40 Day Bible Listening Challenge

One of the ministries that helps reach people world wide who CANNOT read or who PREFER not to read is Faith Comes By Hearing. Here is the link to their free Pastor's Kit.

If you're looking for a special Lenten discipline this year, perhaps instead of trying to give up Bon Bons, it would be better to challenge your church to listen to the New Testament!

By listening just 28 minutes per day, your church members can listen to the entire New Testament in the 40 days leading up to the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord.

Faith Comes By Hearing works with donors who will provide every member of your church a free NT in mp3 format. The CD is specially dramatized (multiple voices and some background content) but the text of the New Testament is not altered. It's available in NIV or KJV. Children 3 - 12 will be given a CD with a Children's Bible story and song collection with key stories from the Old and New Testaments in a simpler version (New International Reader's Version).

In exchange for this encouragement to listen to the New Testament, they ask your church to take up a love offering that is used completely to make Bible recordings for languages that do not as yet have such a recording. Their goal is to complete about 200 languages per year at the approximate cost of $25,000 each. They also ask that if you have older members receive participate that you help them work the mp3 player.

A portable Mp3 "Stick" player is available for $29.95.

The results may be amazing. Sadly, unless your church members are encouraged to listen to the Bible, they may never hear it at all!

What a great project as a church for Lent!

More on Faith Comes By Hearing: Around the world Faith Comes By Hearing produces digital bible recorders. They're most commonly used as follow up tools. Missionaries may go in and show the "Jesus Film" for instance. They will then identify people wanting more information and the audio players Faith Comes By Hearing provides are used to create "listening groups" so people can listen to the whole New Testament and then discuss the passage. These listening groups then form the nucleus of churches as the people are able to make deep commitments to Jesus Christ the Lord. Try the dramatized New Testament for yourself... you might decide to create your own listening group and plant your own church right here!

You can read their Fall 2007 Newsletter on the Proclaimer and how it is being used around the world.

Simply The Story - "Oral" Bible Study Techniques

While at the ION conference I was able to meet Dorothy Miller the executive of God's Story. Her organization produces an animated chronological presentation of the Bible's message that's available in 200 languages with more being added all the time. I purchased some for some foreign nationals who live near me. For $3,500 a ministry can translate the God's Story video and make unlimited copies for local evangelism.

But I want to tell you about another of Dorothy's ministries...

In her work, she's also started training people in "Oral" Inductive Bible Study techniques. The program is called "Simply the Story". I've reviewed her manual (it's free at the link!) and plan to review it again. I was also privileged for her to hear one of my Bible stories and give me some personal guidance. If you're at all interested in Bible Story Telling, it's a great tool to get started.

In addition to telling you how to LEARN stories, this manual teaches you how to guide listeners into observing, interpreting, and applying the story through oral methods. It's a veritable gold mine of instruction!

"Simply the Story" training is becoming popular in the US. Here are 3 recent contacts they've had with US pastors demonstrating the need for this type of training here, not just the "foreign mission field". (Note: "Simply the Story" is abbreviated as "STS" hereafter.)

1. A church leader who attended STS workshop took the concept back and demonstrated it to his Bible study class. His pastor wrote him this note. "I want to tell you how blessed and excited I am about Simply the Story. By executive order (and approved by the elders) I am moving that it become our 'teacher training' for all age groups. I can envision all the classes being taught by regular people right out of the Scriptures! It is simple and revolutionary. So, I guess this means that you will have to be ready to teach this often."

2. After attending a STS workshop, a church member shared a story with herpastor and gave him the STS document. The pastor initiated a new neighborhood "smoker friendly" Bible study. Her pastor uses the STS way of presenting the Bible. The story started with 4 people and has already grown to 14. "Most are new believers, some coming out of cults and a few are just neighbors seeking. Best of all," the pastor reported, "I am overhearing conversation during breaks where the class members are discussing the applications in the story."

3. Another pastor who attended a STS workshop told us, "We are taking a look at all of our children's curriculum. We want to clearly communicate the Bible at an early age. One adult class will be using this too to see how it impacts the people."

