Focus: StoryRunners March 2013

Transcription

1 Focus: StoryRunners March 2013 The Great Commission Global Prayer Movement See each monthly issue at

2 Friday, 1 March Pray for our teams of trainers leading Schools of Storying (SoS) today in Zimbabwe, as an orphanage hosts the end of the third week. Saturday, 2 March Pray for our Orlando based teams of trainers leading Schools of Storying in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Sunday, 3 March Pray for the 2 billion children in the world who are unable to read a Bible or even to have access to literacy education. Monday, 4 March Pray for the growth of a new church that was planted in Calavi, Benin in Africa as a result of last month s SoS. Tuesday. 5 March Pray for evangelistic fruit for 18 Benin SoS participants like Franko, who has started using the new language stories in his home area. Wednesday, 6 March Pray for even more fruit from Bible stories shared in unreached people groups (UPGs), which leads to story groups, then house churches. Thursday, 7 March Pray for college seniors this month making the decision to intern with us as traveling one year trainers starting this summer. Friday, 8 March Pray for the nine new story groups that have started in Benin to grow into churches, led by the 18 SoS participants. Saturday, 9 March Praise God for the Benin Cru national director s desire to plant many new UPG churches there, like the 70 he helped plant last year. Sunday, 10 March Pray for a StoryRunners team in the Middle East, as today they are leading a house church worship through use of a Bible story. 2

3 A Ministry of Storying Pray for laborers in the harvest. We know from scripture that God s heart is for every unreached people group in our world, which includes oral tradition storytelling cultures. Two billion people in these kinds of cultures need to hear the gospel in an oral tradition format in order to understand it and be able to pass it on. That is why we are reaching them by using Bible storytelling, with 41 short three-minute narratives. StoryRunners is first building traveling teams of trainers, based in Orlando--to lead an in-country school for five weeks at a time--to work with national believers. These Schools of Storying complete a Chronological Bible story-set into the language of their people. The first part of our twopart vision is to get God s Word in this storying format into 500 languages over the next 10 years. Last fall and this spring we have launched this workshop strategy in a number of African countries. The second part of the vision is to build national training teams who take the StoryRunners story-set from the common trade language to the unreached people group (UPG) languages. Pray for the right national 18 participants to attend in each location. Pray also for each country s leadership s ongoing training of these workers, who are now equipped with non-literate discipleship, church planting, and leadership methods - all communicated just through scripture stories. Monday, 11 March Pray for Zimbabwe SoS fifth week happening now, as trainees learn from scripture stories for church planting, like the Macedonian Call. Tuesday, 12 March Pray for the Zimbabwe SoS trainees to depend totally on God and exercise great vision as they make ministry plans this week. Wednesday, 13 March Pray for StoryWave (introduction to storying) training for Cru staff, students and pastors in Kiev, Ukraine, this week March. Thursday, 14 March Pray for a planned time of outreach March 16-21, when participants will have opportunities to apply their StoryWave training there in Ukraine. 3

4 A Prayer and a Mandate By Galen Miller Mobilization Coach and Strategy Consultant StoryRunners Through the prayers of many, over the past 10 years, Cru has been partnering to send two-year western missionary teams-- with five other mission groups--as a OneStory.org partner. This StoryRunners Cru sending ministry has also been leading one-week seminars for the past five years, training Christian workers in the U.S. and many other countries, especially in the areas of unreached people groups. The need and focus has been to address the reality that 70% of the people in our world do not use reading in their daily life. Two billion of these people live in oral tradition cultures. Their education systems, some dating back thousands of years, pass on everything that is important to them through a series of cultural stories, songs and even dances. These stories effectively pass on their history, values and even traditional religions. The OneStory partners, originally meeting as part of the Table71.org (launched during a Billy Graham Itinerant Evangelists conference in Amsterdam), recognized that these missed 70% needed a Bible in this orality teaching form of story telling. As a result, the partnership teams have been focused on producing and distributing contextualized, naturally told and recorded sets of short narratives from the Bible (with special help from our Wycliffe, JESUS film and other partners). There is a hidden reason this orality focused teaching with a story works! It goes beyond the statistics, which show our world has two billion adult non-readers (plus two billion kids with no access to 12 years of academic style school). Often missing from our western conversations about the importance using oral-tradition methods is that our western education system not only teaches us to read. It also teaches us to think in concepts and abstractions! Conversely, these story-learningcultures strongly prefer and gain better understanding from the concrete learning style of storytelling. Conceptual learning is a learned skill-set that starts being taught in our western third grade academic style school system - a skill set that is foreign to these cultures. I believe prayers for the Great Commission to be fulfilled received a direct answer as the body of Christ started working together in the partnerships mentioned above. As a result, the body of Christ has also become aware of this huge orality roadblock. To understand effective methods to get past this barrier, the complexity of why oral tradition cultures learn differently is a necessity. Secondly, using their first language to tell the stories is also critical. Research from the book Seed to Fruit shows the best practices in cross-cultural missions work includes sharing the 4

