Tracy Radosevic Brings the Gospel of Mark to Life in Abilene

By Cliff Barbarick

With funding from an Advancing the Mission Grant, Cliff Barbarick brought Tracy Radosevic to Abilene, Texas, on September 24 for a full day of biblical storytelling activities. During the afternoon, Tracy led her famous MULL workshop for two of Cliff’s college classes, and that evening she offered a storytelling performance of Mark’s Gospel that was free to the public. In the coming month, she’ll also offer personal storytelling coaching sessions for fifteen students in one of the classes.

The performance of Mark’s Gospel drew nearly 150 attendees, almost 100 of whom were students from Abilene Christian University. As we’ve come to expect from Tracy, her performance delighted, challenged, and moved the audience as they experienced the whole gospel in one sitting. One anecdote captures the power of Tracy’s storytelling: after being completely riveted for the whole 2.5-hour performance, a nine-year-old boy couldn’t stop asking his mom about the surprising ending of Mark’s gospel as they drove home — and even the next day at school, he was still talking about it with his friends in his fourth-grade class. Surely this is exactly what Mark intended to provoke with the “original” ending in 16:8, and Tracy’s storytelling provided a way for the story to keep provoking audiences nearly 2,000 years later.

Tracy Radosevic on stage in Abilene, Texas.

Thank you, Tracy, for bringing the power of biblical storytelling to a new audience in Abilene, and thank you to NBSI and the Advancing the Mission Grant for making it possible! (Also, special thanks to NBSI member Barbara Tucker for making the long drive from Dallas/Ft. Worth to attend the performance and support her friend!)

The Challenge: What ideas do you have to promote biblical storytelling where you are?

By Shelley Gnade

Just this year, grant funding made it possible for Tracy Radosevic to bring the Gospel of Mark to audiences in Abilene, Texas, and for Sandhya Ruban to advance biblical storytelling in India. Your idea could be next.

If you attended the Annual Conference in July, you may remember our challenge: Dream about new ways to grow NBSI, then help us make those dreams happen.

Now we want to extend that challenge to our entire membership.

We want to give away money to fund ideas that will advance our mission, extend our reach, and grow NBSI — and we need your ideas!

The Board has long dreamed of ways to reach new people, enlist new members, engage the members we already have, and introduce biblical storytelling to new communities. Now we want to put some of those dreams into action — and we want to hear your dreams, too.

Maybe you have an idea for sponsoring a regional storytelling event. Perhaps you could develop a plan for establishing relationships with seminaries or schools. Maybe you see an opportunity to have a storytelling or NBSI presence at denominational conferences. Or perhaps you have a completely new idea that none of us has thought of yet.

Surprise us! Dream big!

Funding Is Available

In an effort to advance our mission while being responsible stewards of our resources, the Board has established a grant policy through which we budget funds specifically for projects that advance NBSI’s mission. Normally, applications are reviewed in May and December.

Because we still have grant funds available in the 2026 budget, the Finance Committee will review applications on a rolling basis from now through the end of the year, or until the 2026 budgeted funds have been awarded.

So, if you have an idea, now is the time to bring it to us.

You don’t have to have all the answers. You just need an idea and a desire to help biblical storytelling flourish.

What would you try if you had funding to make it happen?

We can’t wait to hear what you come up with — and to see how, together, we can grow NBSI and share the power of biblical storytelling with even more people.

Online Workshop — October 25

Richard Swanson leads NBSI’s next online workshop on Advent stories — October 25 at 7 PM Eastern. Full details and registration coming soon.

Voices of the Heart: An Advent Telling

SAVE THE DATE! Voices of the Heart, the Metro-DC guild of the NBSI, will be presenting an online biblical telling of Advent Scriptures on November 12th at 7 PM. All are invited to attend as you prepare your hearts for the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior. A Zoom link will be published soon on our Facebook page, website and the November newsletter.

The Stories We Tell: Faith, Film & the Bible

By Jim Sterner

Joe: “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.” Norma: “I AM big, it’s the pictures that got small.” It’s never too early to plan to attend our upcoming NBSI 2027 Conference. And we are so excited to announce the title of this year’s conference. It’s called, “The Stories We Tell: Faith, Film, and the Bible.” Now as your NBSI Board plans our next fun and joy and laughter-filled three days together, we want you to start thinking of what you might bring to the 2027 conference. Have you attended a plenary, or worship, or a workshop, or the Epic Telling, or Lighting the Fire at the conference and said to yourself, “I can do that!” So as we plant the seeds for next year’s Conference, I hope you also noticed the word film in the conference title. So please embrace your inner Billy Wilder and let your creative juices start flowing. As Norma Desmond would say, “All right Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up.”

Network of Biblical Storytellers International

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