This document provides biographical information about Clyde Taber and Shirin Madani, the founders of the Visual Story Network ministry. It details their early lives and backgrounds, how they met while serving as missionaries in Istanbul in 1988, and how their shared vision led to the founding of the Visual Story Network in 2005 to use media and storytelling to spread the gospel. It outlines the ministry's goals and strategies to train Christian leaders around the world in using various forms of visual media and mobile technologies for ministry.

1. DRAWN INTO
A BIGGER
STORY
TheTabers: Quinn, Sage, Elena, Shirin, Clyde
How Clyde & Shirin
almost became John &
Maria...and were called
to live leveraged lives.

2. 2
Table of Contents
Page 3 GettingtheNamesRight:TheClydeandShirin story begins
Page 4 YouWillReachMillions:MiddleEast&Media
Page 5 NewWineskin:TheVisualStory Networkisborn
Page 6 HistoricShifts:Screens,Story andMobile
Page 7 11Hours ofMediaaDay
Page 8 ThreeMovements:AResponsetoThreeShifts
Page 9 MiddleEastWomen’sLeadershipNetwork
Page 10 WhatGodHasDone
Page 11 IranandIndia
Page 12 OurCenturyTeam
Page 13 ClydeTakesaBeating (Clyde’sstorycontinued)
Page 14 Shirin,AreYou ReallyIranian? (Shirin’sstory continued)
Page 15 TheTaberClan:Quinn,ElenaandSage
Page 16 ContactUs

3. 3
Getting the Names
Right
Clyde made his debut on
September 17, 1962 in
Baltimore as the first of
Emilie and Clyde’s two kids.
Emilie wanted to name him
John Glenn Taber after the first American to
orbit the earth. Clyde III wanted to keep the
streak alive so Clyde Ellis Taber IV was
given the name that started in 1895.
Emilie lost the naming battle, but prevailed
in the next big decision. Born of Polish
Lutheran (Emilie’s side) and West Virginia
Baptist (Clyde’s side) stock, Clyde was
baptized (and confirmed) in St. Paul’s
Lutheran Church north of Baltimore. All was
well in Shangri-La until the Warren Beatty
movie “Bonnie and Clyde" debuted when
Clyde was in kindergarten. The jibe first
heard in the alley behind their north
Baltimore row home had remarkable staying
power, “Hey Clyde, where's Bonnie?”
(continued on page 11)
God is the Great Author of
story. He is the Redeemer
of stories. He is the
Weaver of stories. Here
begin two stories that get
redeemed and woven
together to reveal His
purposes to the nations.
Marcia Carmel
Madani was born
August 17, 1966 in
Compton, California
to Mahmood and
Patricia. When
Mahmood, a first-time father, identified
his daughter through the newborn
window, he thought his daughter had a
birth defect. He got a second opinion from
their neighbor Vicki who confirmed his
suspicion (she had not yet had children
herself).
Shirin's head was oblong from the passage
through the birth canal. Without
consulting anyone else, Mahmood had her
birth certificate changed to Shirin Marcia
Madani. In several Middle Eastern
languages, Shirin means “sweet.”
Mahmood felt she would need a name to
help compensate for her deformity. It did
not take long for her head to take a normal
shape, but the name change was
permanent.
(continued on page 12)

4. 4
You Will Reach
Millions
From 1993 to 2000 Clyde and Shirin
reached Muslim and international
students in Paris and through North
Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
They poured their lives into hundreds of
students because someone cared
enough to do it for them while they were
in college.
While on a trip to North Africa in 2000,
Clyde met Mohammed, a Muslim student
open to the Gospel because of media he
found through satellite television. On the
same trip, an American pastor he had just
met surprisedClyde by saying “I sense
the Lord is going to use you to reach
millions through media.” Clyde couldn’t
dismiss that God was confirming a new
desire to use visual media to reach the
lost.
In 1988, the east coast boy met
the west coast girl in the Middle
East.They fell in love while on a
one-year mission in Istanbul,
Turkey.
For the next seven years Clyde
oversaw the development of
some of the most innovative
evangelistic media in the world
through the JESUS Film Project.
More than 100 million people
have been influenced through
these tools and strategies.
1988-89 Istanbul team Clyde led. Shirin
is the woman of mystery on the left.
Paris team Clyde led.

