Why Storytelling?

Our Lord Jesus was the best communicator who ever lived. His most common form of teaching was by the telling of stories - parables with images and characters taken from everyday life to illustrate his message. He created a hunger for truth in the hearts of the people through these many parables.

Today, storytelling is still an effective way to reach seeking hearts. Telling stories is a powerful way to stir hearts and imaginations and to pass on key information from one generation to another. The thing we often remember most about sermons is not the "three main points", but the illustrations! Since its beginnings, GRN has followed Christ's method, and used Bible stories to communicate spiritual truths with many wonderful results.

One memorable example happened several years ago. A missionary couple from another mission was assigned to go to an unreached tribe in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in Africa. When they arrived they were amazed to find that this supposedly unevangelized tribe already knew about Jesus. Fifteen years before, one of our teams had made recordings for this tribe in their language. The people had memorized all the stories on those recordings and had known about the way of salvation for all those years before any missionary arrived!

Today, lives are still captivated and convicted by the Bible stories. To be most effective, the stories must be told with a local voice, without the distraction of a foreign accent. This combination of Bible stories, a local voice and the prayers of God's people help the old, old story to keep on transforming lives the world over.

  • A series of articles by Clair Rulison on the role of stories in GRN scripts

  • Down through the centuries, storytelling has been a most effective way to communicate.

  • Storytelling has always been an effective way to communicate. Jesus used stories or parables when He taught the crowds. For years GRN has followed Christ's method and used storytelling to communicate spiritual truths.

Related information

Ministry Strategy - GRN trains and deploys missionary recordists to nations all around the world - no language is too obscure, and no village is too remote.

How to use GRN Audio visual resources - 1: Sharing the Gospel made easy - This article gives an introduction to some of the many different ways the GRN audio visual resources can be used in ministry.

What do we record? - GRN aims to communicate God's truth accurately and clearly for each language and culture, especially those who are small, isolated and under-resourced.

Orality - Articles about the characteristics of oral societies, and how to communicate the gospel to them.