CASE STUDY : The Path App
Making discipleship personal

Building a Cross-Platform Discipleship App for Churches Making Disciples Who Make Disciples

THE CHALLENGE

The Path discipleship material existed in print and PDF form, but Confluence churches needed a modern, interactive way to deliver it across both major mobile platforms. The app needed to:

  • Present 33 chapters of rich content in a readable, distraction-free format

  • Let users highlight paragraphs and take personal notes tied to specific passages

  • Sync progress and notes across devices

  • Ship on both iOS and Android without maintaining two separate codebases

  • Keep the focus on the content and the relationship — not the technology

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Path is a structured discipleship tool built for the Confluence family of churches. It guides people through four "Trailheads" — 33 chapters covering the foundations of following Jesus: salvation, identity, spiritual practices, and mission. The material is designed to be worked through relationally, one person guiding another, with the app serving as the map.

I built The Path as a cross-platform app using SwiftUI and Skip to ship natively on both iOS and Android from a single codebase.

Platforms: iOS & Android
Timeline: 5 months from start to launch
Tech: Swift 6, SwiftUI, Skip, Supabase, WebKit

Technical Implementation

Core Architecture

  • Swift 6 + SwiftUI — Modern Swift concurrency with async/await, MVVM architecture, and @Observable for clean state management

  • Skip — Single SwiftUI codebase compiles to native iOS and native Android, no separate Kotlin project needed

  • Supabase — PostgreSQL backend with row-level security, real-time sync, and built-in auth (Sign in with Apple + email/password)

  • WebKit Rendering — Chapter content rendered as styled HTML with custom typography (New York serif body, SF Pro headings) and full light/dark theming

  • Content Pipeline — Source markdown converted through a custom build process into themed HTML for native rendering

  • NavigationStack — Path-based navigation for a fluid reading experience across chapters and trailheads

  • Swift Concurrency — Async/await throughout for networking, data sync, and background operations

Key Features Developed

  • Cross-Platform from One Codebase — Built with SwiftUI and Skip, shipping native apps on both iOS and Android

  • Structured Reading Experience — Four Trailheads with 33 chapters, rendered with custom typography and theming

  • Interactive Notes — Tap any paragraph to highlight it and add personal reflections, synced via Supabase

  • Progress Tracking — Picks up where you left off so you can read throughout the week

  • Sign in with Apple — Simple, secure authentication alongside email/password

  • Community-Ready Architecture — Designed with note sharing and group discipleship in mind

Development Process

This project sits at the intersection of my two worlds — 13 years of iOS development and over a decade in pastoral ministry. I designed the UX around how discipleship actually works: two people meeting regularly, reading together, reflecting individually, and sharing what they're learning.

Choosing Skip let me write SwiftUI once and deliver a genuinely native experience on Android — critical for reaching the full Confluence community without doubling the development effort. I used this project as an opportunity to modernize my workflow — leveraging AI tooling to accelerate development and automating build and deployment processes.

Every technical decision was filtered through one question: does this serve the discipleship relationship, or distract from it?

THE RESULTS

The Path delivers a complete discipleship experience on both iOS and Android from a single Swift codebase — making the material accessible to the full Confluence church community regardless of platform.

Technologies Used

  • Development: Swift, SwiftUI

  • Cross-Platform: Skip for transpiling to Android

  • Database: Supabase for data and syncing

  • Content Processing: XML/XSLT transformations, Python scripting

  • Development Tools: Xcode, Git, Github Actions, Android Studio, Claude Code