Epic Partners International, a partnership founded by CCC, IMB, Wycliffe and YWAM, is engaging a storying approach among unreached peoples. Epic conducts training and workshops and establishes EpiCenters around the world to enable churches or agencies to prepare forty to fifty initial stories in an unreached people's language, equipping mother-tongue storyers to tell the stories and multiply churches. It also makes audio recordings of the stories for archiving and broad sowing by volunteers.

Radio ministries are becoming increasingly involved in supporting oral approaches. FEBA Radio has partnered with other agencies in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa in broadcasting stories. TWR has recently identified orality as one of five top strategic initiatives.

A Deaf Bible Network has been formed fostering Deaf nationals recording Bible stories in their native sign languages: God's Stories in Sign. Deaf Opportunity Out Reach (DOOR) has four training sites for chronological Bible storying where Deaf leaders from over 25 countries have been trained.

Global Recordings Network (GRN, formerly Gospel Recordings) has produced audio and audio-visual Bible-based evangelism and discipling resources in more than 5500 languages designed specifically for non- and minimally-literate people groups. These resources continue to be refined as GRN develops strategic partnerships with other like-minded organizations to reach the unreached oral communicators of the world.

This growing engagement is not limited to missions agencies. Local churches are getting involved as well. Larry Johnson is a coordinator among pastors in Ellis County, Texas, a rural county south of Dallas.46 Johnson attended a training event about oral communicators and how to work effectively with them. There he realized that there were many oral communicators in his county and came to understand how the churches could minister to them more effectively. When he returned to Ellis County, he shared his findings with pastors. "They recognized that these are the people they are not reaching through traditional churches," he said. "They may be members, but they are not in positions of leadership and are probably on the fringes."

Johnson then enlisted pastors, interested educators, church members, and other skilled people to identify worldview values and beliefs among Ellis county oral communicators. They then chose biblical stories to speak to the oral peoples' view of the world, crafted them, and set about to test them through telling them to sample groups of oral people in the county. They also selected visual materials to use in conjunction with the stories. They have set a goal of planting 700 churches, most of which will meet in homes.

While making these preparations, Johnson heard through international missions announcements that leaders in Central America needed churches to partner with them in evangelizing a specific unreached people group. Today these local churches in Ellis County have gotten additional training in language and worldview issues, and have extended their use of oral strategies to Central America. Johnson comments: "We are now doing overseas among an oral people group what we have been learning to do among our own oral people in Ellis County."

Strategies using oral methods, then, are not unproven theories. They have a proven track record, beginning with biblical times and continuing to the present. Under a wide array of situations, among diverse people groups on virtually every continent, oral strategies have demonstrated their effectiveness in evangelism, discipleship, church planting, and leader development.

What can an individual do to become a part of this growing engagement in making disciples among oral learners? Here are some practical steps: Any individual reading this paper can learn more about the field of orality and storying by reading the books, visiting the websites, or contacting the agencies referenced in this paper. The individual can learn to story passages from the Bible. The individual can identify the nearby oral communicators who are not believers and look for natural opportunities to story the gospel among them and to disciple them with stories. Individuals can share their journey in storying with the local church they are part of, and investigate ways of going global like those in Ellis County have done.

46 This account is provided by James B. Slack.