Intentional evangelism utilizing stories from God's Word
resulting in multiplying house churches
S-T4T merges two of the most effective approaches in global missions into a single, reproducible strategy for reaching the world's oral majority.
Created by Stephen Stringer and endorsed by leading missiologists, S-T4T gives every believer — literate or non-literate — the tools to share their faith, make disciples, and plant multiplying churches through the power of God's Word in story form.
The oral communication of Scripture through narrative — a method Jesus himself used and that two-thirds of the world naturally understands.
A proven Church Planting Movement strategy that creates obedience-based, self-reproducing networks of trainers planting new churches.
A framework that makes the Gospel available to all people in a way they can understand, remember, reproduce, and pass on to others.
S-T4T is designed from the ground up for the billions who communicate orally — ensuring that no one is excluded from hearing, sharing, and multiplying God's Word.
S-T4T is not a training event — it is a comprehensive, life-on-life discipleship approach that covers evangelism, discipleship, and church formation in a single reproducible framework.
Listen to their story. Share your story. Tell God's story. S-T4T's entry strategy opens natural doors for the Gospel in any cultural setting.
A core set of twenty-plus Bible stories carrying a redemptive theme that builds new believers in the foundations of Christian life — in a format they can immediately pass on.
New believers are brought into house church fellowships where they story through Acts together, experiencing church formation through the eyes of the New Testament church.
The S-T4T strategy covers the five stages of a Church Planting Movement plan — from initial contact to generational church reproduction.
Listen to their story. Build relationship and gain permission to share.
Share God's story from creation to church. Invite a response.
Weekly storying through the core discipleship set in house groups.
Story through Acts. Form indigenous worshipping communities.
Train trainers who train trainers. Reproducing church networks.
"How will you remember this story?"
"To whom will you tell this story?"
"What in this story is there to obey?"
Two-thirds of the world's population communicates primarily through oral means. The vast majority of unreached people groups are non-literate.
S-T4T was built for this reality. By combining oral communication principles — narrative, mnemonic devices, oral thought processes, and communal learning — with the intentionality and accountability of T4T, S-T4T makes the Gospel available to every person in a form they can understand, retain, and pass on.
As one practitioner put it: "We cannot take Bibles to our people — it would be dangerous and ineffective. But we can take God's stories without problems, and they will listen."
"Storying T4T offers an innovative, effective way to witness and to tell the stories of the Bible. This strategy gives an opportunity for two-thirds of the world's population who are functionally non-literate. It's time to return to the method Jesus used to communicate the Truth."
"Storying Training for Trainers is the best-developed resource of its kind. It integrates the advantages of Bible storying with leadership training processes refined in multiple church planting movements. The model offers both structure and flexibility."
"S-T4T dramatically accelerates our training of indigenous teams and gives us a model that takes the mystery out of our storying methodology. We are deeply indebted to S-T4T for helping us provide oral Bibles to every people group awaiting Scripture."
"The International Mission Board has done an amazing job of preparing trainers to effectively teach others how to present the Gospel through story telling. Their emphasis on 'every learner becoming a trainer' puts the training into immediate action."
Access the full library of S-T4T resources — training guides, story sets, facilitator notes, and more — freely available to equip practitioners and trainers around the world.
The full set of S-T4T discipleship stories from Creation to Church — formatted for oral delivery, with facilitation notes and storying guides for trainers.
Browse FilesCFT curriculum and the Acts-based story set for guiding new believers into indigenous, self-sustaining house church fellowships.
Browse FilesThe complete three-day S-T4T evangelism training curriculum — designed to equip every believer to share the Gospel through story in any cultural context.
Browse FilesThe complete S-T4T training manual — including the full core story set, Church Formation Training (CFT), a three-day evangelism curriculum, and the complete glossary and bibliography.
Stephen Stringer, General Editor · WigTake Resources, LLC · ISBN 978-0-9747562-4-0
Church Planting and Discipleship for Oral Learners