Simply The Story

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Send your Spanish-speaking friends to YouTube to see what a small group Bible study would look like when using oral strategies! MAF-LT's video team recorded a live session of Simply The Story, an oral inductive Bible study. Laura Macias delivers "One Leper" from Mark 1:40-45 and follows with questions that has the entire group excited about finding lessons from God's Word and sharing how they apply to their lives today.

Here is the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCOFnkcQsbc

• Tired of seeing that glazed over look on students' faces when they're in a monologuish Bible study? 
• Hit the wall with a literate approach to the Bible? 
• Want to see the Bible come alive like never before? 
• Want adults, youth, even international students to energetically interact with and remember Bible stories after only one session? 

Then this workshop on March 5-7 in Boise, Idaho, is for you! Learn a brand new, interactive Bible storying approach that is sweeping the globe.  Close your Bible and get into it all over again. 
 

Only a few lights filtered through murky night haze as we descended into Mumbai, India. A great city lay beneath us, certainly not asleep, but wrapped within its own dense cloak. Later, riding to the hotel, rows of dark apartments stared down at us with only an occasional lit window for punctuation. Streetlights, shop lights, and bouncing headlights alike pushed vainly against midnight soup, setting the environmental tone for the entire three-week project. Day or night, India’s smoggy air remained visible yet always obscured the sky.

Ministry Partnerships Train Church Leaders

Mission Aviation Fellowship’s Learning Technologies (MAF-LT) division along with Hemet, California based “The God’s Story Project” (TGSP) partnered with two different Indian national church groups to conduct three sets of workshops in October 2007 in Mumbai and Delhi, India. These “Simply The Story” (STS) workshops trained selected Indian church leaders to present the Gospel using stories.

TGSP Director, Dorothy Miller, TGSP International Director of Technology, Andrea Pebbles and India Field Manager, Rev. Dr. S. M. headed the team. They drew instructors from a pool of previously qualified volunteers in the United States – a retired lady from Northern California, 2 young ladies from Southern California, an emerging leader from a Texas inner city rehab program and experienced China missionaries. Additionally, veteran missionary, Regina Manley, MAFLT Orality Specialist represented MAF in this joint project. I, MAF-LT’s Communications Specialist, chronicled the team’s activities.

Coordinating our work in Mumbai were Pastors Dr. J & E. S. of an active Christian fellowship. Their church of over 5,000 people meets in scores of small groups and house churches scattered throughout the vast slums of northern Mumbai. They own no buildings and manage no large facilities. Instead, they direct the entire ministry from rented rooms at the end of narrow alley along a fetid creek. Despite the setting, they supplied a ready cadre of drivers, organizers and helpers to ensure everything we could possibly need was immediately at hand.

Seven hundred miles northeast, in the national capital of New Delhi, Pastors Dr. J & M. T. provided similar aide. They secured the use of a rare, large church building for the seminar. Indian law allows religious freedom. However, in a society 80% Hindu and 14% Muslim, public displays of Christian proselytizing or worship draw sharp opposition rapidly. So, as in Mumbai, this Delhi church meets in small groups scattered about the greater metropolitan area.

In Mumbai the team offered two sets of three concurrent workshops located in different parts of the city. Each workshop hosted 12-25 students for three days, training them to present stories, ask the right questions and facilitate the resulting discussion. In Delhi we presented an additional three-day course.

A 52-year-old woman in Nepal said, “I did not ever think God would speak to me, because I cannot read. I always had to wait for someone to tell me what God said. Now I can hear God.” (Quote from a believer after hearing a Bible story told with the STS, a.k.a.Simply the Story, method)

In our zeal to make the Bible available to every believer, have we made literacy the “requirement” for hearing God? An educated Christian often thinks like this: God speaks to us today through his Word, the Bible. In order to grow in Christ we must read the Bible regularly. Therefore, literacy is essential to Christian growth.

That thinking translates into these practices: Those who learn to read may receive Bible training and become church leaders. Those who cannot read are inadvertently relegated to secondary status. Like the woman quoted above, they think that only those who can read can hear God.

Learning Technologies is bridging the gap made by a “literacy dominant” approach of communicating the Gospel. We do this by joining modern technology and skillful storying techniques. Believers are discovering that literacy is no longer “the barrier” to hearing God speak through his Word.