Formal Bible Training – A Pastor Shares her Story

Formal Bible Training is needed desperately in this world!

“62% of the world’s pastors have no Formal Bible Training and will probably never get any formal training from Bible school. A lot of these pastors have less than a 6th-grade education”– Phil Long, President of Global Action

My name is Pastor Rebecca Simmons, I currently reside in the United States of America.

This is my story of why I am so grateful for Christian Leader Institute’s free Formal Bible Training online.

I have been a born again Christian since 1994. Prior to giving my life to the Lord, I had been meeting different men who shared the gospel with me and prayed for me, but I was determined not to get saved as I believed that many in the church were living as hypocrites. One night, while I was out getting ready to get drunk, the Lord sent a man into the bar to talk to me about Jesus. He just happened to know my sister and her boyfriend and asked for a personal introduction to me. Once we were introduced to each other, we spent the rest of our time in that bar dancing and flirting with each other and I forgot about getting drunk. After the bar closed, we sat in my car and talked. He told me about having recently being saved and how much he loved his church. Then he invited me to church. At first I told him no. I said if I was going to hell I would go from the barstool and not the church pew. This was because of my belief that all Christians were hypocrites. We became friends and eventually, I went to church with him. When I walked in the door, I felt like I had come home. I felt like I had found the missing part of my life. I kept going and three months later, I gave my life to the Lord. After that moment, I never stopped going to church.

After ten years of going to church and walking in close relationship with the Lord, I felt the call and the urgency to preach the gospel. I didn’t obey the call to preach the gospel or to pastor right away. For some time, I thought it was just a personal ambition and that God could not possibly have been calling me to serve Him in the way.

One day while running from my call, I found out that I was pregnant and I was devastated. I wondered how I was going to preach the gospel with a new baby to care for. When I was five months pregnant, I found out that my baby had died in my womb and I had to have surgery to remove the dead baby. It was while I was in the hospital that God spoke to me. He asked, me what I would have done if this thing had ended in my death. He said that He had touched my body and wanted to know what I would have done if I had died and had to stand before Him and tell Him why I had refused to do what He called me to do. I wept profusely and from that point on, I knew that I would obey God.

I wrote my first book and started getting calls to speak at book clubs and women’s conferences. Each time I was called to speak, I would preach the gospel. See Rebecca Simmon’s Author page at Kindle

I have been serving in that role for the past eight years. God has given me a heart for the lost and I have a desire to lead others to Him. It is my ministry dream to empower God’s people through the preaching and teaching of His Word as contained in the Bible.

The unique challenges in my geographic areas are that there are so many churches and the people have a mentality of going from church to church and seemingly, a lack of commitment to any one house of worship.

The church tat we were in before my husband and I planted our church gave us their blessing as we went out to plant, Our pastor at that time said that we were too faithful and too faith-filled for him to say it was not God. He blessed us and told us to call him if we needed anything. However, he still has a difficult time receiving the fact that we left the denominational structure and branched out as non-denominational.

My husband and I pastor the church together. My mother got saved and started going back to church at our ministry. Our children who are still in New Jersey all attend church every week and are a part of the ministry serving on the praise team, as musicians, as ushers and as junior trustees. .

A scholarship at CLI is important to me because I have not had the money to attend school and there is no where else where you can receive doctrinally sound free formal Bible training online. I believe that as a result of attending CLI I will be more equipped and effective in my role as a pastor in the Lord’s church.

Please pray that I will continue to stay focused on saving souls and changing lives by making disciples of Jesus Christ. Please pray for our finances as both my husband and I are bi-vocational and constantly believing God for our household and church bills to be paid.

Formal Bible Training at CLI

The Formal Bible Training includes a certificate program, a diploma program and a degree program. The degree program offers an Associate and Bachelor Degree which has an administration fee.  If you are a pastor and need Formal Bible Training online, Christian Leaders Institute will help you get what you need.