5. 5
ANew Wineskin
In 2005, two mission agency directors
were talking while waiting for a plane in
Bangkok,Thailand. Jim Green (Executive
Director,JESUS Film Project) and Rob
Hoskins (President, OneHope) shared a
deep desire for the body of Christ to be
more effective in reaching a new
generation for the Gospel.
Eventually, 20 people gathered on May 2006
in Orlando, Florida. Amidst the voices of the
many gathered, oneVoice emerged. There
was overwhelming sense that God was saying
something needed to be done.
At the time Clyde was overseeing the development of new media for the
JESUS Film Project when he was asked to lead this new initiative. A
partnership was formed that would explore new ways to reach people in
our increasingly media saturated world. This partnership became a new
ministry called theVisual Story Network.
The Lineup (Visual Story Network co-founders).
Clyde Taber, Bailey Marks, Stephan Tchividjian, Rob Hoskins, Jim Green,
Paul Konstanski, Rich Sheeley, Bill Sunderland
Jim Green
Rob Hoskins
Visual Story Network

6. 6
Historic Shifts
After 2000 years, the Good News of Jesus has still not reached every person on the earth.The Church
has been slow to adopt new forms of communication in our era of rapid change. Critical Gospel
opportunities are lost.The world is increasingly…
Screen
Dominated
Story
Driven
Mobile Device
Saturated

7. 7
11 Hours of Media a Day
This has a profound effect on
the youth of the world as they
are saturated in media that can
warp their souls.
Watch how in the 3-minute story
ofYuseff and Andrea at
www.visualstory.org/need.

8. 8
Three Movements
In response, theVisual Story Network fosters three fresh moves of God within the global body of Christ.
Our 2016 plans to foster these movements are as follows.The detailed plan is available at
www.visualstory.org/2016.
Visual Media
Movement
Story
Movement
Mobile
Ministry
Movement
2016 Goal: Provide strategic leadership
resources to 500 churches and ministries.
Strategy: 1. Reach 2000 leaders monthly
with best practices and products
communiqué.
2. Introduce 100 leaders to the potential
visual ministry partners.
3. Launch first online course on media
production.
Outcome: These churches and
organizations will develop greater “visual
literacy” and more effectively allocate
resources to media strategies.
2016 Goal: Train 200 Christian Leaders in
10 countries in the art and ministry
application of story.
Strategy: 1. Story Workshops.
2. On-Site Story Training for ministries.
3. Launch first online course on “Story in
Ministry.”
Outcome: These leaders will influence 500
others to integrate the key principles of
story in the content they create and the
ministry strategies they develop. This will
help 50 organizations become more
effective in their ability to captivate the
hearts of non-believers.
2016 Goal: Train 500 Christian leaders in
25 countries to develop local tools and
strategies using mobile devices.
Strategy: 1. Four-week Online Course.
2. Introductory Training Resources.
3. Launching regional mobile ministry
groups.
Outcome: These leaders will influence
two thousand others to adopt
appropriate, innovative mobile strategies
in their ministry outreach helping reach
200,000 people through their mobile
devices.

9. 9
Middle East Women’s
Leadership Network
Shirin has built a network of 100 Christian
female leaders focused on the Middle East.
The network provides training and
mentoring for women in media and
leadership development.
Many of these women are hosts on
Christian television broadcast into the
Middle East.
Sarah is a 27-year-old Iranian who
experienced a radical conversion to
Christ. She was profoundly affected
by the idea that under Islamic law
her voice only counted as half that
of a man in a court of law. She
immigrated to the United States in
2013.
When given the opportunity to host
an evangelistic broadcast television
into Iran, she did not hesitate. She
states, ”since I began to broadcast
on television into Iran, my family
has not spoken to me.”
Regarding the Visual Story Network,
she says,” I love the training and
encouragement I receive. There is
nothing else like this for women.”
In 2013, Shirin was invited to a
gathering of Christian leaders
focused on the Middle East. Of the
100 leaders in the room, she was
one of eight women...and the only
one under the age of 50.
God used that to stir her heart to
develop women leaders. She
launched the Middle East Women’s
Leadership Network. At the next
gathering of leaders, 47 of the 100
leaders were women!
It is her burden to raise up a
generation of godly, innovative
women who will help reach the
Middle East for Christ.
Shirin leads a recent women’s media summit for
55 women.

10. 10
What God Has Done
• The ministry expanded to 1,945 participants in 80 nations reaching an
estimated 260,000 people with the good news of Jesus.
By the end of 2014, God used theVisual Story Network in the
following ways…
• We trained 147 leaders likeJoseph Hovesepian in the use of story in
reaching and teaching people in places like Iran.
• VSN resourced Isabella, a media evangelist inThailand, and 23,000
others who spent 1200 hours onVSN web sites as they sought help for
their mission work.
• The ministry helped Frontiers, a church planting ministry among Muslims,
develop strategies to use mobile phones in evangelistic outreach. Our
Mobile Ministry Forum (expanded to 126 organizations as the world’s
leading partnership platform for using mobile devices in ministry.
• VSN launched the Middle EastWomen’s Leadership Network. Forty
female leaders focused on Iran received training and mentoring.
• Pastor Paul Matthews from India committed to creating the first
evangelistic film in Halbi for the Halbi people. Forty-four other unreached
groups were adopted.
• We trained 345 leaders in the area of mobile ministry like Donna. In turn,
Donna ledAmira toChrist using her mobile phone. Amira is a young widow
in India whose story follows.
Isabella
Joseph Hovsepian
Pastor Paul

