Simply The Story
Experiencing Scripture
Through Discussion
Timothy Church
Planter Training
STS - East Africa (and more!)
Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, and Zambia
Cult Leaders Stopped! Ekalakala, Kenya "Most of the attendees expressed appreciation for the privilege to be trained to get back in the Word and even to teach it. One pastor said, 'Cult leaders have recognised our ignorance in the Bible and they're taking advantage of it and bringing their teachings here, but now we can go back to the truth through God's stories.'"
"Now We Know How!" After TCPT workshop in Mutyambo, Kenya "The general overseer of the pastoral fellowship in the region spoke on behalf of all participants saying that, 'real transformation has come to the district.' He shared how churches had been focused on unnecessary matters and neglect to disciple members. He said this happened because most pastors did not know how to teach the word so they had abandoned the responsibility. But he praised God saying, 'but now, through the TCPT, we know how!'"
Power of God's "Stories" Demonstrated in Sudan Workshop
One of the spiritual "treasures" our Simply the Story trainers gently guided students to see is in the story of Martha and Mary and the dinner. The students discoverer Martha's disrespect of Jesus in the way that she speaks to Him. When Mary was not helping with the serving Martha says to Jesus, "Don't you care that my sister has left me to do all of the serving?"
Our leader in East Africa just wrote...
"Yesterday, when I did the Martha and Mary story, one man said, 'I've been a Christian for a long time. In fact for 30 years I've been a pastor, but when the war was happening in Sudan, I always said to God, 'Don't you care that your people are being killed by the arabs...?'"
Then others shared similar examples. Finally they all said,"Let's stop now and ask God for forgiveness."
Yei Town, Sudan "At the end of the training, a pastor who has been in ministry for about 20 years spoke on behalf of the rest saying, 'We now have a way of teaching the word to our people. This training has opened many wounds in our lives. There are many issues that we need to correct in our lives as ministers as revealed to us through the stories learnt in this training. We don't have bible study programmes in our churches for lack of materials for teaching, but now we have more than materials - we have an endless skill. He then said, 'kindly thank your leaders for sending you to us, tell them Sudan is never going to be the same.'"
Ethiopia: Better than Money?
Picture this...as our East Africa Director travels 600 kilometers in a jeep, the driver occasionally remarks, "Well there used to be a road here!"
Then, our director arrives at a remote place to vision cast Timothy Church Planter Training to 80 illiterate tentmaker/evangelists. Their elderly leader greets our director with, "I didn't know when you would arrive and it is late in the day. You have 20 minutes to tell them whatever you came to say. Oh yes, while you are speaking, each man will be going to the paymaster to get his allotment."
Our director jumped straight to telling a Bible story. The elderly leader translated while the evangelists collected their money. On his way to the paymaster the third man hesitated. He stopped, listened to the story for a moment, and then turned around and sat back down. As the leader translated, he occasionally wept. In time, his translation became more and more animated.
No evangelist left his seat to collect his money.
Our director told the story, oversaw the retelling of the story and asked the interactive questions that revealed the spiritual insights and applications. The elderly translator turned to our director. "How long was that?" "An hour and a half," our director responded.
"We want to learn how to do this!" the evangelists called out.
Five vision castings took place across Ethiopia. Illiterate village evangelists there have prayed for a way to learn Scripture and understand it. To a person, the church officials, the academic leaders and the evangelists excitedly embraced Timothy Church Planter Training as the answer to their greatest need. All promised to do their parts to bring more language versions for Ethiopia into existence and to record the 66 Bible stories needed for the TCPT.
The TGSP leadership in Africa is expanding and maturing in ability to train people in this brand new concept. As funding and trainers become available, we want to go back and respond to the pleas of these believers in Ethiopia.
Even Seminaries Like STS? Liberia Response
Pastors’ confessed, "We realize that we have been missing many of the lessons in Scripture because we have not been paying enough attention to the treasures God put there for us!"
Mike Holman, a TGSP TCPT partner from Mission Aviation Fellowship, introduced God's Story and Simply the Story in Liberia. A 2-day vision casting training took place at the International Gospel Outreach Bible College in Buchannan Liberia. Forty-five pastors and church leaders enthusiastically received the STS training, quickly picking up the STS method. They asked for the full training of 6 days to take place ASAP! At a public showing, God’s Story captivated both children and adults, and a team has already started translating GS into the Bassa language.
