Acts 6:3-13

³So, friends, you pick 7 of your own men to do that job. They can give the widows money and food. You have to pick men that other people say are good men. They have to be men that God’s Holy Spirit controls properly, and they have to be men that always think properly. We will make those men bosses of that work. They will give money and food to the widows.

⁴And we will keep on praying and teaching God’s word.”

⁵All the Christians agreed with those 12 men. So they picked a man called Stephen. He was a man that God’s Holy Spirit controlled properly. And they picked some other men called Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolas. (Nicolas came from a town called Antioch. He was not born a Jew but he turned to God and started to follow the Jewish ceremonies, and after that he believed in Jesus.)

⁶They brought those 7 men to the 12 close followers of Jesus, and those 12 men prayed for God to help those 7 men, and they put their hands on their heads to show that they were giving those 7 men that job.

⁷At that time the Christians kept telling God’s word to more people, and a lot more people in Jerusalem believed in Jesus. A lot of the men that looked after the Jewish ceremonies also believed in Jesus.

⁸God helped Stephen to be good to everybody, and he gave Stephen the power to do great things to show people that God was great.

⁹But some Jewish men started arguing with him. Those men came from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia. They belonged to a Jewish meeting house that they called the Meeting House of the Free Men.

¹⁰But God’s Holy Spirit helped Stephen to think properly, and gave him the right words to say. His words were so strong that those men couldn’t win any argument.

¹¹So they talked to some other men in secret and paid them money to tell lies about Stephen. Then those other men said, “We heard Stephen say really bad things about Moses, and about God.”

¹²They told these lies to the older Jewish leaders, and to their law teachers, and to a lot of other people. Then all those leaders got upset, and they went out and grabbed Stephen and they brought him to the Jewish council, for them to judge him.

¹³Those men from the Meeting House of the Free Men got those liars to stand up and say, “Stephen keeps on talking against this place, God’s special place. And he keeps on talking against our Jewish law.