Overview of the Following Jesus Series
Dr. Avery Willis’ description of the Following Jesus Series.
Quicktime (.mov) | Windows Media (.wmv)

List of possible users
The Following Jesus Series is a unique experience for those desiring to provide cross-cultural ministry. Here is a listing of only a few of the many roles and functions to communicate God’s Word to oral learners through Following Jesus:

• career missionaries
• short-term volunteers
• 10/40 Window tentmakers
• Seminary students in missions
• Youth and children workers

Best uses of the Following Jesus Series
Use the Following Jesus Series to catch the next wave of missions advance. The Following Jesus Series is a must for anyone serious about making disciples of all peoples. The series hold the keys to understanding that orality is more than audio.
The Following Jesus Series is based on chronological Bible storying (CBS) and may be used in the following ways:

Evangelistic Settings
Evaluating Your Situation
Making Disciples
The Ten Step Process
Bible Truths and Worldview explained
Storying session characteristics
Resources and links for additional learning

• Evangelistic Settings: Campaigns, open-air arenas, and one-on-one encounters all can benefit from the Following Jesus Series within oral cultures. Instead of a literate approach (such as bulleted information, analytical thought, and using Scripture excerpts), the Following Jesus approach would take the non-believer chronologically through the Bible. This can be done in a fast-tracking approach, or over time in a relationship-building experience.
• Discipleship Settings: an oral approach to what is typically a literature-based Bible study. Instead of students using a written curriculum, the Following Jesus Series presents a method for orally studying Scripture in a story form. Through use of stories, the truths of God’s Word are revealed and discussed within a group setting.
• Leader Training: Established pastors, bi-vocational pastors and other church leaders no longer have to depend on college-level literacy to study God’s Word. Church leaders, in fact, do not even have to be literate!
• Missionary Training: The apostle Paul was one of the most effective missionaries God ever used. Was Paul literate? He utilized the services of several scribes, including Luke to write his letters to the believers in many churches he had established. It is an incredible claim, but the Following Jesus Series allows missionaries with little, if any education, to become effective missionaries nurturing church-planting movements!
• Schools: Many students have a story time in which myths, legends or folktales are shared by faculty or an outside storyteller. Following Jesus helps Christians have a way to enter a place of learning and present Bible stories orally and then lead a thought-provoking discussion.
• Restricted Access Nations: Vast quantities of printed literature are no longer required for conducting Bible studies. Through the Following Jesus Series, learners will appreciate how God’s Word will travel across borders effortlessly bringing a timely message of redemption and spiritual growth.

Evaluating Your Situation
If you work among people who prefer learning by an oral means, this is for you. Check out the Orality Assessment Guide.

Making Disciples
In the Great Commission, Jesus commanded His disciples to go throughout the world and make disciples of all nations. Proclaiming the Good News of Jesus leads to a conviction of each person’s will to make a decision. That decision leads to a conversion and following Jesus. This is called discipleship. Here is a definition of discipleship used in the Following Jesus Series:

“ Following Jesus is a personal, lifelong, obedient relationship with Jesus Christ in which He transforms my character into Christlikeness, my values to kingdom values, and involves me in His mission in the home, the church and the world.”

The Ten Step Process

Each storying session in the Following Jesus series is based on a Ten-Step Process.  Listen to a four-minute description.

1. Select a biblical principle and we make sure it is clear and simple.
2. Consider the worldview issues of a chosen people group so that we know how to choose the correct stories and how to tell those stories.
3. Identify the pertinent bridges and barriers and gaps in the worldview of that chosen people group so we will know how to address them.
4. Select the biblical stories that need to be communicated to get this principle or concept across in their world-view.
5. Craft the story and plan the dialog that is going to follow the story so that they learn how this biblical story addresses a critical world-view issue that they have.
6. Tell the story in a culturally-appropriate (including narrative, dance, song or object lessons).
7. Facilitate the dialog that will help them discover the truths and applications, usually by asking questions.
8. Guide the group to obey the biblical principle so that it can be lived out in their lives in practical ways.
9. Establish accountability within the group to help each other obey the biblical principle.
10. Encourage the group to reproduce all of this by modeling the principle in their own lives and then telling the stories to other people.

