Many church volunteers learn Bible Storying in order to use the technique on missions trips. What churches learn in the United States should be used of the Lord to accelerate response to the gospel. Those same principles should also work in our own backyards.
Two concepts should drive everything that is taught and caught related to traveling to another location, presenting the gospel, teaching others how to share and expecting evangelism to continue once you return home.
Those two concepts are:
- Reproducibility: If you use a DVD playback system, they’ll need a DVD playback system. If you use an art easel and a variety of watercolors, they’ll need an art easel and a variety of watercolors.
- Sustainability: If what you do cannot be continued after you pull out support, then whatever you’re doing is not sustainable. While the initial effort (flashy stuff) is fine for some things to draw attention (such as outsiders being there in the first place), if those left to continue the effort can’t pass it along, they will shut it down. They won’t evangelize if it’s not sustainable.
The DNA that shaped their belief system is tied to something unattainable in that culture. Oral learners need the whole package. They don’t have good “picking and choosing” skills of an analytical literate worldview learner. Adaptation often takes a higher level of analysis that literate worldview believers appreciate.
If the medium that carries the message cannot be reproduced by local believers, then it makes them feel inferior, and they rarely follow your example.
But guess what? There is good news because if you take an oral preference into consideration, then they will do what you do.
And the really amazing thing is that this method works for everyone, no matter how they best learn and understand.
As you plan for your upcoming missions trips, consider these tips:
- Do it at home before you do it on the missions field. If you’re not going to do it here, you will struggle to do it there.
- Multiply by using reproducible methods. Think Bible Storying instead of curriculum to be as reproducible as possible. Talk the gospel.
- Draw an illustration with a marker or stick in the dirt rather than taping slick teaching pictures to the wall. This will help them reproduce your methods after you leave.
- Don’t give them stuff they can’t afford to replace or repair.
- Prepare at home first and not on the fly over there.
- Invite believers where you serve to join your church on missions projects back home.
- Don’t leave a new believer alone to grow in the Lord until discipling is established. Remember you can always use Zoom.
- Avoid evangelizing just to get a yes and walk away. Be a disciple-maker of disciple-makers.
So, make plans to head out on mission and take many with you. And when you leave, make sure they can become disciple-makers following your example.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Mark Snowden serves as director for the Cincinnati Area Baptist Association. He has visited 47 states and 57 countries. This editorial will appear in the March 27 edition of The Baptist Paper. Click here to subscribe.
