College students Blake Bland (left) and Rose Baijense tell a Bible story using the StoryRunners® process at downtown Orlando’s Lake Eola.
College students Blake Bland (left) and Rose Baijense tell a Bible story using the StoryRunners® process at downtown Orlando’s Lake Eola.
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At 1 a.m., Rose Baijense’s cell phone shattered the silence of her apartment. OK, which family member or friend’s in trouble now? she wondered groggily.
“Nobody loves me! Nobody wants me! I’m not good enough for anything!” sobbed her chronically depressed best friend, who is also an atheist.
Should I tell her? Rose wondered. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I know Someone who has the answers to all this, Someone who loves you unconditionally.”
Her friend suddenly laughed. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Jesus has the kind of love you’re looking for,” Rose said.
“That’s not what I want!” her friend said and hung up, leaving Rose frustrated and discouraged.
The next day, she told Rose, “I can’t believe you tried to convert me while I was having a breakdown.”
Rose listens intently to a beachgoer during the summer mission.
This was not the first time Rose had been rejected after trying to share with a loved one the hope that Jesus offers. So many friends and family struggled with depression and anxiety that several had attempted or completed suicide. “Jesus, I am so tired of this!” she cried out in prayer. “You have what they need. How do I tell them about You and how much You love them without pushing them away?”
Through her involvement with Cru® at New Mexico State University, Rose attended the ministry’s Winter Conference in Dallas, Texas. There she came across StoryRunners®, Cru’s orality ministry. One aspect of StoryRunners involves teaching Christians how to share their faith using culturally relevant Bible stories. Is this God’s answer to my prayer? she wondered.
After enjoying the ministry’s brief storytelling training online, Rose got good responses from friends she shared with about the oral Bible story she’d learned. She signed up for StoryRunners’ two-week 2024 Summer Mission in Orlando, Florida.
StoryRunners defines an oral Bible story as an abbreviated passage of Scripture that is easily learned and retold, using everyday language.
At the house where they’ll stay for the summer training, Kavon Niknafs (left) and Blake Bland, both students from Arkansas Tech, unpack in their upstairs bedroom.
In a nine-bedroom vacation rental house in Kissimmee, Florida, just south of Orlando, Rose meets the others who will be part of the summer training: five college students and several StoryRunners staff members. The staff members first cast a vision for StoryRunners’ international ministry to oral learners, who are people who prefer to learn by listening. Many of those learners are part of what’s known as unreached people groups — distinct ethnic groups with so few believers among them that it’s difficult for a seeker to learn about Jesus. For those without literacy, oral storytelling proves especially powerful.
Then, staff members explain the ministry’s focus for this summer training: Because so many college students prefer to learn orally, “we’ll teach you several Bible stories and train you to use them and more back on your campuses,” says Jack*, the mission’s director. “We’ll also do several outreaches in the community, so you can practice what you’re learning and share your faith at the same time.”
In the Star Wars-themed playroom in their Orlando-area home base, students (left to right) Carrisa Hallock, Lilly Ray, Lillian Miniatt, Rose Baijense, Kavon Niknafs, and Blake Bland reinforce the Bible story they just heard by drawing out the action.
That night, the students engage in their first story group, an oral equivalent of a Bible study. They listen to, learn and discuss Jesus Heals the Man Lowered Through The Roof. Then they apply the story to their lives, name someone they will tell the story to, and pray for one another. The next day, after learning how oral Bible stories are developed, they continue getting to know each other at the nearby community pool. “Even though we’ve just met,” Rose says, “it feels like we’ve known each other a long time.”
Rose relaxes in the lazy river portion of the neighborhood community pool.
To learn their next Bible story, Carrisa, Rose, and Blake pretend they’re the disciples in the boat during the storm, who see Jesus (played by Lillian on the ottoman) walk on the water in Mark’s Gospel, chapter 6.
Day three opens with a story group to learn Jesus Walks on Water. Students act out the story as a learning method to help them internalize it. After learning to initiate conversations with strangers, they practice doing so during a scavenger hunt at Disney Springs shopping district. Winding through sidewalks packed with people, they build confidence by engaging others in conversation, asking for help with clues or directions to different locations.
The students take a break for dinner during their scavenger hunt at Disney Springs.
On day four, the team learns and practices the story of Jesus, Simon and the Sinful Woman. After a workshop on effective storytelling and how to ask good follow-up questions, students brave Orlando’s summer heat and humidity and spend time at downtown Lake Eola. They share Bible stories with young couples, families, hipsters, and people experiencing homelessness.
Despite some rejections, Rose and the others push past their fears, and each shares a story at least once, sometimes even incorporating their own faith journey. That night, in preparation for the next day’s activity, they practice their personal three-minute faith testimonies.
