August 2: “A Place at the Table” Guest Speaker, OJ Mozon, Griot

A tale of reconciliation and inclusiveness.

About the Speaker:

Ollis Jon (OJ) Mozon, Jr. is a native of Washington, DC who loves to tell stories that energize hope, encourage faith, exude love and enlighten minds. While serving as a Navy chaplain he discovered the joys of storytelling as part of adopt-a-school projects where Sailors and Marines volunteered to read stories at local schools. What began in classrooms expanded to school and public libraries and finally resulted in OJ being a featured local teller at the Swansboro, NC Coastal Storytelling Festival.

OJ grew and developed as a teller through his affiliation with the North Carolina Black Storytellers Association and the National Association of Black Storytellers. He was able to share his expanding repertoire of Bible stories, folktales, myths, legends and historical vignettes for community and cultural festivals, churches, and historical presentations. His passion grew to tell stories like Jesus that changed the course of a person’s life journey.

OJ’s travels and deployments with the Navy and Marines expanded opportunities to learn and tell new tales across America and in several countries around the world. While in the Pacific Northwest, OJ joined the Frog Rock Tellers Circle discovering different telling traditions and styles and participated regularly in the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle on Memorial Day weekends. He completed his Navy Chaplain career at Camp Pendleton and remains in the San Diego area affiliated with the Black Storytellers of San Diego, Inc. and the Storytellers of San Diego.

Storytelling, for OJ, is much more than a teaching methodology or entertaining performance art. Storytelling is the essential heart of ministry. He currently serves as Director of Orality Training with Dynamic Church Planting International and is applying lessons learned through the International Orality Network, Simply the Story and Network of Bible Storytellers to more effectively use oral presentations to reach oral preference people groups with the Gospel message and train inspired leaders to plant dynamic churches.