How the church started
Acts: from an upper room to Rome
Luke's second volume follows the message from Jerusalem to the capital of the empire. This path covers Pentecost, the first conflicts, the decision to include Gentiles, Paul's journeys, and what Acts describes rather than prescribes.
Built for the days between Sundays
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.
What you'll come away with
What this path is for
Not a reading streak. These are the things you should be able to do on your own once you have worked through it.
Follow the geography
Acts 1:8 is the outline: Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the ends of the earth. You will always know which movement of the book you are in.
Understand the Gentile question
Chapters 10, 11, and 15 settle the hardest issue the early church faced. You will be able to explain the decision and the reasoning behind it.
Read Paul's journeys with a map
Three journeys and a voyage to Rome, matched up with the letters he wrote along the way.
Tell description from prescription
Acts reports pooled possessions, casting lots, and dramatic conversions. You will have a framework for deciding what carries over.
How the tutor works
A tutor, not a search box
The same eight habits run through every path. They are what make this study rather than summary.
Questions first
Open a passage and Trinity asks what you noticed. Your reading comes first, then the explanation.
Greek and Hebrew, one tap away
Tap a word to see the Greek or Hebrew behind it. See what it can mean and where else it shows up.
Follow the thread
Pick one image, promise, or line. Follow it from Genesis through the prophets into the Gospels.
Context that clicks
Who wrote it, to whom, and why. Get the background the first readers already knew.
A plan that bends
Miss a week and nobody guilt-trips you. Your plan fits the time you actually have and picks up where you left off.
Bring your doubts
Ask the question you'd never ask out loud. Trinity takes it seriously, no judgment.
Pick up the thread
Every session ends with a short recap of what you read and what's worth coming back to.
Every side, fairly told
On baptism, the end times, and more, you get the main views and their best arguments. Disputed questions are labelled as disputed.
The path itself
What you'll study, in order
Each unit builds on the one before it. Lessons live inside Trinity; this is the shape of the ground you will cover.
Jerusalem
Forty days, then an ascension
Replacing Judas
Pentecost, and Peter's sermon
Life together in chapters 2 and 4
Ananias and Sapphira
Stephen's speech and death
Judea and Samaria
Persecution scatters the church
Philip, Samaria, and an Ethiopian official
Saul on the Damascus road
Peter, Cornelius, and a sheet from heaven
Antioch, where they were first called Christians
The Gentile decision
The first journey
Trouble at Antioch
The Jerusalem council in chapter 15
What was decided, and why
Galatians read alongside Acts 15
Into the empire
Philippi: a jailer and an earthquake
Thessalonica and Berea
Athens and the Areopagus
Corinth and Ephesus
The riot of the silversmiths
To Rome
Farewell at Miletus
Arrest in Jerusalem
Two years in Caesarea
Appeals, Agrippa, and a shipwreck
The open-ended last verse
I've led a small group for six years, and honestly I was mostly repeating Sunday's sermon. Trinity kept asking what the passage actually said before it would tell me anything. Our Thursday nights are better for it.
I was baptized in March and still couldn't find anything in the Bible. I asked what a psalm even is, which felt embarrassing to type. It showed me Psalm 13, a man complaining to God. I didn't know that was allowed.
I mostly use it for word study. When I'm stuck on a Greek term, it walks me through what it can mean without pretending the question is settled. It's told me "scholars disagree here" more than once, which I respect.
Forty years in church and I'd never finished the Bible. I'm in Numbers now. Not thrilling, but I'm still going. Most days I read it before the kettle's boiled.
I'm not sure I believe any of it yet. I came in wanting to argue, and I still do. It argues back properly. It names the best objection before I can, and it doesn't sulk when I won't concede.
I ask it what a fifteen-year-old would really ask about a chapter. It gives me the awkward questions, not the tidy ones. Twice now it's sent me off to study properly, which I suppose is the point.
I read on my phone during my eleven-minute break, and it never tries to make it an hour. Last week it caught that I'd misread who was speaking in Job. It was one of the friends, not God. Changed the whole chapter for me.
I work in two languages, so I'm fussy about words. I asked why one Hebrew word is lovingkindness in one place and steadfast love in another. I got a real answer about hesed, not a devotional paragraph.
I worried it would hand my people easy answers to hard chapters. It mostly doesn't. Someone asked it about hell, and it laid out what Christians have held and said plainly which parts are disputed. I can work with that.
I sit with dying people, so I don't have much patience for cheerfulness. I'd been avoiding the lament psalms. It walked me through Psalm 88, which ends in the dark and stays there, and it didn't rush to fix it.
I'd abandoned three reading plans before this one. I went quiet for a while, came back, and it just carried on. No lecture. I'm in Isaiah now.
Before you start
Questions people ask about this path
Christians read this differently. Luke reports it as what the Jerusalem church did, not as a command to every church. The path shows the arguments on both sides and the later letters that bear on it.
This is genuinely disputed between Pentecostal, charismatic, and cessationist Christians. Trinity lays out how each group reads Acts 2, 8, 10 and 19, and what each does with 1 Corinthians 12 to 14.
Paul is under house arrest, still preaching, and Luke stops. Proposals range from Luke writing before the outcome was known to an intentional open ending. Trinity gives you the main ones.
It helps, since Acts is volume two and picks up where the Gospel left off, but it is not required. Trinity fills in what Luke established whenever it matters.
Start this path today
The first unit is free, and you do not need to know anything going in. Trinity will ask what you noticed before it explains a thing.
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