It's Just a Story! NOT!

Interested in preparing for cross-cultural missions? Want to learn another tool for sharing the gospel with your neighbors? Looking for a way to take your personal Bible reading to a deeper level?

Simply the Story has found that most people don't know how to tell Bible stories.  They embellish them with details that aren't in the Bible, leave out details they think are not important (but actually are), and throw in a good deal of sermonizing.

But why should anyone want to tell Bible stories?  If we want them accurately, we can always read them in the Bible, right?  Unless you're illiterate.  (You'd be surprised how much of the world still can't read.)  And even if you can read, chances are you breeze through the Bible stories too fast, missing the rich insights about God, yourself, and Jesus embedded in them.

So, Simply the Story provides training in what missiologists call "Bible Storying".  Essentially this involves three parts:

1. Telling the essential details of a Bible story accurately.
2. Having your listener repeat the details back to you until he can do it accurately also.
3. Asking your listener questions to help him discover the truths embedded in the story.  (They call this part "Oral Inductive Bible Study".)

This enables illiterate Christians to accurately present truths from the Bible to other illiterates in their culture.

It provides another tool for evangelism that works with people from a wide variety of ages, cultures, and education levels.

And it helps literates and illiterates alike to discover more deeply the treasures of the Bible.

An STS training course is coming to my community (and actually to my church's facility!) later this month.

I plan to attend all 5 days of the training.  A shorter 3 day version will also be available.  The schedule is designed to require minimum time off for those in the workplace.

For more information, you can download a brochure and a registration form.  I am not running this event, but I do plan to attend, and I did a great deal of research beforehand to see if it would be worth my time and money. I think it will be. I'd love to see you there.