago as he taught his people! It was time for a story!

The power of the Story

Upakari, an evangelist in Assam, India, found that the Bible told as a story made all the difference.* “Before attending this story telling training, whenever I preached in my church, my messages were mostly things like, ‘We should not do wrong things.’ When I talked about Israel or the Jewish people, the [church] people could not understand what I meant. But when I began learning so many Bible stories, then I went back and started telling them stories instead of preaching. After that I could see a dramatic change in my church. Now the people easily understand who Abraham is and so they know what Israel is.”

How does this relate to Bible Translation?

Traditionally, literacy work has gone hand in hand with translation work. But in oral cultures, where being able to read is still beyond the grasp of most people, there is another way of passing on the Bible – by telling it using stories.

Millars and Story Tellers family

Consider the experience of an Indian evangelist, James Kumar: “In one of the Madji villages I visit, a girl named Samari suffered from a bleeding problem for 7 years. It started when she was 12. I told her the Bible story of the woman who touched Jesus’ garment and got healed from a bleeding problem of 12 years. After that, I went back to my home. A few days later, Samari came to see me privately. She greeted me and said, ‘Pastor, really your God is very great. I have spent at least 15,000 rupees (a year’s wages in a village) for getting healed, but nothing helped. At the moment you told me that story, I was healed!’”

Bible stories are powerful and memorable. People who cannot read can be trained to tell the stories and thus play their part in discipling the nations.

New Zealanders and storying

Let me tell you about three people from New Zealand who took up the challenge of connecting with an unreached people group. They went on a four week ministry trip to Bangladesh called Proshikkhon (which means “training” in Bangla), during which tribal Christian leaders learn the skills of Bible Storytelling – bringing greater effectiveness to their ministry.

They spent a week in Australia training in Bible storytelling and contextualisation (working out how the Bible fits in the context of a culture). Then the team spent January 2011 in Bangladesh helping indigenous Christian workers reach their own people groups.

Jo Millar: “I saw firsthand the effectiveness of Bible storytelling as a tool for people to share God’s Word with others in a way that suits their culture, and I had the privilege of praying for these people as they went out and practiced their Bible storytelling skills. It was a profound experience to see people realising that their culture is precious to God and doesn’t need to be westernised to be Christian… and then hearing the cry of people’s hearts to have the Bible in their own language.”

Stephen Sogo holds a Pilari girl

Ross Millar: “Some of us were invited to a Santali wedding held in a nearby village. The people were Christians. The uncle of the bride stood up in front of the assembled guests and rolled up his trouser leg. He made some bold statements in a language we didn’t understand. Then he pulled out a safety pin and stuck it through his leg! He didn’t even flinch. He showed everyone. Then he pulled the pin out. Was that the sort of thing to do at a Christian wedding? This is what he said: ‘It will cause our family pain to lose our daughter. But it is not a pain we cannot bear.’ This strange action showed the importance of family. These Christians had kept good practices in their culture.”

Stephen Sogo, a Solomon Islander living in New Zealand: “Bible storytelling is for every group. When we entered Muslim and Hindu villages, people accepted God’s Word when we told Bible stories. A story doesn’t tell people what to believe, it tells them the truth and people think about it.”

What about in New Zealand?

As Stephen said, Bible storytelling is for every group. Research shows that at least 50% of New Zealanders are oral learners. Reading is not their preferred way of gaining knowledge. They like to listen, discuss and draw their own conclusions from the things they are presented with. How are these people being reached in New Zealand?

We have New Zealanders now who are trying to make it their daily practice to share a Bible story with someone. Everyone can be part of this. Think about it.

These stories are taken from Telling God’s Stories with Power: Biblical Storytelling in Oral Cultures by Paul F Koehler.
For information on Bible storying, visit www.Bibletelling.org
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To learn how to craft Bible stories, contact our office to find out when the next workshop is being held.