What is Church? The STORY of the Book of Acts

Ken posted an instructional tool on his site about how to study the Book of Acts. I want to post an alternative twist to this study. My twist is that it is taught using story form. It may take me a while to get the entire survey up but here is the basic guide to doing the study.

Ideally this study is done using a group of 20-30 people. The person facilitating the training will tell the first few stories and model how the story telling and debriefing will transpire.

Once the large group is familiar with how to tell the stories, divide our group up into smaller groups of 4-6 people. Each group will listen to the Scripture read from different versions of the Bible several times, they will try to retell the story amongst themselves until a good retelling of the story is obtained from the small group. The small group will then tell the story a few times and identify principles of church planting in each story. As each of the small groups complete this exercise, they return to the large group to retell their story and to debrief it. Each group is given different sequential stories so that as the stories are retold in the big group, they hear the entire story.

Now, let's back up. The facilitator will need to tell at least the first four stories (I am including a list of stories at the bottom). He will also lead the discussion of the stories in the big group. While the participants are in their small groups, the facilitator will go between groups to make sure that they are staying on task and to make sure it is storied, not preached.

Here is the list of stories. I will try to post a story a day so that you can see how this works and what would be the different Church Planting characteristics to pull out from each story.

Text Story
Acts 1:1-26 Jesus appears to disciples, is taken up into heaven
Acts 2:1-13 Coming of the Holy Spirit
Acts 2:14-47 Formation of church in Jerusalem
Acts 3:1-4:4 Peter heals a paralytic
Acts 4:5-33 Peter & John before the Sanhedrin
Acts 4:32-5:16 Ananias & Sapphira
Acts 5:12-42 Apostles in jail
Acts 6:1-7 Choosing helpers
Acts 6:8-7:60 Stephen martyred
Acts 8:1-25 Phillip in Samaria
Acts 8:26-40 Phillip & Eunich
Acts 9:1-31 Conversion of Saul
Acts 9:32-43 Peter heals Aneas, raises Dorcas
Acts 10:1-48 Peter & Cornelius
Acts 11:1-18 Peter tells Jerusalem church of Gentile converts
Acts 11:19-30 Gentiles in Antioch believe the gospel
Acts 12:1-19 God frees Peter from jail
Acts 12:20-24 Not in CPM training
Acts 13:1-52 Saul & Barnabas go to Cyprus & Asia
Acts 14:1-28 Paul and Barnabas in Listra y Derbe
Acts 15 Decision of the Jerusalem church
Acts 15:36-41; 16:1-10 Macedonia vision - second missionary trip
Acts 16:11-40 Paul preaches in Phillipi
Acts 17:1-34 Paul & Silas travel together
Acts 18:1-28 Paul meets Priscilla and Aquila