By Mary Van Rheenen

Several refugees come to the Baptist church we attend in Arnhem, the Netherlands. We are not a large church, but we simultaneously translate the worship services into Persian, Ukrainian and English. Most of the baptisms in the past three years have been people from Iran or Afghanistan. One of them (let’s call him Azad) recently received his Dutch equivalent of a green card—after about six years of waiting and praying.  
 
Azad spent the first six months of that time in a detention center connected to the international airport in Amsterdam. During that time, he saw many other would-be refugees deported back to their homelands or moved on into the Dutch asylum system. In the beginning, Azad felt understandably depressed. It’s difficult to be in limbo, especially when that limbo is essentially a prison. One thing that helped him was reading through the entire Bible. Twice. Azad said he especially liked the stories of the prophets in the Old Testament. The perseverance of Daniel, for instance, gave him hope. 
 
Note that it wasn’t the poetry of the Psalms or the careful reasoning of Paul that gave Azad hope. It was the stories. This did and did not surprise me. For several years now I’ve been learning more about the power of Biblical storytelling. This is a very successful tool to use with people who prefer to learn by listening and observing rather than by reading, and everyone appreciates a good story. The leader of a recent online workshop on Biblical storytelling shared how he had used this technique in reaching out to Iranian graduate students. Many of them were focused on high-earning, high-prestige professions, only to find an emptiness when they had succeeded in “succeeding.” The man had learned to share the content of Ecclesiastes from memory, used this as a springboard to discuss a meaningful life. 
 
He had learned the content by heart. The idea is to tell, not recite. It is highly likely that Jesus’ disciples used the same method. Compare, for instance, the story of the unfaithful tenants in Matthew (21:33-45), Mark (12:1-12), and Luke (20:9-18). Minor details vary; the core content is the same. Learn more about this approach at biblegateway.com.   

“Storying” for teaching, discussion, or personal devotions is one of the ways to use the scripture recordings my husband, Keith Holmes, has made with Faith Comes By Hearing. You do not need to be literate in the language you are listening to–a boon for languages which may be someone’s heart language, but may not be customarily written or may be written in an alphabet unfamiliar to the speaker. Wycliffe Bible translators in Slovakia have even held workshops on this technique: https://simplythestory.org/ 

One Romany Bible club leader I interviewed uses this method and teaches it to others—including other teachers. See Romany Education Network for series on Romany teachers. 

Which brings me back to Azad and his favorite Bible stories. Now that the Sinti Romani Bible translators have published the Old as well as the New Testament in their language, they would like to record the Old Testament. And since Keith did the New Testament recording, they asked whether he would do this as well. Instead, he suggested training a couple of the Sinti believers to do it themselves. Sometime soon we will drive from our home near the border over into Germany to do just that.  
 
Speaking of Bible stories, what would some of your favorites be? And who might you share them with?  

Mary Van Rheenen is Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel alongside her husband Keith Holmes, who serves as CBF field associate. They serve as resource coordinators for Romany and those working with Romany throughout Europe. This husband-wife team focuses on Christian media resources in major Romany languages and educational resources. Click here to learn more about her ministry.