If you’re not familiar with Giving Tuesday, this is a movement started in recent years as a response to the consumerism and commercialization of the post-Thanksgiving shopping bonanza that begins with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Last year was our first time participating and it was a huge success because of your awesome generosity. Thanks! This year it's on Tuesday, December 1, 2020.
After prayerful consideration, the Kerusomen Board is trusting God to supply $10,500 for our 2020 Year End goals.
Kerusomen's Ministry Has Two Components: Compassion and Hope
KGM Compassion Project: $9,000
Purchases 65 goats and 500 chickens.
Provides help for 165 vulnerable people and their families in India.
The unreached areas we serve have been disproportionately devastated by job loss during the Covid-19 pandemic. So this year our Compassion Goal in India involves serving our church widows, vulnerable families, and their communities by helping them to start small backyard chicken and goat rearing businesses. We believe families in poverty have the God-given talents and skills to provide for their families. What they don’t have is a lump sum of money to invest in their potential—paying for education, saving for the future, or investing in businesses.
Facts on how Covid-19 is impacting the poor in India:
- 736 million men and women live on less than $1.90 a day. Most don't have access to adequate food, shelter, and employment opportunities. (World Bank 2017)
- India ranks number one of countries where poverty is likely to rise the most due to Covid-19.
In the video below, Tom Caprio, Kerusomen USA President, describes the business start-up program and how we all can help.
You can help Kerusomen Gospel Ministries make Giving Tuesday last year after year, restoring hope for vulnerable widows and families in India. Covid-19 will drop millions more families and widows into extreme poverty; India is expected to be the hardest hit country. Together, with God's help, we can make a huge difference.
$25 gifts five chickens
$100 gifts one female goat
(plus its first kid to another family multiplying your impact!)
No gift is too small.
Whatever you give, 100% will go to the mission field towards
the Giving Tuesday Compassion Goal.
Thank You
KGM Hope Project: $1,500
Equips 100 KGM disciples with Bible Storytelling Scarves and training
41% of the World - 3.7 Billion People are Unreached
70% of these Unreached Peoples are Oral Preference Learners
Watch the video to learn how KGM is reaching them:
The hardest places to reach people with the Gospel are often that way for a reason. There are geographic challenges, restrictive countries, alternate world views as well as complex language, dialect, and learning differences to overcome in these hard to reach places.
Reaching the Unreached Oral Cultures in India
Why many people don't have a literate lifestyle in India:
Characteristics of Oral Cultures:
- Oral cultures are peoples that for hundreds of years have shared, received, and recalled information with the oral arts: storytelling, drama, dance, music, song and even poetry;
- Even if people in these cultures can read or write, they still prefer to learn information and truths in the form of a story. This is true for several reasons:
- Some are illiterate. But they are intelligent men and women. Their greatest disadvantages are either they cannot read or write or they prefer to learn by audio or oral methods.
- Those that have attended school (especially younger generations) don't spend much time reading so they lose their fluency.
- Oral cultures rarely read for new information. It is believed in these cultures that trustworthy information comes from people - not the printed page.
- Most oral cultures have limited access to the internet. Worldwide 1 in 3 people have internet connection. In the areas with the most unreached peoples, the situation is worse. In 2020, India has 685 MILLION people who do not have online access to the Gospel videos or podcasts.
According to International Orality Network, for these peoples that are either illiterate or oral learners, newspapers, books, printed matter, internet text, even a physical Bible will have minimal impact. So for the gospel to reach these people groups, we must learn to tell the story in a way they can understand.
"India boasts one of the oldest group of oral peoples on earth with nearly 3,000 people groups that make up over 1 billion souls. We will not be reached at the core of our being with traditional approaches to evangelism and discipleship. We are oral first." Bishop Daniel Ponraj, "Is Orality Really Effective in Sharing the Gospel?" Christianity Today
What is the Bible Storytelling Scarf?
