Upon graduating from Purdue University with a degree in aeronautical and aerospace engineering, Frank and his wife, Stacy, moved to El Segundo, where Frank worked for Hughes Aircraft Company designing commercial satellites. After spending five years as an engineer in California and Georgia, Frank enrolled in seminary and began serving the church. Together, Frank and Stacy have served churches in Tennessee, Georgia, and Arizona for nearly three decades. In 2018, Frank returned to the world of aerospace and aviation, becoming a flight instructor, airline pilot, and, most recently, a senior principal engineer for spacecraft systems.
During that time, the importance of creating tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God became increasingly evident. Therefore, we have created God’s Purpose, a ministry dedicated to provide thoroughly researched and applicable studies and journals for individuals and small groups.
For nearly two thousand years, Christians have meticulously copied, preserved and translated the pages of the Bible. These foundation works are central to connecting our ongoing relationship with God to those who have witnessed His powerful acts throughout history. However, we have found that many Christians are unfamiliar with the Bible and are looking for tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God.
Therefore, we have created
The Trail: A Journey Through the Bible.
The Trail: A Journey Through the Bible offers a fresh, inviting path into the timeless wisdom and wonder of the Bible, integrating centering prayers, a carefully curated reading plan of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha, and open journaling space to capture your insights along the way. Thoughtfully arranged for both structure and contemplation, this book draws you into God’s story while deepening your own faith journey.
The Trail features:
Centering Prayers:
- Begin each session with prayers to quiet distractions and focus your mind on your time spent with God. Establish a meaningful daily rhythm in Bible reading rooted in prayerful focus.
Curated Reading Plan:
Encounter the unfolding narrative of God’s people with a unique, historically attentive reading plan. The Trail’s daily readings emphasize the narrative flow of God’s acts in the lives of His people and are tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God.
Reflective Space:
Reflective Space: Capture your thoughts, questions, and insights in dedicated journal sections, encouraging growth and deeper understanding.
Daily Podcast:
Daily Podcast: We have created a daily podcast which offers brief reflections on one or more of the daily passages.
How The Trail can help you explore the Bible in a meaningful way:
You set the path and the pace -
- You do not need to complete all the readings for each day. Since The Trail is based primarily on reading through the New Testament, you can choose only to read the New Testament through the year. Or, you can add the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. Also, if you do not want to read the Apocrypha, you can always leave out those readings. The path is yours to design.
Connect with historical background -
At times, connecting the writings of prophets with the historical context of Israel and Judah can be challenging. Therefore, we have arranged The Trail so that the prophets are connected with what is happening in the life of the people. Also, we aligned the events of Samuel-Kings with the Chronicles to help you better connect with the overall storyline.
Ask questions and record your insights -
Along the way, you might find powerful insights that you might want to hold on to. Take a moment to record it for the future. Also, you might discover a puzzling question or two. You do not have to find the answers immediately. Instead, write your questions in The Trail so you can refer to them when you have time for in-depth study. As always, you can share your insights and questions with your small group, or friends who are reading the Bible with you.
Leave a Legacy
The Trail is more than a Bible reading program – it’s creating a heritage of faith. As you journey through the Bible, you are also writing a testimony your family can treasure for generations.
The Trail invites you to step away from the noise of everyday life and journey through the Bible with intention, guided by the Spirit, and enriched by reflective practices. Start your exploration today and discover where The Trail leads you.
We have also seen a need for effective and engaging resources for small groups. Therefore, we have also created Toward the Horizon: A New Transformative Small Group Experience.
The Toward the Horizon series is a thoughtfully crafted collection of small group tools created for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God. They are designed to guide you and your community through some of the most powerful passages of the Bible. Starting with the Gospel of Matthew, this new series is designed to help your group engage the Scriptures in a practical way while growing together as a community. Our greatest desire is that Toward the Horizon will deepen your connection with Jesus, and help you discover how true life is found in Him.