11. 11
Today, according to Operation World, the
church in Iran is the fastest growing church
in the world.
David Yeghnazar is the 42-year-old leader
of ELAM Ministries based in the United
Kingdom. ELAM is the largest outreach into
Iran through television broadcasts,
leadership training and church planting.
David had us provide story training for their
25 staff on several occasions. He recently
shared, “The Visual Story Network
training on story telling has concretely
helped us communicate and engage our
audience more clearly and effectively.”
David is the kind of leader we train to be
more effective in his mission through
media.
Amira is a Muslim widow raising two sons in
India. During a visit, Donna shared with
Amira, “I was just given some films on the life
of Jesus that you can watch on your phone.
Would you like to see them?” Amira
hesitated, “Well...sure. I don’t know much
about Him.” Donna gave her a micro SD card
with the films. When they met a week later,
Amira said, “Every evening the boys asked to
watch more films about Jesus.”
After some discussion, Donna asked, “Amira,
do you want to be clean before God by
accepting Jesus as the sacrifice for your sins?”
“Yes, I want this gift,” she replied. Donna
led her in prayer to receive Christ.
Donna and Amira continue to meet and
encourage one other to obey what they are
reading in the Bible. Donna learned how to
use a mobile phone in ministry through
the Mobile Ministry Forum initiative.
Iran and India

12. 12
Our Century Team
Shirin and I have been empowered to “make disciples of all
nations” the last 30 years through the faithful prayer and
financial support of families, individuals, businesses and
churches. These partners have grown with us and our family as
the ministry has expanded.
The team includes nurses, pastors, a Navy admiral, entrepreneurs,
single mothers, teachers, accountants, retirees, producers,
software developers and more.These saints are very dear to us.
We are building our CenturyTeam.This is the 100 partners that
support us monthly through prayer and finance.We currently have
89 partners who give between $30 and $500 per month.
Would you consider joining our CenturyTeam?

13. 13
Clyde Takes a Beating
(continued from page 2)
Clyde and Emilie provided a stable home for Clyde and his sister
Elaine. When he was in second grade, his parents traded the red
brick row home for a red brick rancher on a cul-de-sac with three
quarters of an acre in the suburbs. Always the tallest in class, he
leveraged his height and work ethic to excel in baseball, basketball
and volleyball. As the son of an engineer, academics came to him
naturally as well.
When he organized neighborhood whiffle ball and kick ball games,
he found a way to let kids of all ages play. He felt the pain of those
on the outside. Decades later, the Strengths-Finder test told him
his greatest strength is Includer.
At Fallston High School, sports, academics, a
posse of three friends and a series of girlfriends
kept him confident and content. He balanced
the plates while adding in the weekend party
scene. After graduating near the top of his
class of 225, he strode off to the University of
Maryland with proud shoulders and greedy
hands. As a computer science major, he knew
there was a pot of gold at the end of the four-
year rainbow.
When he arrived in College Park, his shoulders slouched and his
head spun in a mass of 36,000 students. In a sloping lecture hall
with 500 others, he couldn't crack the calculus code and dropped
the course. He retook it his sophomore year and squeaked by with
a "C." To overcome his isolation, he pledged the Phi Sigma Kappa
fraternity his sophomore year. The parties were great, but the
lifestyle was detrimental.
On a gray day in late December in 1982,
he stood alone in his parent’s kitchen. He
forced himself to open the dot-matrix
printout of his grades. He knew it wouldn't
be good. Fourth on the list was CMSC 211
– Computer Architecture. Staring back at
him was the unmistakable mark of his
humanity… a "D." He had never gotten
anything less than a "B" and now he had
a "C" and a "D." For the first time in his
20 years, he saw the universe as
something large and wild. He had to admit ”I’m not as great as I
thought I was.”
He dug up the thick, forest green Living Bible he received for
confirmation and started at page 1. The stories were ancient and
distant, but he hoped for an answer hidden in those pages. With a
new awareness of his limitations, he began to ask, "God, if your real
and if your relevant, would you let me know?” The stage was set
and a battle began in the heavenlies for a lost son.
The next 12 months included...two demonic encounters,
unexplainable answers to increasingly specific prayers, Campus
Crusade for Christ staff giving a presentation in his fraternity, getting
jumped by four vicious guys after leaving the most well-known bar in
the area (“the Vous”) at 1:00 a.m. on Good Friday (which required a
weeklong hospital stay and two surgeries to put his jaw back
together).
One year after his “inciting incident” (opening the grades), he had
joined in a small group Bible study, went to a Campus Crusade
conference with 1000 students, committed his life to Christ and
received a missionary calling.
The hoopster
Fraternity guy

