Description:

The African continent has a population exceeding one billion people spread across fifty-four countries. In linguistic terms, Africa has more than two thousand spoken languages, which represents 30% of the languages in the world. This land is home to a beautiful landscape of rich and varied cultures.

The power to tell the story of God’s love for humanity and plan for salvation continues to impact the church all across Africa. Many African cultures function as oral cultures, so it is instrumental that the church develop effective storytellers who will lead people in deepening the faith of both new and mature believers through this method. Orality Discipleship is the answer to the growing issue of how do we disciple tens of thousands of believers in hundreds of languages in multiple countries all at the same time. Our values are established through tradition and learning in our mother tongue. If we are to change those values from other religions or traditional Africa religions, then we must speak to the heart.

This project has been is to establish and strengthen discipleship in the region over the course of several years by using oral methods. Leaders in the Africa Region have been working towards the goals of this project since 2020. Generous donors have helped to support mailing 640 SD cards with storytelling materials out to 118 districts, especially important while in person gatherings were prohibited by pandemic restrictions. Leaders have also held orality training events and been able offer support for field orality coordinators.

In order to fully complete this project, leaders in the Africa Region intend to:

• Train Orality Discipleship champions on the Africa Region
• Establish centers of Bible storytelling in local churches and districts
• Train Bible storytellers and reinforce the network of coaches.
• Translate, produce and distribute storyteller materials in various local languages to districts

Great storytellers use local wisdom and discover the issues that affect the community. Then they use the values that are common knowledge and either affirm or contradict these values with Godly values. Using local poems, sayings, and songs make it easier for listeners to connect to the truth and help them forge a deeper faith in God. As a part of this project, trainers will record their stories and share them with others in order to provide an audio library of well told stories with good questions in the various languages. Ultimately, material will be translated to many different mother tongues and distributed across the region.

Giving now will bring them one step closer to fully financially supporting this meaningful, creative work in the Africa Region to make Christ-like disciples in the nations!