Our History

Verse By Verse Ministry International is a young organization.  Founded in 2003, the ministry began as a simple way of distributing recorded teachings taken from the Bible studies of Stephen Armstrong, a Sunday school teacher and itinerant preacher. As Stephen taught the Bible in churches, homes and neighborhood club houses around San Antonio, attendance and interest grew, both in his teaching and the ministry website.  Soon, other men and women with a similar love for God's word joined in the work of the ministry, and Verse By Verse Ministry began to take shape.

By 2005, the ministry began to receive requests from churches around the country to hear Stephen teach, and the online audience began requesting more content than the existing website could accommodate. With the help of a website developer, Stephen began work on a new version of the website, and by Fall 2005 the first major update to the VBVM website launched. Almost immediately, the site experienced a surge in traffic and a regular pattern of donations.

The need to accommodate this rise in financial giving to the ministry led to the establishment of a formal non-profit organization called Verse By Verse Ministry of San Antonio and the appointment of a Board of Directors to provide oversight and accountability.

Over the next several years the ministry grew steadily by God's grace. In 2008, the ministry began producing written studies, and by 2009 the ministry website was receiving over 1 million hits and distributing nearly 50,000 Bible lessons each month.

To accommodate the traffic and interest, the ministry designed and launched a new website in July 2009 - a major undertaking that contributed to an accelerated expansion of VBVM's growth and reach for Bible students around the world. After 18 months in service, the site delivered nearly 600,000 hours of Bible teaching worldwide and logged over 1 million visitors annually.  

In January 2011, the ministry launched our current website hoping to stay ahead of the growth curve. The new site incorporates better navigation and a topical index. Also the infrastructure is more robust and can handle substantial increases in traffic and content.

Finally, VBV Ministry is reaching out to new parts of the world with in-person courses and counseling to pastors, teachers and others who desire to minister according to and through God's word. The ministry is actively teaching in North America, Europe, Africa, Central America, and Asia, prompting the Board to change the ministry name to Verse By Verse Ministry International to reflect our worldwide reach. 

We also continue to add volunteer staff and Bible teachers to assist in the development and presentation of new curriculum and written study materials. Though the ministry is growing and adapting to meet many needs, the primary goal of the ministry remains unchanged: to teach God's word clearly and boldly until all sixty-six books of the Bible verse-by-verse have been proclaimed verse-by-verse and made available online for free.