The 10-Step Process is the key to Following Jesus. The series includes a radio drama where a character named An (which means Christian in Chinese) learns to story from another character named Pastor. The series also includes a video segment where Avery Willis reviews the 10-Step Process with a group of Indonesians. The 10-Steps are reviewed frequently in this series.

Read how a young pastor discovers the 10-step process of chronological Bible storying.

Bible Truths and Worldview explained
Universal Bible truths are captured in sayings such as, “God punishes sin.” That is a Bible truth which would be very important in a culture for them to know. What are the things you want them to know about the Bible, about understanding whom God is, about understanding what it means to have a profession of faith? You’ll need to start thinking along those lines for Bible truths as it relates to your objective. A worldview is how a local people group interprets the world around them. It is their culture, their beliefs, and practices on a daily basis. As Christians, we want to know what they believe. There are actually three very specific keys to help you get a handle on the worldview. These three keys are bridges, barriers and gaps.

• Bridge: a comforting or very acceptable idea or concept
• Barrier: something that people have to overcome in order to understand and apply the Bible truth to their life.
• Gap: something lacking in a people’s knowledge that a story will help fill in.

When you put all of this together -- the objectives, the Bible truths, and the worldview bridges, barriers and gaps -- it’s time to select the best stories for the set you want to give to a people group.

Storying session characteristics
There are other forms of storying -- storytelling, narrative preaching -- but they do not follow the Following Jesus pattern. Their forms are based on literacy. They assume there will be literates—that there will be God's Word somewhere; somebody around from somewhere to read. Chronological Bible storying is based on the premise of telling the story as close to the original Bible story as possible, telling it in the way they tell it locally, but it will be oral, and they will learn this. They will memorize it over time and they will have an oral Bible to where they can be a minister in any way they want to be, in any way they need to be as God calls them, whether they ever learned to read and write. So this is telling the story to give them an oral Bible.

People ask, “How do you make the application?” Well, the dialogue session helps us do a number of things, among them, an application. The dialogue session is primarily designed simply to make sure that the people have learned the story and understood it correctly. So that after we've told the story we often say something like, "So that is the story," close the Bible, mark the end of the story, and then move into dialogue. The dialogue may begin with questions about basic elements of the characters. Who does the story say Saul was? What did he do first? What did he do next and so on?

We need to communicate in some settings why we're doing this, because on occasion people have been puzzled. They say, "You just told the story, obviously you know all these things, so why are you asking us these things?" So we need to communicate to them, "We're trying to help you learn the story, so let me ask you some questions that will help you recall what happened." Sometimes that kind of explanation is necessary. But in the storying dialogue, it's very important that we let the participants discover those truths in the story. We want them to go away from the story session with the idea that God has spoken to them by His Spirit through the story. The story (God’s Word) and the Spirit are the teachers, and we are the facilitators and the guides, but we are not the source of the teaching; we are not the source of the authority. We think this puts people squarely back on the Spirit and the Word as their teachers.

Resources and links for additional learning

http://www.chronologicalbiblestorying.com -- A Web site devoted to the systemic presentation of God's Word to oral communicators. Chronological Bible storying resources are provided by the International Mission Board (IMB), SBC, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS).

biblestorying@iname.com -- An e-mail newsletter devoted to Storying the Bible among the world’s peoples compiled by J. O. Terry.

http://epicpartners.org -- a Web site facilitating chronological Bible storying partnerships with the International Mission Board, SBC; Youth With a Mission (WYAM), Wycliffe Bible Translators and Campus Crusade for Christ.

Write to us to add a resource or URL