Acts 4:13–20 — Retelling 2

Lightly edited excerpts from transcript 2. Both Scripture readings and unrelated meeting conversation are omitted. Repetition, fillers, a memory lapse and clear transcription errors have been tidied while preserving the conversational approach.

## Preparing to retell

**Bob:** I learned some interesting things about this next portion—the retell. A retell is not saying the verses in the same words. If you walked up to one of your clients and said it exactly as written, they would ask, “Who is Peter? Who is John? Who are the Sanhedrin?” and a whole bunch of other things.

I will let you read it twice, and then I will attempt the retell. I want to do it in a way that does not add things that are not in the text, but uses what can be derived from it.

**Participant:** Like telling a story without someone necessarily having to know the characters.

**Bob:** That is right. Confining myself to this text, how would I tell the story to your client—to Beth?

## Bob’s retelling

I want to tell you a story about Peter and John, who healed a man. They were called to account and questioned about this by a ruling group called the Sanhedrin.

They called in Peter and John, along with the man who had been healed. As they began to question them, they realised these were unschooled people who had been with Jesus, and they were very bold.

The leaders were trying to figure out what to do. They did not want this teaching to spread, so they sent the men out of the room while they debated among themselves.

They said, “We do not want this teaching to spread, but everybody in the whole town has heard about this. What are we going to do? We are going to command them not to speak any further about Jesus.”

When they called them back in, they told them that. Peter and John replied, “You judge what is right. Should we listen to you, or should we listen to God? How can we stop talking about what we have seen and heard?”

## Reflection afterwards

**Participant:** Very good.

**Bob:** The one part I missed was that they could see the man who had been healed standing there. There was nothing they could say.

**Participant:** That is okay. I think that worked.

**Bob:** I had to reorganise it quite a lot to have it make sense, and I do not think I added anything.