Bilbo

“Bilbo” is a traveling Bible storyteller in a Muslim country. He is a church planter using the Bible stories from a story set prepared during a two-year storying project. This story set is in a “gateway” language that can be used with over 20 different unreached people groups that all speak this same language! Bilbo and other church planters received training to use these stories to plant churches. The training was paid for through StoryRunners by some Christians who understood the value of getting the stories to many different people groups.

One evening Bilbo visited a rural area to tell Bible stories to a group of about 15 men. It was a mixed crowd of half Muslim men and half new believers that had been led to faith in Christ. The new believers had been meeting regularly in a house church for six months or less.

Bilbo told the story of Creation and the Fall as the men listened quietly. Then Bilbo asked some simple devotional-type questions to see what impression the men had of the stories. The room fell silent as if no one had anything to say. Bilbo tried to explain the questions better so they would understand what he was asking. Still, no one offered any answers or opinions.

Finally one man said, "Can we hear the stories again?" Bilbo began to tell the stories again. When finished, he once again asked one of the devotional questions. This time there were a few very short responses to the questions. But for the most part, everyone just sat there as if they didn't know what Bilbo was asking. Finally, one man said, "Can we hear the stories again?"

Bilbo told the stories for a third time. Immediately after Bilbo finished telling the stories for the third time, the room erupted in conversation. All the participants were very animated about something. They were all talking at the same time, asking Bilbo and each other a lot of questions. This went on for about 20 minutes. The men were totally shocked by the stories. They did not want to think about the devotional questions; they just wanted to hear the stories again.

Bilbo later said, “After hearing the stories three times, the men started talking about what they thought of the stories. They were all amazed and shocked by the stories but they couldn't figure out what to do next. Some of them wanted me to tell more stories, while others wanted me to tell the same stories again. All of them wanted to know the answer to the problem. All of them realized they had disobeyed God just like Adam. Their relationship with God was broken and they wanted to know what to do to fix that problem. I told them that we would bring them more stories later that answered their problem."

Some of the men present had been led to Christ, accepted into the community of other believers, and had been attending Western-type services for months. Yet they were totally shocked by the reality these simple stories offered. The Bible stories they had just heard gave them their first glimpse of a truth they had been unable to comprehend from the expositional preaching they had been hearing in the church.