10. Urgent Need
The Urgent Need Module is a story that portrays a need to which audience members can easily relate. Its purpose is to respond to the listener’s natural tendency to procrastinate, and to encourage quick obedience to the direction God is leading them.
Here is an example:
Dark Down There
Eugene Scott has spent many years translating the New Testament for the Sharanahua people of Peru. Everyone calls him Scotty.
One day Scotty led one of the older men in the Sharanahua village to Christ. Soon afterward, that the man died. As they were laying him in the ground, another older man, a relative of the dead man, came along side Scotty and commented, “It’s dark down there, isn’t it?”
The man had a tremble in his voice. Scotty knew what was on his mind. The Sharanahuas were traditionally animists. The animists of the Amazon have a fear of darkness. They seldom venture out at night. They hate dark places. Spirits that inhabit the animals, the trees and the water use the darkness to attack their victims to bring sickness and death. Scotty could tell this man was thinking of the day he would be put in a dark hole and confront the terrifying world of the spirits.
Scotty said, “Yes, it’s dark where they are putting his body. But his spirit is going to a place where it is never dark.”
The man was startled. “Do you mean there is a place where it never gets dark?”
Scotty told him, “Yes, Your relative gave his life to Jesus, and Jesus has taken him to where it is never dark.”
The man thought a moment and asked, “Have you known for a long time about this place?”
“Yes, I’ve known it since I was a boy.”
“Did your father know about it?
“Yes, my father knew too.”
After a long pause he asked again, “Did your ancestors know about this place.”
“Yes,” Scotty had to answer,” my ancestors new about the place.”
“I’m and old man,” he said, “and I never heard about that place. My ancestors never heard about it and they all died.”
The man just stood, looking into the hole. He was too polite to ask the next question, but Scotty could read it in his eyes, “If, there is such a place, why did we not know about it?”