Tag Archives: Great Commission

By Jerry Wiles
president emeritus, Living Water International

When considering what we call our Lord’s Great Commission, to communicate the Good News to the ends of the earth and make disciples of all people groups, it would be important to determine what message and methods are totally reproducible and transferable to the various regions and people groups.

a gift of clean drinking water

After having trained more than 3,000 people in 16 countries over the past 20 months, Living Water International continues to receive very encouraging feedback. LWI’s basic Orality Training Workshop: An Introduction to Contextual Bible Storying consists of a two-day, bilingual, five-story training. The emphasis is on teaching a little, that people practice a lot, and use immediately.

This approach is not intended to be comprehensive in any way, but to give a sample, a taste of what oral disciple making methods can look like. It is what you might call an easy-on ramp to the orality super highway. It’s a simple jump-start to get people on the journey of following Jesus’ example of sharing the Gospel and making disciples. An important aspect is to making sure that the stories and questions are biblical, understandable and reproducible.

The majority of the unreached and unengaged people groups of the world are oral learners, either by necessity or by preference. In fact, according to the International Orality Network, 70% of the world’s population (4.35 billion people) are considered oral learners. That is, those who can’t, don’t or won’t read, or prefer to learn and communicate by means other than print-based or written instruction. Also, 2700 languages still have no written script and 2252 languages still have no Scripture translated into their heart language. Continue reading →