"West Africa Baptist Conventions and Unions"

Since September 2008, missionaries Jeff and Barbara Singerman have been leading orality training in Baptist associations in the countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire. These trainings purpose to teach church leaders the effectiveness of using Bible stories with their oral peoples. Two core principles in the trainings are obedience and accountability. As the church leaders teach their members stories, they are to encourage them to tell the stories to others and then to ask for an account of how their sharing of the stories was received. In June, the Singermans started returning to the same associations with a follow-up seminar to train the church leaders in spiritual warfare and stewardship, again using oral methods. In a village in Benin, among the Yoruba speakers, an evangelist named E shared that he had started nine “preaching points” since the first seminar six months earlier! Amazed, Jeff and Barbara said, “E, you have a passion for leading people to Christ and starting churches. Surely you would have started the same number of churches in the same amount of time using your former methods.” E replied, “No! It is difficult to start even one church in the same amount of time with preaching as I was doing. Now I have a team of lay people telling stories from place to place with me. The people love to come and hear the stories and eagerly study the stories of the Bible.” Three of these new preaching points are among completely unreached peoples! Praise God!