Training Tools - First Steps

Before you begin your journey into Bible storying, we recommend you read the following articles to better understand orality and secondary orality.

Training Tools - Telling Bible Stories

Anybody can be a Bible storyteller. Here are some tips on how to learn and tell stories effectively:

  •  DO NOT memorize it word for word. You want to be able to tell it naturally just as if you were there when it happened.

  •  Use the same tone of voice you’d use to talk about a personal experience. Focus on remembering what happens, not the precise words. For example, whether you say “And then Jesus went on his way” or “So then Jesus left and continued on his way,” doesn’t really matter. Try to absorb the story – the characters, the plot, and the scenes. If you listen to the stories on our Web site you’ll notice that they aren’t “perfect.” Strive for naturalness more than rote memorization. However, it is important to stick to a close paraphrase. You are telling a story from God’s Word, so you don’t want to add things that are not there.

  •  Don’t use religious terminology that would be awkward in the way you tell the story. Avoid the awkward phrases we are used to reading in the Bible but which are not used in everyday speech. The goal is to make the story faithful to the meaning of the biblical text (we can’t add anything to the story unless it’s in the Bible) and understandable to the listener. As stories are crafted for different cultures and communicated in different languages, the meaning stays the same. Keep this in mind as you learn to tell the story.

  •  Different people have different ways of learning to tell a story but one useful way is by visualizing. Read the story in several different versions, including a paraphrase like The Living Bible or The Message. If you can get an audio version of the story, sometimes it helps a lot just to listen to someone else tell the story. Meditate as you go through the story and picture each scene in your mind. Eventually, as you retell the story you won’t have to know the next line, but you’ll be able to picture what happens next and tell it like you’re describing what you once saw. You’ll end up describing it with almost the same words every time. Picture the links between each scene and give yourself mental cues.

  •  Practice telling the story alone and out loud from memory and then you’ll be ready to give it a test run in front of your family or friends. But remember to have fun! Don’t get too caught up in getting the words exactly right; let the story be real to you. Have the pictures in your mind so you can remember the stories and enjoy them – it’s God’s Word!

  •  Some stories require giving some context before telling them. You may even want to suggest some things to listen for before you tell the story. For example, you might want to explain some things like, "To 'recline' at a dinner table meant to lie down barefoot and sideways on some pillows while eating from a very low table," or, "In those days, most people walked everywhere on dirt roads while wearing sandals."

  •  It’s also a good idea to avoid using terms like “Pharisee” and “denarii.” Instead of “Pharisee” you may want to use the term “a religious teacher." Since a denarius was a coin worth about a day’s wages, you may want to say, “one owed him $50,000 and the other owed him $50.”

Training Tools - Leading the Studies

Before telling the story, tell the listeners that you want the group to retell the story after it’s been discussed. It's amazing to watch the group self-correct by interrupting each other with a correct story piece as they attempt to reconstruct the story. A group of listeners are usually able to correctly reconstruct the story more quickly than a single listener.

A fun way to move the telling along is to give the first person a ball. If he can’t remember a story part, he then tosses the ball to another person in the group. That person must pick up the story from there but he can toss the ball to someone else in the group if he forgets a story part.

A good storytelling technique is to hold the Bible closed before telling the story, hold the Bible open while telling the story, and then hold the Bible closed again after telling the story. An open Bible indicates the story has begun and a closed Bible indicates the story has finished.

Remember, the goal in leading discussion is to allow the group to discover the truth, not for you to tell what it is! In most of the studies, we have included questions for discussion, but feel free to ask your own questions. If all else fails, there are five questions that can be used with any story and culture:
  1. What did you like about the story? or      What was the most interesting part of the story to you?
  2. What did you not like about the story?
  3. What did you learn from the story about people?
  4. What did you learn from the story about God?
  5. How does God want you to obey what you learned?