Update on 12/13/2007

And here's an update from an Indian pastor. South India has a large Christian community already so that made this report especially interesting to me if you're wondering about the use of Bible Story Telling in a place that's not a "brand new" mission field:

A pastor in South India reported, "I have had 11 years of theological education. In 16 years we planted 29 churches in the villages among the uneducated and baptized 820 people. After I received STS training, in nine months we baptized 434 people and planted 19 new churches! new believers came from when the uneducated of our church told the Bible story they learned at church! and the 29 churches have more people and they all know more the Gods word."

Spreading Biblically Inspired Music

The music at the conference was provided by Heart Sounds International.Frank Fortunado did a fine job of taking the Biblical text of Jesus calming the storm and casting the demons into the pigs and turning that into a song for us to sing.

Because the conference was devoted in part to reaching cultures through Bible Story Telling that often have no written language and no "Bible", that means they have no Christian music.

The Heart Sounds International folks are "ethnodoxicologists" who 1. Analyze local cultural forms of song and 2. help local Christians infuse the forms with Biblical content.

Of course in Reformed circles, we have a large body of psalmody and hymnody. Music books emanating from the Reformation period on the continent were known for containing all 150 Psalms set to the meters of the day, then a collection of "Bible Songs" putting Bible passages to music, then a collection of hymns or musical meditations on Christian themes not directly connected to a specific text.

Heart Sounds International has a You Tube Channel where you can see their work.

Unfortunately modern Christian music in the US is very sensitive to the music of our culture, but not faithful in rendering metrical psalms or Bible Songs and some of the meditations on Christian themes leave something lacking.

Maybe we need some ethnodoxicologists in the Contemporary Christian Music industry?

Update: Here is an interesting article by Terry Mattingly on the this phenomenon of how music is shaping the church.

If we were on a foreign mission field and Tribe A liked one form of music and Tribe B liked a completely different form of music, we wouldn't chastise Tribe A for failing to sing the songs Tribe B liked. We have multiple "Tribes" in the US. They tend to be segmented by generational criteria instead of geography or race.

Using Bible Stories in Prisons

The potential uses of Bible Story Telling are virtually limitless. One group using Bible Stories in an interesting way is the Prison Discipleship Ministry of the Navigators.

At the above link you can download - for free - their "fill in the blank" prison discipleship course. The Navigators cover the same material though - now - using Bible Stories because for many people in prison, the old "fill in the blank" studies are beyond their reading level. Using Bible stories allows them to reach more people.

One interesting note about how the study was structured is how the stories used were chosen and structured. Most Bible Story programs are set up choosing Bible Stories that address the worldview of the recipient culture in the first set of Bible stories chosen for translation. Islamic cultures receive a strong presentation regarding Abraham. Animists hear other stories emphasized initially. Quite unconsciously but providentially the Navigators chose a progression of stories that is especially helpful in addressing the psychological issues facing most criminals. I'll leave it at that because when you hear the psychological explanation you realize that the "psychological" problems these "criminals" have is no other than original sin! They difference is - they got caught!

Access to the net here is limited, but I'll type more as opportunity arises. You can thank Rick Warren for this post. Everyone is in the main hall listening to him - it freed up an internet connection for me to use!

Update: Rick Warren got sick and didn't show up, but thanks anyway Rick! The mention of your name was enough to free up my internet connection!

Reporting from the Bible Story Telling "Boot Camp"

Actually it's called the "International Orality Network Annual Event 2007" but we're going because I look at it as a "Boot Camp" of sorts to refine my understanding and skills and learn some new things from more seasoned Bible Story Tellers. May the Lord give us safe passage!

One presenter there works in a Third World nation. His students memorize 125 Bible stories over a 3 year period and, at the end, know the Bible better than many traditional "Bible School" graduates.

The graduates then go to people who often do not read and don't have a Bible... and to places where they would be beaten or worse if they were seen handing out Christian literature. But Bible stories are quite popular.

Another presenter is Jackson Day who trained me last June. It will be good to see him and have a "refresher" course as well.

Renee will go to an all day session for women on Tuesday.

While most of the people there are going to talk about Bible Story Telling on the foreign mission field, there will be a lot of information on using Bible Story Telling here in the West in prisons, with students, for evangelistic bible studies, etc.

Hopefully I'll have some things to report. I hope to have a recorder so I can make some audio to upload possibly.

On the right hand column you can see links to posts from ION for the next few weeks...After that, click on the ION label!