Also the president of the Liberia Baptist Seminary in Monrovia immediately saw the value of STS training. "Please come teach this to all of our seminary students."
Below is Full Report on
the first African Timothy Church Planter Training.
This TCPT ran outside Nairobi Kenya. Ramesh, our leader in the Buddhist world, and Bramuel, our East Africa Director, trained 35 Masaai and Komba pastors. 
These pastors, mostly non-literate or semi-literate, were taught inductive Bible-study, oral style. We call this method, "Simply the Story."
Attendees first learned how to tell complete and accurate Bible stories. Then these attendees were introduced to ways to find the spiritual treasures in the stories. Next these pastors started to learn how to form their own questions that allow them to use discussion style teaching to lead their congregations to those treasures.
Lastly the attendees learned how to use those questions to lead listeners through the story, enabling each listener to make personal applications of the truths.
In TCPT, as pastors show skill in all of these areas of study and presentation, for "graduation" each is given a solar-powered audio-player formatted with 66 Bible stories, God's Story and in some languages the recorded New Testament.
(MegaVoice company manufactures these players.) Can you imagine the joy each pastor experiences when receiving this Scripture-laden player?
The time usually needed for TCPT to produce "graduates" is two weeks. However, we seized this opportunity for a four-day training to begin this African pilot. The trainers took attendees as far as possible in the four days. Even though we had only 21 of the goal of 66 Swahili stories recorded, we wanted to run this pilot. So, the players we sent contained those 21 Bible stories, plus God's Story and the New Testament in Swahili.
After four days, the pastors attending were not technically graduates, as there were not enough days to solidify their skills. However, the attendees did gather the concepts very well. They so badly wanted (and needed) the solar players, that the TCPT instructors and I decided to "loan" out 25 players. 
(When the 66 stories become available on the players we will complete their training and swap the player with 66 stories for the players with the 21.)
The non-literates were very very grateful for this tool as it gave them access to God's message.
.......Amazing Power of God's Word......
At the beginning of the first day, the expectant attendees were surprised (and frankly somewhat unhappy) when they thought that these visiting instructors had come only to teach them how to tell "Bible stories." They wanted a "pastor's conference."
It wasn't until the attendees listened to the 80-minute audio version of God's Story in the just completed Swahili, that they begin to soften.
By the second day the attendees had heard the TCPT instructors present three stories and the attendees had participated in the discussion of each story. As well the pastors started learning and telling new Bible stories assigned to them and crafting their own questions. Gradually, the light of perception of what TCPT was truly about began to dawn on them.
Then the third day, something wonderful happened. The morning of the third day our leaders again modeled two stories. Bramuel told the story containing God's instruction to Moses to strike a rock to provide water for the Children of Israel. Besides the many questions and applications of truth, one verse outside the story was given to show that the rock represented Jesus.
Afterwards, Ramesh told the story in Numbers 20 where Moses struck the rock after God had instructed Moses to just speak to the rock. The room became dead silent. Then Ramesh began to walk slowly through the story and ask questions. Through discussion, the dreadfulness of Moses disobedience was understood. When the pastors saw for themselves form the story that this great man, God's appointed leader, lost his expected blessing of leading the people into the Promised Land, they were stunned. Then, when the pastors figured out that Jesus, as that rock, should not have been stuck again as in the first story, all that could be heard was the mouth sound of clicking, signifying the seriousness of the moment.
Later, that day, after one of the pastors told the story of Jonah chapter 4, and the questions began to be given by one of the newly trained attendees, a leading bishop from the area stood up. "I am Jonah," he confessed. "I have been praying for some people, but I did not want God to answer my prayers. I do not like these people!" He began to repent openly. Then others stood up and a wave of confession and repentance took place.
At the end of the third day, the pastor who closed in prayer mentioned every one of the stories they had covered in this TCPT (maybe 10 by then). He praised God for many specific truths that they as attendees had gained from the stories.
Afterwards, the people flocked to Ramesh and Bramuel saying, "We now know that God will speak to us out of His Word! We did not even know before that many treasures were in the Bible stories!"
