Opening Doors with Bible Stories

Ted Middleton is a Missouri pastor. He’s trained in using Bible stories to witness. He grinned ear-to-ear telling me about witnessing to a lady in the checkout line at Walmart. They got into a discussion about taking a long time to convert or a short-time conversion. Ted said that he simply told her the Bible story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. He could have kept going with Phillip and the Ethiopian, Peter and Cornelius, or Paul and Silas with the Philippian jailer. Ted shared the story and not only impressed the woman, but was able to tell the story from memory. The woman was ready to give her life to Christ.

Bible stories make terrific witnessing tools that can be chosen to apply to different situations. But you have to listen. Pray and the Holy Spirit will help you choose the story.

Convey the Gospel aurally (talking), but also using oral methods that involve listening and intentionally engaging in highly relational disciple-making in small groups that can become churches.

The same can happen in small groups. The right Bible story that addresses the right biblical issue can be transformative. And, increasingly, people stay away from Bible studies at church, but will attend them in a person’s home.

Steve Hawthorne, editor of Perspectives, a missions course, once told me he had noticed a trend that the front door of the church is the home. And when you take God’s Word in oral formats into a home to study, then it becomes a larger doorway for helping people pray, care, and share Jesus.

We have a mixture of people who are far from a relationship with Jesus in America. One size does not fit all. A colleague once boasted, “There’s only two people in America – lost and saved.”

Generic presentations that treat all lost the same rarely produce a harvest, especially if all you know are literate presentations. It takes listening to what the issue is and then addressing it with the right Bible passage or story.

Yet, churches continue to buy a program or curriculum for what worked someplace else. A missionary in Guatemala was frustrated that the curriculum he was using wasn’t relevant. It turned out the curriculum was developed for people in the Philippines. There was just too much difference in cultures.

By ignoring learning preferences – typically oral or literate – an evangelistic approach is often unnecessarily confrontational or doesn’t relate to their thinking preferences.

So, we no longer have the right to blame hard hearts among the lost. Bible stories are available to evangelizers and disciplers that will fill their empty spiritual void.

Note: This blog was excerpted from my chapter in “Orality in America.” This white paper was written by a number of Bible Storying leaders across the U.S. If I can help, please contact me at SnowdenMinistries@gmail.com.