Today we held our first training class on Chronological Bible Story Telling. We utilized a friend from South Africa for the training, who is known all over the African continent for this training. It works very well in oral tradition cultures, cultures with low literacy rates, and is generally just a great way to share the story of the Bible. So often we treat the Bible like a book of all these individual passages and stories instead of the overall story that is the Bible.
The instructor (shown here with one of our National Pastors) has many years of experience and runs a Bible school in South African and is also a construction engineer. He helped OMS-Mozambique with some construction and engineering challenges at our seminary and that is where we first met him, immediately 'hitting it off' because of some of the similar life experiences in our backgrounds. His training method was highly recommended to us by our OMS African Regional Director, was talked about at the OMS conference, and it is really something. The questions and interaction were good and all of us had our thinking challenged and expanded today as we learned how to present the bible in a story-telling way. Our instructor was not bashful in hitting some of our cultural issues head-on as compared to God's instruction and no-one's culture was spared for "all have fallen short....."!
We included a nice meal of rice with a chicken topping, some fruit, and water. That provided a great time of fellowship between the nearly 30 participants as we talked about the class and got used to each other.
We left excited and enthusiastic and are looking forward to tomorrow's session followed by practical application on Wednesday. Many of our new evangelists are in the class and they are excited to see this method as the promise of a redeemer starts early in Genesis after man is separated from God, and the entire bible points to that redeemer in the person of Jesus Christ. Many people here have heard the various Biblical stories at one time or the other but this story telling method ties them all together into "the story".
Each participant will receive a nice book to use in discipling others with this method. It was a great day and it is truly a priviledge to participate in this training. We also have enough materials to continue our own training on this method.
It was a wonderful day and a great reminder of who God is and the power of His word.
"I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love....I love to tell the story, for some have never heard, the message of salvation from God's own holy Word."
"I love to tell the story! 'Twill be my theme in glory; To tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love"
Hymn by Katherine Hankey and William Fisher
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