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.