More Than Words: Reviving the Living Tradition of the Spoken Story

By Leong Sook Ting

“…Story is an invitation to participate, first through our imagination and then, if we will, by faith, with our total lives in response to God."

— Eugene Peterson, Introduction to the Book of Exodus, The Message

All photos courtesy of @vaaimolibible unless otherwise stated. Bible verses quoted are from the NIV.

Living Breath

Long before writing and print, there was the Voice. It began in a garden, continued through the centuries, and eventually spoke through a Jewish Carpenter who taught complex truths in the form of simple stories about seeds, coins and prodigal sons.

In a world full of digital noise and fleeting soundbites, the ancient art of storytelling is experiencing a quiet, holy resurgence. To tell a story is to make the Word audible again; a form of “incarnational” ministry. It doesn’t just convey information; it awakens the soul. Think about the great Bible stories you heard and remember to this day – creation, exodus, nativity, miracles.

Jesus himself taught primarily through parables. Telling Bible stories in natural, colloquial language emulates Jesus in breathing life into theological truths.

Finding the Voice

How do we choose the stories for oral Bible storying? It depends on the environment of the intended hearers as well as the method chosen. For instance, the “One Story” method teaches the Bible as a single, interconnected narrative of redemption. Other methods may focus on specific themes to address a community's worldview needs.

The common thread is that oral storying makes the Bible accessible to oral learners who prefer to hear than to read. It goes hand-in-hand with written Bible translation, except that the output is in oral form.

Stories are chosen to cover the main themes of the Bible as well as build bridges or challenge existing worldviews. The stories prompt hearers to reflect and discover the meaning of the stories. Examples of stories used in the Teochew and Tamil oral Bible storying projects include Creation, the Fall, Jesus’ birth, His teachings, Crucifixion and Resurrection. It is easier for messages to stick when they are presented in the context of the whole panorama of God’s story.

The goal of Bible storying is to support discipleship and evangelism. By listening and meditating on stories, hearers capture truths and are engaged to find out more, growing in their faith.

Tamil Oral Bible Storying project Vaaimolibible’s recording of the story from Mark Chapter 5 about the demon-possessed man sparks conversations about fear, power, faith and the value of humans.

Building Bridges

Stories are also chosen to build a bridge to the culture of the intended hearers. For example, fish is a common motif for abundance and prosperity in Chinese culture. So the story of Jesus enabling a miraculous catch of fish in Luke 5:1-11 was chosen for the Teochew project. Similarly, the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 with its themes of filial piety and the nature of family dynamics was also selected. 

Later, when the Prodigal Son story tested, some testers¹ reacted strongly to the story, showing that the story resonated and sparked curious questioning of why the father (representing Father God) could be so gracious and forgiving towards a son who had deeply insulted him by asking for his share of the father’s inheritance early, and had as good as cursed him to die.

Likewise, the spirit world is something very real to many Tamils, and people tend to be afraid of spirits. The story of Jesus restoring a demon-possessed man in Mark 5:1-20 was used to great effect to bridge worldviews for the Tamil project. The testers, who mostly belong to another religion, could relate it to their experiences when they were young or when they encountered spirits in their homes. The story powerfully illuminated the truth that while the spirit world is real, Jesus has power over the spirits.

Crafting the Story

When crafting a story, it is essential to balance the passage’s original intent with what the target audience will understand from the story.

For instance, in the story of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15:23 records the father saying, “Bring the fattened calf [young cow] and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.” When the Tamil translation of this story tested, the tester retold the story with the term “goat” instead of “cow”. When the team probed further to clarify if this was due to the story being unclear, they were surprised to find out that the issue for the tester was that the cow was a sacred animal in both the Tamil culture and his religion, and he could not bring himself to say that the animal being slaughtered was a cow. To maintain the original intent and meaning of the Bible passage, and ensure that this term would not become an obstacle to the audience receiving the story in the first place, the team decided to broaden the problematic term to “fattened animal”, rather than to change the animal totally.

Lost in translation due to cultural sensitivities. An example encountered in Tamil oral Bible storying: Luke 15:27 states, “’Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf [young cow] because he has him back safe and sound.’” In the retelling by the tester who was of another faith, the calf was retold as ‘goat’. Photo courtesy of Ren.

