The ACT Bible Study Method

TLDR: The Bible is more than a story, it’s a drama showing us how to be saved and who we are in Christ and the role we play in living like Jesus. As such, the way we study and teach the Bible with our children should focus on acting.

“All the World’s a Stage.”

William Shakespeare

God made us to be actors. Not the kind that pretend to be someone they aren’t. The kind that recognizes God has given us a role to play in his ongoing dramatic story of redemption. We were made to serve him. We were made to act.

This is at the core of the gospel. When we trusted in Christ, we were made new in his image. From that moment on, we are in an ongoing process of learning who Jesus is and how we can live more like him. Not his divinity—we can’t copy that—but rather his perfect humanity. That we can copy. And as we grow and live more like Jesus, we glorify God and make much of him before the watching world—our audience.

Family discipleship has never flourished in America, and I believe the reason why—at least in large part— is because we’ve missed this focus on acting—at least acting in light of who Jesus is. We might focus on acting “right” or acting “like a good Christian,” but I’m not sure most parents have connected all the dots so the picture looks like it is supposed to: like Jesus.

That’s why I’ve written Family Discipleship that Works: Guiding Your Child to Know, Love, and Act Like Jesus, due out with InterVarsity Press (IVP) this fall, and created the ACT Bible Study Method. In the next several posts, I’m going to introduce this method and several characteristics of Jesus we should aspire to live out. Then, I’ll begin to walk through the dramatic story of Scripture using this method to help parents implement it in their homes.

So let’s get to it.

The Drama of Scripture

But first…

Before we dive into the ACT Method, I want to provide an overview of the drama of Scripture as I see it. This will be important for Step 1 of the method.

You might be familiar with the Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration metanarrative of Scripture. It’s a good one. But I’m not sure it’s detailed enough. It’s hard to fit much of the Bible into that matrix. So, here’s a way I see this story arc running through all of Scripture:

• ACT 1: God Creates (Gen. 1–2)
  • ACT 2: People Disobey (Gen. 3)
    • ACT 3: God Promises Jesus (Gen. 4—Mal. 4)
    • ACT 4: God Provides Jesus (Matt. 1—John 21)
  • ACT 5: Believers Obey (Acts 1—Jude 1)
• ACT 6: God ReCreates (Rev. 1–21)

I formatted the six acts so you can see the parallelism. Acts 1 and 6 go together, as do Acts 2 and 5 and Acts 3 and 4. Hopefully you can see Jesus at the center of it all too. This structure should give you your bearings in any passage of Scripture you study with your kids.

The Act Bible Study Method

All right, now it’s time. Here we go.

The ACT Bible Study Method is built off the acronym ACT—Analyze, Connect, and Translate.

Analyze the Passage

STEP 1: Introduce the Passage

First, we want to introduce the passage we’re studying to our kids. What book is it in? Who wrote it? What sort of book is it? What was going on in it? And, of course, where does it fall in the six acts of the drama. This will give us our bearings.

STEP 2: Read the Passage

We then read the passage using the translation that works best for your family. I’ll be using the NET in my posts.

STEP 3: Summarize the Passage

Next, summarize the passage as a family. That summary can be pretty broad, or it can get more detailed depending on the age of your kids, your familiarity with the Bible, and so forth. The goal here is to make sure everyone has at least the gist of the passage.

STEP 4: Interrogate the Passage

This is where everyone, even parents, get to ask questions about what was read. No question is off limits! Some of these you might be able to answer as a family. Some you might need to research. Some, you might learn in future times of study. Some you may never answer. That’s OK. One of the big wins here is to give ourselves permission to ask questions and admit we don’t have this all figured out.

STEP 5: Wonder about the Passage

The final step of Analyze, is to make wonder statements. These aren’t questions. They’re seeds of curiosity, wonder, and awe of God and his ways. What makes you curious about the passage? Again, nothing is off limits here.

Connect the Passage to Jesus

Step 6: Find the World in Front of the Text

The “World in Front of the Text” is the world as it’s supposed to be. Every passage in Scripture should prompt oughtness in us. Things aren’t as they’re supposed to be. Things ought to be different. This ideal world is what God created and what Christ’s work will bringing about again one day. For now, we live in its shadows, and these shadows are what we look for.

Step 7: Find the World of Jesus of the Text

This “World of Jesus of the Text” is where we see what Jesus has done to bring the World in Front of the Text closer to reality and/or where we see who Jesus is in ways that if we as believers imitated, we would draw ourselves and others closer to that ideal world. While you as a parent can and should consider your own characteristics of Jesus for this section, I’ll use my framework of looking toward Christ’s love, humility, compassion, generosity, hospitality, forgiveness, and obedience for us to imitate. We’ll explore those in the weeks ahead.

Translate It to Your Context

Step 8: Connect the World of Jesus of the Text to Your World

Our final step is to consider how we can live like Jesus in our context. How can we take the character of Christ that we discovered in the passage and live it out the week ahead. How will we act like Jesus?

Well, that’s it; that’s the ACT Bible Study Method. If you and your family don’t have a plan for regular family worship time, I hope that you will consider giving this a try and I pray that if you do, it bears tremendous fruit in your family.

NEXT: The love of Jesus.