Before we moved to Kenya, we met with many of you and presented the vision of developing a pastoral training center for pastors who would not have the opportunity or means to attend a Bible training school. At the same time, we tried remain open to how God would move in the years ahead. Knowing our Lord, and knowing Kenya (things often move very slowly), and knowing our plans were shortsighted and human, we began our year of language learning with open hearts. Our prayers continued (and still continue!) for the development of the training center and for the needs in our community among the Maasai and other local Kenyans. During this time we attended trainings and visited other missionaries in remote areas of the country to see what has worked and what had not for them over the years. We also began meeting with community members to see what was desired and what they needed while discerning what exactly God was calling us to. We are excited to share that although some of our plans and means have shifted through this searching in the last year, we are still pursuing that original vision. God has blessed us in pursuit of some new areas as well.
One of the missions we saw working well, that fit with our vision, and excited us most was sharing the Gospel through stories known as Chronological Bible Storytelling. We have been piloting this method out with many groups: pastors and pastoral trainings teaching them how to do CBS with their congregations and leading CBS in various schools ourselves and training leaders. Along with that, we are hoping to start a few community groups with people we interact with on a regular basis in our area.
What is CBS you ask? In the mid-1970’s an Australian New Tribes missionary in the Philippines attempted to correct a situation where a people had been semi-evangelized but had no real concept of sin and Christ as Savior. He found that he had to go back to Genesis and teach chronologically through the Old Testament to the story of Christ before his listeners really understood their lostness and were open to a Savior and the great story of redemption. Storying was used early on as a culturally appropriate and field reproducible method of reaching and training nonliterates. It was soon found that where those who were nominally resistant and even hostile to traditional presentations of the Gospel were attracted to storying sessions and began to respond.
-CBS is chronological. It teaches the stories of the Bible in chronological order, beginning with creation and continuing to the stories of Jesus. By doing this we lay a firm foundation of who God is, who man is, and how God wants to relate with humanity.
-It is the Bible. It is not simply using stories from our lives to illustrate the message of our sermons. It is not even simply using Bible stories for illustration only, which are both common issues in the local church. It involves telling the Bible stories accurately and teaching the main principles of redemption found in these stories.
-It is storytelling. Stories help isolated truths make sense because they give context, are more interesting to listen to, and are far easier for people to repeat to their friends and family than are three point sermons! Therefore they can more easily share the message with others.
We tell the story as a story while only telling what is in Scripture. For many people that we teach, this will be their main form of knowing Scripture. After telling the story multiple times, we ask observation and interpretation questions to test listener’s comprehension (such as what does this story teach us about God and His character?) We then move on to deeper application questions to have our listeners relate the story to their lives and their own personal stories and lead them in a memory verse related to the story we have learned. We finish by praying, fellowshipping, and worshipping together.
In the short time in sharing this method, we have received great response. Our students have been excited to be interacting with a story instead of merely being read to or listening to a sermon. The pastors seem to desire deeper training on preparing their sermons from Scripture and exegete Scripture, which is something that training them to craft their own stories from Scripture will help with immensely. Recently, we have started sharing with a group of Maasai ladies at the market in Maasai. Although I admit, they are having to help me along a little bit!
We want to thank you for your support as we continue working with pastors in how to teach Scripture and craft stories based off of Scripture to their congregations in the days ahead. We ask for your continued prayers as we work to tell the stories ourselves in the schools and start to find new groups of the unreached in our community wherever we go. It is easy to take and share a story on the road. We are so thankful for each of you and your continued support in this venture. We would like to leave you with part of a story, some sample questions, a clip of us sharing the story, and some of our girls acting out the Christmas story for you (although we apologize for the quiet audio). May God richly bless each and every one of your families as we participate in this work together!
