Forgive and forget and other unusual Bible stories – Audio

Old treasures

This series of stories was created out of lectures I gave at annual Storytelling seminars for Tabor College students between 1983 and 1986. I had no idea at the time I put them into circulation how far and wide they would go. People (mums, dads, teachers, and kids) listened to them in India, USA, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and all over Australia.

Tyndale Publishers in Chicago made a book of the title story. You can still get it as a read-along e-Book in my store. I actually read it and the pages turn automatically. It comes in 2 version; prose and verse.
Prose version
Verse Version

Fond memories

To my great surprise, many grown-ups bump into me and tell me they loved these stories as little kids. I could fill a book with their tales. One woman told me that as a little girl she had been very ill for months in hospital and her Daddy bought her the cassette tapes and listening for hours a day, these stories helped her heal.

One family only knew the stories by the number of the cassette and it is still a joke between us that the youngest girl, 6 years old (now 35 and a mother of 3) became very upset when she said, ‘Tell Number 5’ and I had no idea what the story was.

Faded …

But as the years wore on cassettes went the way of the dinosaur and the masters went in a box in the garage. It became too expensive to remaster them until lately, and all I needed was someone to ask if they were available to stir me into action to get them out there again. Someone did.

They live again

Like many other people over the years the woman who made the enquiry told me how much she loved the originals and how she had played them to her children who now have children of their own. She not only wanted to reminisce the good feelings she got when listening back then, she wanted to get her grand children and school classrooms listening too.

All your old favourites are here

I must confess I had forgotten I had ever told some of these stories. They might take you back too. And if this is your first experience I hope you get as much pleasure out of these stories as thousands of people before you.

Bring back the memories. Share with the next generation

I hope listeners will forgive the rather variant sound because these recordings were made between 1982 and 1984 on rather ordinary equipment in live conference rooms and have been remastered as best we can manage onto CDs. They wouldn’t be the same if I re-told them in the studio.

Story Titles.

CD 1

• Forgive and Forget
• Forgive and Forget (an older version)
• The Finger Fight

CD 2

• Chosek and Chassad
• Giving it a go
• Nana the singing goat (This story was later published in a Christmas Anthology by Tyndale Publishers)

CD 3

• The King’s birthday
• How the mosquito got its sound (OK It’s not a Bible story but I sneaked it in)
• The busy pastor

CD 4

• The daddy with no name
• Mr Joe Zaphenath Paneah
• The gardener’s pets

CD 5

• Benny’s pigeons
• G.I. Deon
• The history of storytelling
• Zacchaeus

CD 6

• Golly
• An ambitious man

Here’s what Dr Barry Chant said about the original series

Dr Barry Chant was the Principal of Tabor College (where these recordings were made) and as things turned out I later became one of the Tabor board members.

I’m really glad that Colin Pearce has produced this series. Like many of our students, I’ve enjoyed his ‘unusual’ approach to the Bible and its main characters for many years. The first time I heard Colin’s delightful “Forgive and Forget” I hoped that many other people would have the opportunity to hear it too. Now, through this series, you can listen not only to this tale, but to many others as well. Colin’s skill as a raconteur is outstanding. Like the Master he serves, he has learned that stories beat sermons every time.
I hope he will go on writing and telling them and that thousands of people, young and old, will enjoy them as much as I do.