Many language groups are sharing God’s Story – in the mother tongue – not on paper, or digitally but through stories. It is the first step in a long journey of getting a community more excited about God’s word in their language, and starting to translate the New Testament, and eventually the whole Bible.
In Chad, workshops have been running that teach people to tell Bible stories in their own language, with enthusiastic and fruitful results. These responses are from the storying coordinator:
In one village the coordinator asked the local pastor how many people he had evangelised this year, and he replied ‘none’. Then he asked the people participating in the storying programme how many people they had told the stories to, and they said ‘hundreds’, of which a number are followers of the another major religion.
In another village a Christian family heard some of the stories, and remarked that this way of presenting the Bible was much clearer than anything they’d heard before. One woman remarked that she’d been going to church for many years, but had not heard the story presented so clearly; she had previously not really understood how it all fitted together.
The workshop participants told the creation story to one local chief. He was very interested in the story, and was particularly struck by the fact that Adam had only one wife. He remarked that perhaps Christians are right to limit themselves to one wife, since apparently the divorce rate is much lower among Christians in his area than among followers of the majority religion.
Storying – this way of sharing the Bible in the form of stories – is happening all over the world, and many people are becoming more and more excited about the Bible in their language.
Find out more about sharing God’s Story with those who are still without it.
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