The Weird and Wonderful World of Words

Through the story crafting, the project teams learnt some interesting things.

The Tamil team found that Tamil speakers often did not understand the conceptual differences between certain biblical terms such as “Holy Spirit”, “angel” and “prophet”. All were messengers from God and, in their culture, any human who was good could become a “messenger of God”. They questioned the need to differentiate between the terms. This made the team more sensitive to how cultural differences affected how the people might understand some terms.

In the Teochew project, the team faced an intriguing challenge to translate “Holy Spirit will come on you” as used in Luke 1:35: ‘The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God.”’ The team had initially used the term 上帝的灵 (Shàngdì de líng) or “Spirit of God” but the testers wrongly interpreted it as spirit possession of Mary, so they experimented with other terms until they landed on 圣灵 (shèng líng) “Holy Spirit” which was received as more theologically accurate.

Another puzzle was how to translate the term “faith” which is more nebulous than the term “belief” (cognitive). The team eventually settled on the vernacular term “hope”, as it had the closest nuance to how “faith” was used, for example, when we say “to put your hope in me” is largely the same as “to have faith in me”.

Testing the Story

The testing phase is where the stories are told to people who have no prior knowledge of the story. During testing, the oral storying teams constantly ask themselves what the author tried to convey in the passage, and whether the story makes this clear. Finally, the stories are refined for clarity, accuracy and naturalness until they are deemed ready for wider use.

In some stories, the chronology of events in the Bible story can be confusing when told orally. Testing will show what needs to be rearranged so the story is clearer. 

A case in point is the story of the demon-possessed man in Mark 5: 6-8 where it states,

⁶ When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. ⁷ He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” ⁸ For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”

The tester initially said that Jesus had commanded the spirit to come out of the man after the man first shouted at Jesus, instead of before. This showed the project team that the story had to be revised to make the sequence of events clear.

Both project teams decided that they need not deal with all misconceptions within a single story as that could detract from the main message; instead, they could address them in other stories. Deeper understanding of the full text could then come later, for instance, through discussions in Storying Fellowship Groups², or other discipleship activities.

The project teams have been seeing encouraging results from the Storying Fellowship Groups conducted after the stories are rolled out. As these are meant for both believers and pre-believers, they can be helpful to get participants to move on to reading the Bible, or for outreach respectively.

The Tamil Oral Bible storying team ran a Storying Fellowship Group session at St Mark’s Church in Seremban in early December 2025. Participants actively discussed, learned and felt the emotional struggles of the characters in the story. After the meeting, they were motivated to closely read the passage that they had just learned.

Bearing Fruit

Oral Bible Storying is enabling people to hear the Word of God translated into their heart languages³ so that the message resonates with them on a personal level.

The Teochew project has concluded and 16 Bible stories have been published on YouTube. Check them out at: Teochew Oral Bible by Teochew Service PLCMC. The Tamil project concludes at the end of June 2026; you can check out the article by Kalene Lua here on the final review that happened in June 2026. You can also find the completed stories at Vaaimoli Bible and follow them on @vaaimolibible. Journey onward to this link to hear Ren*’s reflections from the field, as the story takes root in Teochew and Tamil.

How to support the work:

Churches could find Oral Bible Storying helpful for discipling and outreach. For resources to train volunteers in the Oral Bible Storying method, email hello@wycliffe.sg.

Other ways to support the Bible translation/ oral storying work include financially, through the R200 (“Reaching 200”) projects. Find out more by emailing r200_projects@wycliffe.sg.

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Footnotes:

¹ Testers are people whom the stories are told to iteratively to check for understanding, naturalness and accuracy to the Bible text. 

² A Storying Fellowship Group is a Bible study group focused on listening to a Bible story told orally, retelling the story, then discussing and reflecting on the story’s deeper meaning.

³ Heart language refers to the language that speaks most deeply to our understanding, identity and emotions.

*Ren (pseudonym) loves bringing God’s stories to life in daily conversations. She was involved in the Teochew and Tamil Oral Bible Storying projects in Singapore and Malaysia respectively.