Getting Our Acts Together

Engaging with Acts

This Summer City Life Church is going on a journey through the book of Acts together. Each member of the church can engage with the journey in the following ways:

1. Sunday morning presentations, group work and application
2. Cell meetings focused on applying Acts to real life
3. Interaction on the website, with notes, articles and discussion
4. Reading plan for the whole church, covering Acts in 9 weeks
    

Sunday Morning	Subject	What you need to have read
June 30	Introduction
July 7	Pentecost	Acts 1-2
July 14	Church city impact	Acts 3-5
July 21	Persecution and scattering	Acts 6-8
July 28	A radical conversion	Acts 9:1-31
Sep 1	The Gentile vision	Acts 9:32-12:19
Sep 8	The Council of Jerusalem	Acts 12:20-16:5
Sep 15	Pauls' mission highlights	Acts 16:6-18:28
Sep 22	The Church as Ephesus	Acts 19-20
Finish by reading Acts 21-28 in your own time.

This is the outline of the journey we will be taking together, working chronologically through the book of Acts. Sunday's notes and resources for cells will be posted up each following Monday.

Purpose and Expectations

• The Word and the Spirit will work in us if we come with a fresh approach, not with an agenda or assumptions, but open to God to change our values and the way we have been.
• Out of this God will do the same thing that He did when he transformed an uneducated and unlikely group of Galileans into a globe shaping movement.
• Our aspiration is that the Holy Spirit would re-kindle this vibrant community dynamic to which people were daily added.
• Also that we would be re-captured by the power and reality of Jesus resurrection and have sparked in us a new devotion to the Master.
• As we relive these exciting and perilous beginnings of the church, may we have a deeper love for His church and have an outspoken boldness of witness and faith, through word, signs and wonders, and actions to spread the good news like never before.
   

Overview and key themes

Acts was written by Luke as a sequel and continuation of the Gospel of Luke. It was written on the way to Rome with Paul who was to be standing trail for his faith. These accounts document the beginnings of the Church and how Christianity became the faith of the Gentiles. Luke is interested in particular in accounting:

• The CONCEPTION of the Church
• The MISSION of the Church
• The GROWTH of the Church
• The IMPACT of the Gospel on civilisation
   

The book follows a Chronological sequence summarised in Acts 1:8.

Acts has Five main Sections:

1. Introduction (1:1-11)
2. The Origin of the Church: Jerusalem (1:12-8:3)
3. The period of Transition: Samaria (8:4-11:18)
4. The Expansion to the Gentiles (11:19-21:16) - The Pauline Mission: Antioch and the
   Empire
5. The Imprisonment and Defence of Paul (21:17-28:31) - Caesarea and Rome
    

Right from the outset we are caught by the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as two key themes that run through the book, and how this group of Jesus followers, known as the Way, continued the miraculous works of Christ.