I’ve been teaching a class of 2^nd-5^th graders on Sunday morning for the past few months. The class takes place at the same time as our regular church service because we haven’t had actual class time in over a year. Like every other congregation this past year, ours has been turned on its head. But as families gradually started coming back to worship services, something was needed for the younger children.

When I was asked to teach, I decided that the book of Acts would be the way to go. Church services felt so crazy because we all had expectations built up over long years of tradition. Even the young children had expectations. So what better to study than the beginning of the church itself? A time when the idea of meeting together on a Sunday was all brand new. A time before two songs and a scripture reading and then a prayer. A time before “Just as I Am” had even been written.

I confess, I had never actually read straight through the book of Acts. I had read it in parts. I had been in classes on it. I had even studied it intently for Bible trivia purposes. Paul was forever traveling places and meeting people and taking people with him, so if you want some serious Bible trivia material, Acts is a great place to go.

But reading through it, chapter by chapter, I found out something I had never realized about the book – Acts reads like a television show. There are narrow escapes from capture, captures and jailbreaks, political intrigue, shipwrecks. All kinds of adventures.

There is foreshadowing, like all good episodic TV. God tells Ananias, speaking in reference to Paul, “I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.” And the remainder of Acts shows exactly that.

There are even cliffhangers. One section is all about Philip preaching and spreading the Gospel, and then it’s literally followed with the sentence, “Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats…” Tune in next week to find out what happens next!

It’s been a wonderful book to go through with kids this age. And to be honest, we’ve had a few adventures and misadventures ourselves. I do sort of a mixture of telling the story and reading directly from the Bible, but that means sometimes encountering vocabulary building words. So a lot of lessons are punctuated with, “does anyone know what that word means?” When a group of men are secretly plotting together to kill Paul, the NIV uses the word “conspiracy.” Here’s a little pro tip, do not ask a group of kids this age, “does anyone know what conspiracy means?” The answer is: they don’t know, but they’ve certainly heard every word that swirls around them these days. Now is not the time.

Also, no matter how much you try to skip past the detail in your storytelling, or skip over it in the reading, they will definitely zero in on, and read aloud with great enthusiasm, “…he gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house NAKED and bleeding.” It is an awesome story. I mean, how often does a demon get the best line – “Jesus I know, and Paul I’ve heard of, but who are you?” Then he attacks the men, and…well, you know the rest now. Another pro tip, don’t let the kids draw their own pictures of the story that day. And be ready to give the Scripture reference to parents and apologize.

If there are any elementary school teachers reading this, I bet they’re rolling their eyes so hard by now that they are about to pop out of their heads – she really shouldn’t be left in charge of children at all…

And you’re probably right. But here’s the great part – I’m practically a living lesson of the underlying theme of Acts. Regular people, undeserving people, mistake-prone people. Jesus gave the job of spreading his church to these people. They disagreed about things, they argued about things, they made mistakes and changed their minds, amazing things happened to them and also terrible things. They were people. Just like I am, and you are, and those kids are. And the job is still ours.