About GoodLion.

I spent more than a decade doing youth ministry, and somewhere in the middle of it, a few things became impossible to ignore.

Young people were hungry. Genuinely hungry. Not just for content or clever teaching, but for someone to sit with them, open the Bible, and help them figure out what following Jesus actually looked like in the world they were living in!

That hunger was real and it was beautiful.

But so much of what modern youth ministry offers is too shallow to satisfy, or too disconnected from the local church to send them anywhere rooted when the program ends.

I kept asking the same question: what would it look like to do this differently?

A few years ago, I found myself in a season of transition. I had moved from California to Oklahoma, stepping away from a vibrant youth ministry career, and I was doing a lot of work in the nonprofit and content space, trying to keep shepherding people through writing, teaching, and podcasting.

I was grateful for it. But I missed embodied ministry. I missed sitting across from young adults and watching the lights come on. I deeply feel God has made me to be a person who shows up in the lives of others.

I had a deep longing for more local pastoral ministry — to come alongside local churches and help close some of the real gaps in how we were teaching and forming young adults.

So I started writing. Just a vision. A simple idea for what a genuine school of discipleship could look like: theology that went deep, formation that went personal, and a structure that was always sending students back into their churches more rooted than when they came.

I put it all in a PDF, stuck it in my backpack, and honestly wasn’t sure if it would ever be more than a dream on paper.

Then I got invited to speak at a camp in Oklahoma, put on by two churches: The Good Fight and Calvary Chapel Oklahoma City. I taught on the kingdom of God, one of my favorite topics. After the session, the youth pastors sat me down. They told me the students were lit up. They asked me what was burning on my heart.

I reached into my backpack and put the PDF on the table.

“This,” I said. “I’m not sure if it works. It’s just an idea.”

They read it. Then they looked up and said: “Where have you been!? We’ve been praying for someone to do this in this city for years!”

That was 2023. That was the birth of the GoodLion School of Discipleship.

What started as a piece of paper in a backpack became a collaboration between multiple churches across OKC, working together to mentor and disciple young adults. It has been one of the great joys of my life.

A little about who I am: over the years I’ve been a pastor, a Bible teacher, a writer, a podcaster, and an independent missionary and ministry leader. I have worn a lot of hats.

But when I boil it all the way down, my two favorite roles are simple ones.

1. Leading my family: my wonderful wife Brooklynn and our kids Jack and Ellie.
2. Shepherding. I am happiest when I am in a room with people, helping lead them closer to Jesus. That is the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

The School of Discipleship is not a platform or my personal brand. It is a room. A small, serious, warm room where we open the Scriptures together, ask honest questions, wrestle with real theology, and then send you back to your local church and your everyday life better equipped to walk with Jesus.

The teaching draws on expository Bible study, biblical theology, spiritual formation, cultural analysis, spiritual direction, and pastoral care. It is visual, discussion-heavy, and designed to move from the text into your actual life without skipping the hard parts.

I teach from my own convictions. I also regularly bring in guest teachers who do not agree with me on every point, because students need to see how faithful Christians can disagree: with clarity, with humility, with love, and without burning the relationship down. That is a discipline worth watching and worth learning.

My commitment is to strengthen local churches, not compete with them. I want students to go home more rooted, not less — to form young adults who know the Scriptures, love their local congregation, and bring honest questions into ordinary life as genuine apprentices of Jesus.

That is why I built this.

I would love for you to be part of it.

Aaron Salvato