OneStory Partners With the Church

Our goal is to be a catalyst to initiate reproducing churches in all 5,500 unreached people groups by the year 2020.

OneStory exists to develop or facilitate effective oral communication strategies to convey God’s Word to people who are unreached or Bibleless.

The majority of the world’s unreached people groups are made up of “oral preference learners”, often with no written language of their own. In order to reach them, OneStory develops worldview-sensitive, chronological Bible ‘story-sets’ for each specific group. These story-sets (typically 40-60 stories in the first two years), are taught to a group of native-tongue speakers, and then recorded. These story-sets form the beginning of a culturally relevant ‘oral Bible’ to be told and retold for generations.

Our primary objective is to encourage sustainable, indigenously led reproducing churches among these oral peoples. Our goal is to be a catalyst to initiate such in all 5,500 unreached people groups (UPGs) by the year 2020.

Along with the development of story-sets, other essential outcomes for a two-year OneStory Quest project include:

1. Developing “first generation” mother-tongue speakers to tell the stories within their people group. These speakers are instructed and engaged in evangelism, discipleship, as well as planting and leading churches that reproduce themselves.
2. The production of high-quality audio recordings of the stories to be archived for reference, distributed through broad sowing or broadcast (generally in partnership with Trans World Radio or Feba Radio).
3. Written documentation of the project, consisting of: worldview observation and research, back-translation of the stories with notes on key biblical terms; reviews of biblical integrity and naturalness; and descriptions of the project results for evangelism, discipleship, Church-planting or other spiritual movements.
4. Planning for subsequent ministry phases by the emerging local church and regional ministry network.

Churches can become managing partners for a OneStory project among their chosen people group, equipping their own members through a OneStory training and consulting cycle at the nearest regional training center. At present, OneStory training centers may be found throughout Asia and W. Africa. And this year, we are developing training centers in Europe, Latin America and N. Africa.

OneStory’s unique training process has been tested in multiple countries and in many languages. Mobilization efforts are underway in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America to train and equip workers to reach out in their own country and across boarders as well. There are currently 84 OneStory projects in progress on four continents, with hundreds more planned for the near future.