2008-05-28 Thu 4:30a Guatemala City

“I have learned that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and what the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.” James Stephens*

Yesterday (Wed)

Paul and Teresa Kohler are missionaries to India who in the past six years have been instrumental in helping plant more than 250 new churches by training nonliterate men and women how to tell Bible stories. They trained 50 people who each promised to train at least 4 others to tell the Bible stories they had learned. Over a two year period they learned around 100 Bible stories and became walking Oral Bibles (though many of them cannot read.)

Paul has long been one of my “heroes”. He became Globe International’s first missionary 35 years ago. My first summer as a student at Liberty Bible College, I visited him in Tuxpam, Mexico (1974). It was then that God put His love in my heart for Latin Americans. Paul planted a dozen or so churches in Mexico before moving to India six years ago. His goal is now to help plant another 250 new churches in the next 18 months. A church is 7 baptized adults. Is that awesome, or what?!!

Our last journal entry told of helping Norma remember the main characters and themes of the first 8 chapters of the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. I should clarify that what I did is not an example of Bible storytelling, but rather an exercise in association. I helped Norma associate something she knows well, the interior of our house, with something unfamiliar to her, the characters and themes of Romans 1-8. Norma has been a Christian for over 20 years.

A 2002 scientific investigation of Church growth in Guatemala showed that though 33% of the population claims to be evangelical, only 30% to 40% of these have personally internalized saving faith–that means they can tell you what they believe and why they believe it. Once during a baptismal service, after the last person was baptized, one of the Elders of the congregation got baptized again as well. When I asked him why he did that he said, “I wanted to feel good like them.”

Recent studies are showing that the reason why many people don’t assimilate the message of the Gospel is because we have been taught to preach and teach logically to the head, when theology is more easily assimilated in the heart by narrative or storytelling. Many people learn by narrative much more easily than by conceptual communication. When we tell the stories of God’s great acts in history and our lives, we leave them open to choose for themselves and let God form their theology for them. My friend Paul calls that incarnational ministry–teaching others in the way they learn best.

*James Stephens, The Crock of Gold (New York: Macmillan); quoted in Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller (New York: Viking Press, 1942), 16.

The “Mystery of the survival of the Jews”

There have been many times in history when measures were taken to eradicate the Jewish race. One of those occasions took place while the Jews were exiled and is recounted in the fascinating Bible story of Esther. In it we feel the power of God’s sovereignty at work.

I recently came across a message given last year by Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin. He is founder of a network of schools, colleges and postgraduate schools in the US and Israel, that promote the principles and values of modern Jewish orthodoxy. This was his Cedar message of April 2007, given in Efrat, Israel, a community he founded about 22 miles south of Jerusalem. In it he mentions being invited by two Universities in China to speak on the subject of “The Mystery of the survival of the Jews”. Here he states that there are two keys to their survival: first the covenant God made with Abram, making him a father before he had any children; and second, the practice of Abraham’s family, of telling the stories of God’s great redemptive acts. These stories impart identity, value, and destiny to their families. Many times these stories are put to song making them even more easy to remember (ie. the “Song of Moses” and many of the Psalms).

To illustrate the impact of how these stories have preserved Jewish culture, Riskin said he was invited to teach the Tora in English to a community of Jews in eastern India. While there, they sang him a song that lasted two hours and recounted the entire history of the Jews from Adam to the destruction of the temple. This community that had very little instruction, had a strong identity due to recounting the stories of the great redemptive acts of God.

What would our families be like if we learned to tell ours and the Bible’s stories of God’s great acts, as a frequent practice with our children and grandchildren? Would generations of our families be preserved? Would we restore the foundations of society?

Prayer Power…
Father, thank you for your wonderful and powerful stories through which You reveal Yourself and your love to our hearts. Help us learn them by heart and tell them with emotion to our children and grandchildren. We pray for Pastors and leaders in your Church that they will discover the power of Your narrative theology to heal the identity crisis in your children. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Psalm 149 – “Let the high praises of God be in their mouth. This honor have all His saints.”
Pro.29:23 – A man’s pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor.