This article offers a creative case study on utilizing oral narratives and symbolic rituals to facilitate worldview transformation in traumatized youth. It follows Abdul, a Nigerian youth raised in a dysfunctional home marked by abandonment, rejection, and unresolved grief. Framed by a centered-set approach to discipleship, the study traces a scripturally anchored journey in which biblical narratives of the abandoned-but-restored are reenacted through a three-stage ritual of separation, liminality, and reincorporation, while songs and symbols drive the doctrine of adoption “deep into the bone.” Such experiential, oral, art-based discipleship, it concludes, can restore identity and transform worldview in traumatized youth.
David Oluseyi Ige is a worship leader and a cross-cultural missionary. He is deeply committed to seeing nations worship the Lord in their unique and indigenous ways. He is an Arts Advocate and coordinates the Worship from the nation’s initiative, a Declare Global Outreach Mission project that seeks to produce 1000 indigenous songs, 300 music videos, and 100 evangelistic films for 100 unreached people groups in the Sahel of West Africa. He has a Master’s in world arts from Dallas International University.
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