Resources

RECOMMENDED READING

  • Truth That Sticks - a practical, first read into using stories to effectively communicate the Word
  • Don't Throw The Book At Them - is a manual for cross-cultural workers ministering in societies based on oral rather than written communication.
  • Making Disciples of Oral Learners - Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization
  • Orality Journal - International Orality Network
  • From Seed To Fruit - Dudley Woodberry address global trends, fruitful practices and emerging issues among Muslims, including communication principles.
  • Church Planting Movements - website by David Garrison, a comprehensive survey of 45 Muslim movements to Christ- each with more of a thousand baptized converts. (Spoiler alert: Yes, Oral methods played a key factor in fruitfulness)

TRAINING FOR ORALITY / STORYTELLING

  • Simply The Story trains people of all socio-economic, cultural and educational backgrounds to teach Bible studies through discussion. Additionally, STS offers the Oral Bible Schools in which students learn 40-160 stories, depending on the length of the school, and create indigenous music, poetry and/or dramatizations in accordance with many of the stories.
  • Story in Ministry - engage with master storyteller, writer, director and producer, Jeremey Casper, during this 5 week online course and refine your story crafting and telling abilities.

CROSS-LANGUAGE STORYCRAFTING

  • OneStory exists to develop, initiate and facilitate oral strategies to communicate God’s Word to oral peoples who are unreached or languages that are Bibleless, contributing to sustainable, indigenously led, reproducing church planting movements which transform lives and societies to reflect a biblical worldview. PI is a partner organization.
  • StoryTogether AStoryTogether project is a coordinated series of actions to develop accurate and appealing Bible stories that are crafted by mother tongue speakers and used by them and others to present the gospel, equip disciples of Jesus, and form healthy, reproducing churches. PI has teams involved in StoryTogether.
  • StoryRunners Founded by Cru in 2003, StoryRunners exists to help the world’s 1,800 unreached people groups hear the gospel in a format they understand: oral storytelling. We are passionate about bringing access to God’s Word to people all over the world, and equipping believers everywhere in evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Story Runners hosts both Storytelling Training and the School of Storying.

STORYING RESOURCES / STRATEGIES FOR OUTREACH & DISCIPLESHIP

  • Progressing Together Orality Version - a 90-lesson in-depth discipleship program using oral teaching methods and an inductive approach to bring believers from their first steps in the faith to spiritual maturity. This discipleship program uses non-narrative passages as well as stories. Training seminars are being organised to equip discipleship group leaders to use the method effectively.
  • How to Learn and Naturally Tell a Bible Story - prepares you to share a Bible story orally for an oral audience.
  • Internalization Handout - provides ideas for group internalization of a story.
  • Oralizing-DBS - adapts the DBS method to an oral audience.
  • ST4T – Storying Training for Trainers. Intentional evangelism utilizing stories from God’s Word resulting in multiplying house churches.  DMM / CPM application.
  • Orality Strategies - provides numerous examples of storying strategies and story set resources.
  • Holding Esther - a dramatized audio stories embedded with trauma healing principles to equip caregivers of vulnerable children. The characters' stories invite the listener to apply truth and validate their own experiences and discover healing found in Jesus.
  • New Hope - is a 7-week study designed to help people find healing from God's word. As they find healing themselves, they are equipped and empowered to go and bring that same healing to those around them.

NETWORKS

  • International Orality Network seeks to radically influence the way oral preference learners are evangelized and discipled in every people group.
  • The Visual Story Network (a spin-off from ION) recently had a conference at which “various people made a commitment to pray and partner until a new indigenous media production is completed” for 22 of 141 least-reached people groups. VSN members are working to see all 141 have indigenous Christian media production.

AUDIO / VIDEO SCRIPTURE RESOURCES

  • Faith Comes By Hearing. As of July 2014 FCBH had produced dramatized audio recordings of the NT in 835 languages. The majority of these recordings are available free of charge as streaming audio, downloads, on their Bible.is app for iPhone and Android mobile devices, and as podcasts. The Bible.is app links printed Scriptures in 997 languages, audio recordings of the NT in hundreds of languages, and the JESUS film. FCBH has also developed Scripture engagement strategies and proprietary playback devices. FCBH has regional representatives based around the world to develop partnerships with interested entities.
  • OneStory Media. The OneStory library of over 100 story sets in various languages.
  • Share the Story. A twenty story visualized Bible story set from Creation to Cross including inductive questions in North African Arabic. This set is available for repurposing in other languages. Please see the blog for information.

TRANSLATION RESOURCES

  • The Seed Company / VAST (Video-Audio Strategies for Translation)Recently in NE India they prepared an audio translation of the Jesus film for two unwritten languages in 21 days. In that time each audio script was also professionally checked by an SIL certified Translation Consultant. These two languages were their 10th and 11th using the VAST concept. “The Jesus film team tells us that their average time to get a written script for the film has been 3 years and I believe that even that short time is due to a seasoned SIL consultant who does cluster projects of 3-5 languages over a 3 year time period. Right now we are looking to use VAST as a launch strategy for unreached language groups to engage and empower a team of their own people to do audio scripture translation for themselves

FILM RESOURCES

  • The JESUS Film Project has launched its “Mission 865,” which is aimed at providing a JF for every people group of at least 50,000 population. It also includes groups under 50,000 population as determined by the situation. They are about 10% complete. If you have a team that needs a JF, this is encouraging news.
  • The HOPE Project is an epic 80-minute dramatic motion picture overview of the story of God's promise for all people as revealed in the Bible.” It is available in 11 major languages and its creator, Mars Hill Productions (MHP), is eager to see it translated into other languages.
  • The God’s Stories series is a set of dramatized stories about some of the great men and women of the Bible, their struggles, their choices, and God’s faithfulness to Himself and to His promises. Below you will find the character dramas that we have finished so far. The series was filmed in multiple locations in Northern Africa and the Middle East. It was filmed using broadcast Arabic. On YouTube in Arabic language.

MEDIA / INTERNET-BASED OUTREACH

  • Foundations in Media Strategy – A five week online course to help you and your team develop a strategic media plan to connect with seekers.
  • Kingdom Training - Engaging online training to help you accelerate a disciple making movement using media.

EQUIPMENT / LOGISTICS

  • Davar Partners is eager to make audio recordings of Scripture resources and distribute them on their proprietary digital player. The digital player allows a team to distribute audio content via small, durable, solar-rechargeable players capable of handling up to 8GB of content. Supposedly they are superior to MegaVoice players.
  • Digital Bible Society uses technology for the purposes of empowering discipleship and church growth through the production and distribution of digital Bibles and Christian resources.
  • unfoldingWord. Open Bible Stories in dozens of languages; translationStudio app.
  • Kalaam Media is a daughter organization to Wycliffe, focusing on heart language website and mobile phone applications.

OTHER

  • Story Hands – exists to train, facilitate and empower henna story practitioners as they explore the intersection between henna art, oral communication and the development of authentic community in a variety of settings around the world.
  • Scriptures in Use - specializes in training non-western oral learners through an Oral Bible.
  • e3 Partners - offers regular Storying Training for Trainers (ST4T) and Advanced Oral Strategies Workshops as well as other resources.

Contact us: Story4Glory@swissmail.org

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