StoryRunners

StoryRunners is a group using some innovative (ancient actually) means to move the gospel ahead in distant places. The plan is to use the power of spoken Bible stories to convey the gospel to people for whom stories are a foundational part of their lives. This storying approach uses heart language and common learning style to provide them with an oral set of the Scriptures. Jesus never wrote anything - he simply conveyed it through stories and practice.

Why this method? - according to their stats the current situation looks like this:

• 6,000 people groups totaling
• 3 billion people who have not heard His message.
  
• 4.5 billion of the world’s population can’t or won’t read.
• 1 billion people have no Scripture and
• millions of people do not have a written language of their own

In partnership with churches and mission agencies, StoryRunners trains teams of near-culture believers to live and work among unreached people groups so that they can:

• lay a foundation for the beginnings of an oral Bible,
• accelerate the spread of the gospel and
• sow the seeds of church planting movements (I really like this point).

This is an incredibly intriguing project that seems much more incarnational than many of our older (or less old) approaches. This seems to capitalize on how the gospel naturally spreads from people to people.

Internet Evangelism

"Sixty-four percent of Americans seek spirituality on the Internet, and as Christians, we need to be there for them," said Craig von Buseck, director of ministries for CBN.com.

The whole story here.

This is pretty profound, but I often wonder how the difference is showing up in real time. I continue to think that the Internet will prove to be an incredible church [movement] planting tool - and not just cyber churches, but real live churches based upon conversions made online. Tools like MyEveryStudent.com will continue to morph into tools that help new believers plant new simple churches / spiritual movements (without ever connecting to original forms). On a biblical front, very akin to the demon possessed man of Mark 5 heading back to the ten towns, or the Samaritan woman of John 4 in her own village.

If we apply Mark 4 (the sower) to the decisions that are being made on line, there should be hundreds of people instantly ready to multiply 30, 60, 100 fold. Very nice.

Tony & Lovie

Making history - in more ways than one.

www.beyondtheultimate.org