Our strategy for CBSM is three easy steps: Worship, Small Groups, and Ministry. This is a process of training students to be disciples of Jesus. First, they must learn to follow and worship Jesus through the preaching of His Word. Then, we want our students to connect with other Christians in our Small Group ministry on Sunday mornings. This allows our students to process and discuss what they learned on Wednesday night, their devotions they read during the week, and what God had been doing in their life that previous week as well. We believe fellowship, thinking, and conversations are a huge part of the Christian life. Lastly, we believe that each student should serve Jesus in their church with the spiritual gifts He gives them. This is our 3rd step called Ministry. We desire that each of our students are on an SMT (Student Ministry Team) to serve Jesus with other students to make our student ministry even more excellent. Through all of this, we want every single student to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, believe it for salvation, live for the rest of their life, and share it with others so that Jesus’ glory is spread from our lives.

Here are some words I wrote a while back on how we came to this style and set-up of ministry, “Check out what Storyline.Framework is all about.  It’s all about teaching students in youth ministry what the Scriptures are all about…Jesus Christ!  We believe that Jesus Christ (God’s Son) is the will of God for all of life (Ephesians 1:7-10), He is the glory of God for all time (Philippians 2:9-11), and He is the point of all the Bible (Luke 24:37, 44).

I remember sitting in my past office which used to be the church’s mini-library.  The tiny office (smaller than the copier room) had enough shelves for all of my books and then just enough space to spare for my desk and office chair.  As I was reclined with my feet resting on my desk and my head resting on my shelves…I was thinking about what I needed to be teaching these teenagers since I only had them for 6 years before they went off to college.  On Sunday mornings I had been teaching them studies on the parables, on prayer, etc.  On Wednesday nights, I had started a series called “Power Chapters.”  That was just taking a really powerful chapter from different books of the Bible…and taking about a month to preach through them.

During that time I was a student in seminary.  I was growing rapidly from everything I was learning in my systematic theology classes and biblical theology classes.  Then I began to think to myself…I’m growing from this, my friends are growing from this, so won’t my students grow from this?  I had looked through all the other curriculum and materials for student ministry.  They were so watered down biblically, they consistently missed the point of God in nearly every passage, and I just didn’t want my students graduating with that shallow knowledge of God and His Word.  I wanted them to have substanenence, depth, and meaningful understand of Christ’s glory.  So in the process of a couple of years, God led me to begin designing and writing these two mega-series: Storyline and Framework.  You can read more about both of them under their headings at the top of the page.”