One pastor told the TCPT instructors "If I had ten years with a commentary I could not have found the truths we have learned here in three days."
.........................................................We All Learned..........................................................
The fourth day brought more tears and cleansing. Through the stories delivered by the attendees and the discussion of their spiritual truths they each contained, God's Word impacted the attending pastors in amazing ways.
We had asked the Masaai and Komba leaders to send 35 all non-literates for the TCPT, but some of the literate leaders managed to fill spots. Although that was NOT "our" plan, later, we learned a lot from that mix of attendees (and so did the attendees as you will see next!)
At the beginning of the training, when the questions were asked, the literates dominated by answering all of the questions. But, Bramuel noticed that the non-literates were softly mouthing and answering the questions too. So, he ignored the waving hands of the literates who wanted to respond. Instead, Bramuel walked over to the non-literates and said, "What did you say? I want to hear your thoughts."
Over time the literates began to realize that the non-literates could give answers that were just as deep and wise as they could being literate. The non-literates also discovered that they were not inferior spiritually just because they had never learned to read.
"Please stay and finish our training," the pastors and bishops all begged.
Instructors will return again to complete the task. We hope soon to have the Masaai God's Story and 66 Bible stories in Masaai produced for the completion of training these leaders. Then we expect to see hundreds of added TCPT run among the Masaai, as the newly trained pastors will soon become the instructors. Why not?
We are seeing that this training (and where needed, Bible content in recorded format) empowers. Now literate and illiterate pastors are able to lead their congregations in a biblical way that they have never before been able to do.
FROM AMAZED PASTOR IN ZAMBIA WHO WAS RECENTLY TRAINED IN STS
"When time came for me to preach to day, (it was Sunday), I stood up and cheerfully announced to the congregation: 'Brothers and Sisters, I have some good news for you. My trip to Moz.que was a great success: But for a change I want to share with you in my message to you, a Story, it is a story I am sure you will likely to enjoy. The first time I heard this Story I really liked it. So let us sit and relax and enjoy this unique Story. So please follow me and together let us sail through this Story.'
"As I said that , especially think I was doing that for the first time I had to capture everybody's attention. Then I noticed every one, including those who used to "sleep" during sermons, sat up and were together to hear this Story. I said to my heart, 'Lord, this is it: Now I want to practice the STS principles, so make it for me.'
"I gave them the Title of my Story. The Story came from the Book of LUKE chpt 13 verses 10 to 17; How Jesus healed the woman with infirmity. I went through all the stages I learnt in MONAPO as taught by Sister Andrea. Then I felt like God was telling me, 'Davison, go on I have given you the Story, tell them, they like it....
"Yes, to my amazement at the end of it, the whole congregation could not even think to stop hearing the Story. Many participated in giving treasures and I asked question, they gave answers.
"WHAT A DAY! No body looked at time and even all those old ladies who normally sleep out during sermons were wide alert and awake, I believe enjoying the STORY.
"All done, we completed the Service: I was surrounded by the people asking me 'Pastor, why have you NOT taught us that way in a long time. Next week , please give us another Story, we love it and we will go home remembering every bit of your Story and what the treasures means to our lives....'.
"The Youth Director asked me later in the evening when he came to our home, 'Where in the world did you learn that...?'",
"Learning what?" I asked him.
"Your method of presentation of the Gospel to us in the Church."
"I then explained all about the STS and how much the Church and others who would love to hear the Truth about God and His Son, Jesus. Two members in our church rang me, they too wanted to know about this new method. THANKS to you and Andrea. Most of teachings will use my STS principles. At a later stage I plan to organize other pastors to share with them how much the Church can benefit from applying the STS method. My wife and children love this method.
"THAT was my first test in the field."
TCPT are being set up now for numerous world locations. As the recording of the 66 stories are completed in other countries, TCPT will begin. See Simply the Story page on this site for dates and locations of upcoming TCPT and STS trainings.
Generations
South India
Great Great Great Grandchildren
in Nine Months!
STS
TCPT
2. Africa (soon)
The God's Story Project
PO Box 187,
Hemet, CA 92546, USA
1.951.658.1619
This STS site already full of information. The site is currently being redesigned to include a lot more story samples in various languages and added training helps. Thank you for your patience.