The Story Bible

With the Story Bible™, you can overcome barriers to reach people groups with no access to God’s word. This breakthrough mission strategy is really the same method Jesus used to engage the oral (illiterate) people of his day, and once Story Bibles are translated, they can be used to spread the gospel by word of mouth and media distribution.

As you explore this web site, pray about how the Story Bible could help you in your mission endeavors.

What is a Story Bible?

A Story Bible is a chronological collection of Bible stories that are told from person to person. Indigenous storytellers present each five to ten minute story in the heart language of the people group and in the communication style of their own cultural stories.

If the entire Bible were told in story form, it would be over 600 stories and would take days to tell and years to produce. However, only about 30 stories are required to quickly start evangelizing and church planting. Stories are selected to cover all the major biblical literary genres and periods in history—they span the Old and New Testaments from Creation to the Church Age.

About half of the stories teach the essentials of the Christian faith, while other stories address specific worldview issues that a people group may have. For example, a people group believing in many gods would need to hear a story like Elijah and the Prophets of Baal that demonstrates one all-powerful God and the powerlessness of idols.

Oral cultures use their Story Bibles just like we literates use our written Bibles. They pray, worship, meditate, teach and make life decisions based on the scriptures. Because a Story Bible is the Word of God, it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16). Missions and churches can use Story Bibles for evangelism, discipleship and leadership training.

Story Bibles dwell primarily in the hearts and minds of storytellers who have internalized the stories and can tell them from memory, but they can also spread through media. As more people hear and learn the stories, the Story Bible becomes embedded into the fabric of the people group's culture. As a result, people follow Jesus, and churches are planted.

The Strategy

There are four key phases to the development and use of a Story Bible. First, a small team embeds themselves in the people group to learn language and culture. Then, the Story Bible is translated and listening groups are formed. The stories are then tested, recorded and preserved. In the last phase, the team is free to spread the stories and plant churches. To learn more in depth about how Story Bibles are developed and used in missions, visit the Story Bible Strategy page.

Advantages of Story Bibles

The Story Bible has a number of unique advantages over traditional media-based missions. It requires no prior Bible translation or language development work, it is customized to a people's specific worldview and it is easily reproducible without the aid of any technology. Find out how the Story Bible compares to traditional media products on the Advantages of Story Bibles page.

Written Bibles, Language Development and Literacy

StoryRunners fully supports the development of writing systems and written Bible translations for languages that need them. We want everyone to read the Word of God for themselves, and Story Bibles are a great stepping stone to get them there. Read more about Written Bibles and Literacy.

Hear For Yourself

You might want to see or listen to this example of a short English Story Bible.

Case Studies

You may read a few of many real examples of Story Bibles in action.