Verse:  Deuteronomy 11:19    You shall also teach them to your sons, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.

 

REACHING ORAL LEARNERS WITH THE WORD OF GOD 

Our long-time Faith Promise Missionary, Al Rhea, has the joy and privilege of gathering and distributing weekly praise and prayer requests from Cru teams in countries in Southern and Eastern Africa. Recently he listed a praise from a team in Tanzania thanking the Lord for the “Story Runners” training in oral translation materials from English and Swahili. 

 For thousands of years, the Bible has been passed on as oral stories:

• The promises God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were passed down by the Jewish people for generations before Genesis was ever written.
• The prophets God sent to Israel and Judah delivered oral messages to the people.
• Jesus used parables when he taught people about the things of God.
• After Paul planted churches in the places he visited, he would write a letter meant to be read aloud to the church there.

While missionaries all over the world are actively involved in written translation work of the Bible, Cru’s Story Runners ministry is focused on impacting the many non-readers in the world who primarily learn orally.  They, also, need God’s Word, not only in their heart language, but also in a form of communication from which they will naturally and readily learn. 

The Promise is a series of 42 Bible stories, from Creation to the Return of Christ, that have been recorded in a number of languages. Their vision is to launch communities of multiplying disciples among oral cultures by equipping local followers of Christ to produce and to use oral Bible stories in 500 languages by 2025 through their School of Storying workshops.

They work hard to ensure each story is biblically accurate, is easily learned and retold, easily understandable in a non-Christian cultural context, and uses everyday language that anyone in the culture can understand.

This is a really fascinating ministry! Go to https://www.storyrunners.org and look around. In the “Stories” section you can listen to the Bible stories in English. In the “Updates” section there are interesting stories of people groups who have been impacted by this ministry.