Background Partners

God's Story in Hard to Reach Places

Bible storying

How a 7 year old helped start a church

There’s a mountain area in Central Asia where getting 20’ of snow is common during the winter.  People have to dig tunnels to get between houses.  There’s no electricity during the winter.  For six months the villages in this region are isolated from the world.

Afareen (not real name) and her family moved to this region right before the snows came.  Afareen began going to the village school. During the winter, after school the kids rush to one another’s homes for hot tea and candies or cookies.  One day they were in Afareen’s house and she told them one of the stories her family had learned.  Then the kids came up with a song about the story.

That night, back at their own homes, some of the children sang the song.  “What is that song you’re singing?”  “We made it up at Afareen’s house.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about a story she told us…” and they tell the story to their Muslim family.

The parents go to Afareen’s parents.  “What is this our children are telling us?”  Afareen’s parents begin telling them more stories.

By the time the snows melt, Muslim families are regular gathering at Afareen’s house, drinking tea, and sharing stories from God’s Word.  Now they are going to the nearby villages and sharing those stories with others.

Midnight persecution, sunrise church

In the southern Pacific there are between 20,000 and 30,000 islands.  Some are sparsely populated and others have larger cities.  Some islands have a long history of Christian ministry working.  Others remain unengaged by Christianity.  On one such island, the population is 99% Muslim blended with spiritism.  That is where Tasi (not real name and a national from another island) felt God wanted her to live.

While we were training Tasi and others from the region, she absorbed the use of chronological Bible storying like a sponge.  A few weeks later, she moved to this particular island.

She began telling stories to women in the village while cooking, playing with children, and getting water.  Because of the extreme religious background of the people, Tasi didn’t feel it would be safe for her new friends if she give them Bibles.  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway since their language is an unwritten one and no Bibles exist in it.

One night, around midnight, men from the village burst through her door and dragged her outside, pushing and kicking her.  More men gathered.  Some began stripping her, beating her with canes on her back and the bottoms of her feet.  The men kept telling her to deny these “infidel teachings” she was telling their wives and sisters.  Tasi kept praying out loud, “I love you Jesus…I love you Jesus…I love you Jesus…”

Men turned her house upside down looking for anything Christian that she might be using to teach.  They only found her own Bible, which they destroyed.  When they couldn’t find anything to use as evidence against her, they resumed their beating and yelling at her until the sun began to rise, since on their island it is wrong to punish people like this after sun-up.

Tasi made it back to her house.  Some women took care of her that day.  Tasi never renounced her faith in Christ.  The men never found anything they could use against her.  They didn’t return to persecute her.  And a small group of women began meeting in her house, the first church on the island, among an unreached people group without an alphabet in their language.  And they share stories from God’s Word.

Blogging as communication and catalyst

Last month I went with a small team to Congo.  There we trained 27 pastors and missionaries in how to use chronological Bible storying to go start churches in undeveloped villages.  It was a fantastic trip full of answered prayers, unexpected barriers both human and spiritual, people becoming Christ-followers, and sharing of lives.  Where but in the Body of Christ can you find people who don’t speak the same language and have almost no common background, but can worship together, pray together, share the spiritual journey they’ve been on, and move forward by faith towards a common goal – seeing people glorify God?

One of the frustrations we had was being able to keep folks updated.  We had several people checking here for updates, but it wasn’t possible to do.  Either we had no power, no access to internet, or when we did it was a sizzling 0.78 kps, which hampered any possible blog entry.  So we’ll have to figure out some alternatives for reporting from the field on future trips.

As we’re planning 2010 trips to train others, I felt like during this next year I’d like to expand the scope of this blog.  Recently we did an intro to storying workshop for several churches.  It wasn’t for those only interested in global missions, but for local outreach, small groups, student ministry, international university students, and families.  It was a great time.  (If you’d like to find out more about doing something like this at your church, let us kn0w.)  During the day, it became obvious many people were making connections to use storying in their various niches that God has placed them.

What I hope you’ll start seeing here are more regular entries that deal with a variety of topics:

  • storying that is occurring globally;
  • thoughts to spur storying use wherever you are in the relationships that God has given you;
  • pointers to other resources and articles in popular mags, mission mags, and scholarly journals that are out;
  • and more reports from locations we are able to train as we are able.

Hopefully the Lord will allow the posts and comments to be a catalyst for us to see people get into God’s Word (the written) in order that God’s Word (the person of Christ) can get into people with the fewest number of obstacles possible.