5 gospel in the first language of the people used in their homes. With these two key factors (story-learning-cultures and the need for first language oral Bible story sets), StoryRunners has developed a combined method of a five-week School of Storying to address these two needs. Pray for the StoryRunners traveling teams in the coming years to be effective at giving away the School of Storying, so that many groups in many nations would develop and use these story- based scriptures and help reach the shared prayer goal of zero unreached people groups! John, a professional hunter, heard the stories in Shona, believed, asked to be baptized and began sharing the Bible stories. Within a month he saw 10 people trust Christ. Friday, 15 March Thank God for the optimum 18 UPG-focused missionaries and missions directors coming to our Orlando storying training, 7-12 April. Saturday, 16 March Ask God to well hone our Orlando April Training participants skills in UPG Bible story development and teaching through story. Sunday, 17 March Pray for our leadership team meeting today, deciding where new SoS locations are possible with current hosts, trainers, and resources. Monday, 18 March Ask God to give each of our SoS trainees a clear vision for multiplying new believers and disciples through Bible story groups. Tuesday, 19 March Pray for the School of Storying that will be starting next month in an impoverished section of Manilla, Philippines. 5

6 StoryRunners Bulgarian Oral Bible set of Stories on CDs. Indian National Storytellers Wednesday, 20 March Please ask God to enable each of the Manilla SoS participants to be diligent during this Tagalog story translation. Thursday, 21 March Lift up in prayer a second church planting outreach in May, using the Tagalog Story Set Bible with these Manilla participants. Friday, 22 March Pray for the national Christians who are being trained in remote unreached people groups in Asia with Oral Bible Projects. Saturday, 23 March Pray for many people groups near those who are being trained, who have not yet been touched with the message of the Bible. Sunday, 24 March Pray for the local governments near those being trained, to cease their persecution, or be blinded to their outreach activity. Monday, 25 March In unity and in faith, let us pray for the growth of the new believers in 2,700 unreached and unengaged people groups. 6

7 A good place to get a small but flavorful taste of God s work, deserving fully alert prayer Unleashed One of the amazing things about teaching national Christians about Bible storying is that it can unleash immediate results. Parfait has been the Cru national director for Benin, West Africa (now moving into a new role focusing on church planting for Cru). A year ago he came to a StoryRunners training in Orlando where he first learned about Bible storying. Last month we sent a team to Benin where Parfait helped us take 18 nationals, who could speak the Fongbe language, through our fiveweek School of Storying. This language only has a written New Testament and only one of the 18 could read it with ease, because it was usually only spoken. The rest could all read and write in French, which they had learned in government schools. A year ago Parfait told our lead trainer that he planned to use storying in other parts of his country with the Nagot people. Parfait wasn t kidding! He and his team had shared Bible stories with 2,430 Nagot people. They planted two churches with 153 people attending and formed 60 followup story home groups. They did all of this with the 32 stories they had developed and translated into the Ede Nago language on their own. Parfait asks for prayer as they now use these 41 Fongbe stories and work on planting even more churches using these Bible stories. Tuesday, 26 March Praise God for SoS stories and Bible-story based songs in the Fongbe language of Benin, opening up doors to other UPGs. Wednesday, 27 March Pray for the many UPGs of Benin and surrounding African countries listed in Thursday, 28 March Pray for the continued sharing of ideas and resources among our mission organization partners for reaching the unreached. Friday, 29 March Pray for the families who will be hosting training sessions for two evenings for our April Orlando-based storying training. 7

8 Saturday, 30 March Ask the Lord to raise up 50 healthy, hardy U.S. senior adult pairs who will commit to joining as regular SoS trainers and equipping nationals. Sunday, 31 March Thank God for the recent matching gift and generous donations that will cover the cost of four Schools of Storying (SoS) locations. My Prayer Life Notes... My prayer requests... People I m praying for... Answers to prayer... Let s talk about ways you can see Global Prayer cultivating prayer in your movement! On the Web at: Global.Prayer@ccci.org (407) Woerner Great Commission Prayer Center Campus Crusade for Christ 100 Lake Hart Drive 2100, Orlando, FL 32832, USA Were these prayer requests helpful to you? Each monthly issue of Movements Prayer Journal offers current prayer needs from another part of the Campus Crusade for Christ worldwide movement. Get an reminder when the next issue is ready. Sound good? Just send your name and preferred e-address to: global.prayer@ccci.org, subject line: Subscribe. View some of the latest prayer requests and praise items from Campus Crusade for Christ ministries around the world Campus Crusade for Christ