For many of the unreached people groups Kerusomen serves in India, Bible storytelling is a much more natural way of transferring information to them.
We do this with a wonderful tool: the Bible Storytelling Scarf.
The Bible Storytelling Scarf is a strategic tool where the Gospel story is illustrated on 42 vividly colored picture squares. Each square depicts a Bible story from Creation to Christ, that is used by a storyteller to share the Gospel with men and women who are oral preference learners or who cannot read or write. When these truths are shared with them in their own heart language, it makes all the difference in the world.
The scarf comes with a page of scripture references that corresponds with each of the squares on the cloth. Training materials, developed by Scriptures-in-Use organization, are free for leaders and lay persons. They teach easy-to-memorize, 4-6 minute story scripts plus questions that help the storyteller generate feedback and teach Biblical truths to their audience.
Through oral bible stories that are shared, memorized and dialoged in their own mother tongue, the Bible truth is planted deep in their hearts. Soon these transformed men and women share these stories with others. With the help of local translation efforts and a dedication for word for word accuracy to preserve the Word of God, these indigenous men and women are proclaiming the gospel of Christ in a way that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers, empowering organic Gospel movements to spread in their own communities.
Many KGM Churches and Leaders Are Already Trained in Bible Storytelling,
but Lack Access to the Storytelling Scarf Tool
Pastor Saha and Anju, using the materials and training from Scriptures-in-Use, have been leaders in this work for over a decade, training over 2,000 disciples in the oral arts of sharing the Gospel. And, churches in India are thriving on this 1st Century discipling and church planting model where people are working one on one traveling from village to village and gathering in homes to tell Gospel stories, just like Jesus and His disciples did.
The Bible Storytelling Scarf Accelerates and Enhances Evangelistic Efforts
It can be worn by women or can be hung on walls at home to invite questions about the pictures that lead to opportunities to share the Gospel story. The scarf is portable so the stories can be shared with family and friends at the water well, while working in the factories and fields, or while cooking at the fire pit. It's a true church without walls.
The Bible Storytelling Scarf is Safer as Persecution Increases
"Persecution is increasing... When people do open air preaching or use tracts they can face persecution. Even carrying or giving out Christian materials can get people arrested. When we tell stories, no one can say anything. I tell you that storytelling is the best and safest way for reaching our country. One day storytelling will be the only way for the church to sustain and multiply here.” Field Stories, Scriptures-In-Use
The Bible Storytelling Scarf is a Tool of the Ages
Today we have both the tools of the age, and the tools of the ages. Some examples of the tools of the age are transportation, radio, television, the internet, cell phones, and other kinds of recording technology. However, we must not neglect the tools of the ages, such as prayer and fasting and personally sharing and imparting life.
Of course, orality is a timeless tool of the ages. God Himself is the originator of orality as He spoke the world into existence.
The 65 KGM pastors and hundreds of lay men and women trained by Pastor Saha and Anju, are strategically placed to engage with unreached people groups all around India who have not yet heard the good news of Jesus Christ.
Equip a KGM Leader with a Storytelling Scarf for $15
Jesus told stories and parables. He pulled spiritual truth from everyday life. Jesus’ stories and the questions he asked revealed deep truths to his audience. Jesus often repeated important themes. The stories Jesus told and the life and actions of Jesus himself were told and retold. With the Bible Storytelling Scarf and training, KGM is modeling Jesus example by empowering indigenous believers in oral cultures to reach their own people and nearby unreached people groups more effectively with the gospel.
In the unreached oral societies KGM serves, there is no more powerful way of sharing the Gospel than to empower trained storytellers so they can share Bible stories with their friends and neighbors. The Bible Storytelling Scarf enhances their stories and opens up opportunities in a natural, non-threatening way.
You can play an important part in spreading the Gospel to the unreached in India.
Gift one Bible Storytelling Scarf for $15 or
equip two storytellers with scarves for $25.
Thank You
