C.R.A.S.H. Course

When I first went to college, I thought I knew what I wanted to do in life. Before coming to college, I had just gone through a difficult time in my life and wanted to devote my life to Christ and stop living for myself. Being a missionary while working as an engineer was my plan so that I could have money while serving God, but He had other plans. In this section, I hope to show how God used my college years to equip me in ministry and how the idea of Crash Course came to be.

At the beginning of my college career, I had joined extracurricular activities like intramurals and clubs that went with my major. A friend from my home church in Crestview suggested I join Baptist Collegiate Ministries since it was a Christian group. I went to their weekly meeting, CRASH, and it was very different compared to many other Christian events I had been to; honestly, it was kind of weird. The students were super friendly, their director was an old man, and they genuinely cared about Jesus. I did not completely commit to being a part of BCM because I wanted to see what else college had to offer. In the next semester, BCM went on a mission trip and I knew I had to go since that was part of what I wanted to do in the future. We drove almost three hours to do evangelism to college students in Panama City Beach during Spring Break (Party Central!) Anytime the director, Tony, drives for a trip he has someone sit in the front seat, affectionately known as the “hot seat,” to keep him awake but also to have discussion. Since I was the new freshman in the group, I had the pleasure of sitting in the “hot seat” the whole time. Tony asked me question after question about my life, my family, future plans, and what God has done in my life. I didn't realize then how important this conversation would be in my life, but it also began a mentoring relationship with Tony.

As the semesters continued, I was given more roles and responsibilities in BCM and enjoyed every second of it; it became a passion of mine to serve others and help people grow in Christ. Not only was I serving in BCM, but I also served at my church by joining the greeting team for Sunday mornings and helped with the direction and teaching for the college group. Eventually I hit a fork in my school career where I had to choose between continuing in engineering or being in leadership in BCM due to scheduling issues. It was at this time where Tony and other mentors helped me discern my calling to ministry. I kept using engineering as a fallback in case ministry didn't work out, but Tony told me that if I am called to ministry then I do not need to have a backup plan because God will always provide.

After accepting my calling to ministry, I was given more opportunities to not only serve but to lead. Leading really caused me to grow in learning how to teach, orchestrate strategic teams, and mobilize students for the gospel. All of the learning and leading eventually led to an idea for developing leaders within BCM, Crash Course. I wanted to create a curriculum that would be a starting framework for their Christian walk. The idea of it came from different churches having a membership class once they join the church. So, once a student joins a ministry or leadership team then they would have this resource as an initial framework to build a foundation and use to equip others. This book is not comprehensive for each subject but is a starting point to guide you in the right direction. At the beginning of each chapter, you will see a scripture verse and we want to encourage you to memorize it to begin building that discipline as well as remember the material that follows. I hope that you find this book helpful for whatever stage of life you are in and I pray that this would ultimately glorify God.