After sharing a Bible story with this woman at Lake Eola, Carrisa talks about her own faith story.
After learning to connect their testimonies to Bible stories on day five, the team joins up with a local ministry that partners with Cru Inner City. This ministry, called New Beginnings, hosts Sidewalk Sunday School, using a stage that folds down from one side of a large moving van. Every week, Rosa Marti travels to a different inner-city neighborhood to teach the Bible and serve pizza to neighborhood kids and families. On this day, StoryRunners students share Bible stories and then divide the crowd of kids and mothers into small groups and lead discussions about what they learned. The kids capture the students’ hearts, making this one of their highlights.
After telling a Bible story during Sidewalk Sunday School, Blake and Lilly ask neighborhood families for their reactions.
On day six, after attending Daytona Beach’s Drive-In Church, the team shares Bible stories at the beach. Wandering from one beach umbrella to another, Rose and teammate Carrisa are turned away several times but still share stories and engage in spiritual conversations with other people, many of whom are believers. The team’s confidence continues to grow. Despite many rejections this day, the students tell 18 Bible stories to 29 people, leading to 11 deeper spiritual conversations and one person coming to faith in Christ.
At Daytona Beach, Kavon (left) and Blake conclude one of several successful spiritual conversations.
After a well-deserved break on day seven, the team members take a tour of Cru’s headquarters on day eight and also develop their own Bible story. Divided into two groups, each team listens to Scripture, then discusses key points and draws them out on paper. They practice telling the story, correcting each other, before each group checks the other group’s story for accuracy and relevance.
At Cru’s headquarters, Carrisa celebrates getting the story details right with Rose (center) and Kavon.
On day nine, in pre-scheduled online appointments with friends who don’t know Jesus back home, each student tells the story they learned the day before and asks questions like: “Have you heard of this story before? What are your initial thoughts? What did you like in it? What did you find confusing or didn’t like? What did you learn about Jesus in the story? And did you learn anything about yourself?” Rose tells her story on Zoom to her atheist friend back home, who is surprisingly receptive.
That night, in their story group, the students learn Jesus, Jairus and the Bleeding Woman.
At the heart of the University of Central Florida’s campus, Lillian and Rose (near the fence) prepare for their next conversation with students.
On day 10, the team visits the University of Central Florida. After Kavon and Carrisa use stories to lead a student named Edwin to Christ, they help connect him to Cru’s ministry there. “We had a lot of noes,” Rose says. “People either weren’t interested, or they were busy and didn’t have time to talk. We did meet a Portuguese woman who didn’t speak English, so we communicated via Google Translate on our phones.”
In UCF’s student union, Lillian (with sunglasses) and Rose pray with an alumni couple bringing their daughter to student orientation.
After a day at Disney World, the team spends Day 12 at an apartment complex helping a Cru Inner City partner ministry distribute food and clothes and offer prayer to people experiencing homelessness. The StoryRunners students then present three Bible stories, including Rose sharing the Bible story of Jesus Calming the Storm. Discussion follows, and several receptive listeners begin sharing their own faith stories.
Rose cleans up after dinner at the house, where all the students take turns doing chores.
On day 13, the team pairs up again, this time at Cocoa Beach, to tell people about Jesus through Bible stories. “A lot of people didn’t look like they wanted to be bothered,” Rose’s teammate, Carissa, says. “But we also ran into a lot of believers. The last family we talked to were really encouraging.”
Rose’s karate shirt triggered a conversation with the couple’s karate-loving son. “That opened a huge door,” Rose said, “so we got to have a really long conversation and pray for the mom. She ended up taking our picture and wrote down our prayer requests!”
Students pair up to pray together before venturing out to tell Bible stories at the beach.
After relaxing at a local natural spring on day 14, the team strings several Bible stories together to create an oral panorama from Creation through to Jesus’ life and ministry. They then present it for the closing Story Festival, the end-of-summer lunch and celebration on day 15. They also evaluate their entire experience and brainstorm how to use what they’ve learned back at their homes and campuses.
Having shared their portions of the New Testament overview, Rose (left) and Lilly listen as Carrisa tells the next Bible story in the oral panorama.
Looking back, Rose and her teammates describe their summer as “life-changing,” “eye-opening,” “transformative” and “the experience of a lifetime.” Together, they initiated 240 interactions, told 96 Bible stories to 150 people, initiated 88 deeper spiritual conversations, including seven complete evangelistic presentations, and saw two people put their faith in Christ.
As the summer winds down, Rose takes some time alone with God to recharge spiritually.
Rose returned home after the summer training. But her storytelling journey is taking off.
“Now my best friend regularly asks me for a bedtime story from the Bible,” Rose says. “Some stories connect with her more than others, but now she’s listening like she never did before.”
*Editor’s Note: Real name changed for security purposes.
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