Inclusive - a drama script for and about your church today

A drama script by Rod Belt.

Themes: Inclusion, holiness, Acts 10.

Cast: 5 (at least one male).

Runtime: 15 minutes.

Is your church facing questions over how to include believers or seekers who don’t fit church norms or whose lives appear at odds with long-held beliefs? How welcoming can we be without compromising our faith? Churches everywhere are coming up against these issues and many are finding them divisive, but while the particular issues may be new the problem of inclusion very much isn't, and this script brings to life a crucial and dramatic moment in early church history when the believers first struggled over a faith-challenging question of inclusion, as related in Acts 10 and 11.

Peter the Apostle has a weird dream and gets an unexpected invitation, and the straightforward way he responds will turn the early Church upside-down and transform it from a purely Jewish sect in one small corner of the Mediterranean to an ever more inclusive faith with a global reach. To the first believers this is such a shocking and unthinkable turn of events that Peter is called upon to explain himself and his actions to the agitated apostles in Jerusalem, and this meeting is brought to vivid life in this script.

This gripping script is a real debate starter and would work well in a themed meeting with space for discussion. It is longer (at 15 minutes) and more serious than most of my scripts – I tried to reduce it to five minutes of humour but it wouldn’t go! Sorry!