Toward the Horizon: The Gospel of Matthew is now available for small groups, personal study, men’s and women’s groups, micro-churches, and anything in between.
To help you get started, we offer a kit containing ten Participant’s Guides and one Leader’s Guide. If you have a larger group or multiple leaders, individual copies of either guide can be purchased online to perfectly fit your needs.
What Makes the Toward the Horizon Series Unique?
- Discover Key Themes: From specific verses to overarching themes across chapters, explore carefully selected passages from the Bible that spark meaningful conversations and practical application.
- Build Community: Engaging questions encourage everyone, regardless of their background with the Bible, to share their perspectives, ask questions, and grow together in faith.
- Waypoints: This innovative approach uses storytelling to illuminate the passage being studied. Making the text more engaging, Waypoints are helpful for story-oriented learners. Waypoints are included in both the Participant’s and Leader’s Guides.
- Flexibility for Groups and Individuals: Whether you are leading a group or engaging in personal study, the Leader’s and Participant’s Guides work together as tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God. Start with the Participant’s Guide, reflecting on the chosen passage through a series of engaging questions. The Leader’s Guide offers extra insights and discussion points. Feel free to skip, reorder, or spend extra time on any question—it’s your journey.
How Our Small Group Study Can Help You!
After spending over 20 years as a minister in the local church setting, I became acutely aware of the need for tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God. This was especially true when it came to resources to support small groups and their leaders.
As church staff have become increasingly busy serving with daily operations and the demands of pastoral care, creating helpful resources has become difficult. Not only that but providing training for small group leaders is often a significant challenge.
Leading a small group involves a variety of skills, from caring for the pastoral needs of the group, to preparing interesting lessons and forming engaging questions. Also, small group leaders themselves are often busy with work and family responsibilities. Therefore, preparation to lead their small group is often limited to a few precious moments before the group is set to arrive. I do not mean this as a criticism of small group leaders or their pastors. Instead, this is simply a reality of the busyness of our world we live in.
Toward the Horizon: A Journey Through Matthew’s Gospel is the first in a series for small groups books designed to deepen your small group’s connection with Scripture and each other. Having served the church for so many years, I have found that a strong small group ministry is critically important to the growth of disciples of Jesus and the creation of community. Our hope is that these tools might be a resource that would be of benefit to small groups, as well as individual studies.
If you are currently not participating in a small group and are looking for tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God as an individual, we believe that the Toward the Horizon study will help provide you with the resources to explore the Gospel of Matthew in a meaningful way. If you are working through Toward the Horizon by yourself, we recommend ordering a copy of the participant’s guide as well as the leader’s guide. This will allow you to work through the questions in the participant’s guide yourself; exploring the biblical passage to discover your own insights and to develop your own answers, before turning to the leader’s guide for additional thoughts on the passage.
Also, if you are someone who has considered becoming a small group leader or would like to gather a few friends to engage the Bible in a deeper way, we offer a package of 10 participants guides with one leader’s guide for your convenience.
Toward the Horizon is designed not only to provide tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God, but also to give you practical instructions and insights on the passage to give you confidence when leading a group.
Instead of reading through a commentary on your own, we have provided biblical insights which will help answer questions from your group. Also, we have included different types of studies such as word studies, comparative investigation, and thematic analysis to help you discover different ways of leading your group through the passage your group is exploring.
Starting with the Gospel of Matthew, this series is designed to help your group engage the Scriptures in a practical way while growing together as a community. Our greatest desire is that Toward the Horizon will deepen your connection with Jesus, and help you discover how true life is found in Him.
We hope these resources will help you walk more closely with God. In the busyness of life, we hope these will help shape you as a leader and help you to be more confident in your faith.
We also invite you to join us on our mission as we create ministry tools for a deeper understanding of the Bible and growing closer to God. We would love for you to partner with us through prayer as well as through one-time or monthly gifts. For more information, just fill out our form on our “Contact Us” page. We are so grateful for your support as we seek to share the teachings and life of Jesus with the world.