14. 14
Shirin, are you really Iranian?
(continued from page 2)
Mahmood Madani was a direct descendent of Mohammed, the
founder of Islam. This honor earned him the title “Seyed.” While
on an academic scholarship in Los Angeles from his home
country of Iran, he met Patricia, a striking Roman Catholic from
Long Beach. Mahmood was not a practicing Muslim so he agreed
to allow Patricia to raise Shirin and her two brothers as Catholics.
After completing his degree in aeronautical engineering, he
returned to Iran where he rose in the ranks of Iran Air. For the
first 10 years of Shirin's life, the family alternated between a year
in Tehran and a year in Seattle. Mahmood oversaw the purchase
of Boeing aircraft for Iran Air. When Shirin was 10, Patricia
decided to move back to Seattle with the kids. Though still two
years before the Iranian revolution, she did not feel the Middle
East was a place to raise a tall, attractive daughter.
Shirin never quite fit into either culture. This came to a head
when she was in junior high during the Iranian hostage crisis. Try
as they might, she and her brothers could not hide their
ethnicity. It was one thing to get teased by kids, but she felt a
new level of shame when her PE teacher stopped her one
afternoon and said, "Shirin, is it true? Are you really Iranian?”
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, Mahmood left his prominent
position in Iran Air and settled in Seattle selling cable-television
door to door. Patricia's health had been declining, but the family
doctor kept telling her she was experiencing menopause.
One night Patricia was so ill that she was unable to get off the
couch. Shirin, in 8th grade, helped her father carry her mother to
the car to take her to the hospital. Within three weeks, Patricia
was in a coma. Three weeks after that she passed away from
advanced leukemia.
Mahmood was crushed. He had recently lost his country and his
career and now had lost his wife. He was left alone with children
ages 11, 12 and 14. To find himself, he left on extended trips to
Iran. Sometimes there was supervision and sometimes there was
not. Shirin become a mother and head of a household before high
school.
Pam McPoland, Patricia's best friend from
across the street, eventually had the kids
move in with her family. Pam and Dennis
had three kids the same ages as the
Madani's. While the household was chaotic,
it provided a family for Shirin, Thom and
Cameron.
On Sunday mornings and Wednesday
evenings everyone piled into the station
wagon and went to church. Not only did
Pam share the gospel with her life, she did
so with her words. Each of those kids
came to faith in Christ. (NB: Shirin tells
this story in detail in chapter 1 of her book, "Muslims Next Door.”)
One Wednesday evening, Pam directed Shirin to the world map in
the lobby of the church that showed where the church had
missionaries. She said, "Shirin, maybe God will use you some day
to be a missionary to the people in the Middle East."
Shirin, Pam and Dennis

15. 15
The Taber Clan
Quinn, Age 22 graduated in May, 2015 with a degree in economics from
Pepperdine. He is serving with Horizons International in Beirut, Lebanon
as the Creative Media Director. He has been capturing stories of the
refugee crisis in camps inTurkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. Long term,
he would like to use business as mission throughout the Middle East.
Elena, aged 19, is a sophomore at Point Loma University working on an
International Business degree. She recently completed a semester
abroad in Paris where she was way too close to the Paris terrorist
attacks.You can watch her story at www.visualstory.org/parisattack.
Sage, age 14, is in her freshman year of high school atTrabuco Hills. She
runs cross country and track. She loves her not-so-small small group at
Saddleback Church (17 girls). She is a budding portrait artist whose work
can be seen on Instagram at artsty_Sage.
Meet the Tabers in a Minute
25 Years of Marriage www.visualstory.org/25years
Tabers in 2012 www.visualstory.org/tabers2012
Tabers in 2013 www.visualstory.org/tabers2013
Tabers in 2014 www.visualstory.org/tabers2014
Tabers in 2015 www.visualstory.org/tabers2015

16. 16
Contact Us Visual Story Network: www.visualstory.org
Mobile Ministry Forum: www.mobmin.org
Middle East Women’s Network: www.mideastwomen.org
ClydeTaber, clyde@visualstory.org, 949.310.8733
ShirinTaber, shirintaber@gmail.com, 949.235.5148
Online Giving: www.visualstory.org/give
Contributions: Send your check payable to
Visual Story International
P.O. Box 2120
Orange, CA 92859
Office: Visual Story Network
27631 La Paz Road, Suite A
Laguna Niguel, CA 92859