Formal Training in Church Planting at CLI
I am Beauty Nobuhle Tyalimpi, a mother of three children and a grandmother to five. Born and bred in South Africa in the Eastern Cape, I am a 59-year-old widow and a primary school teacher. I love the Lord and am also a church planter. So, I am excited to receive formal training in church planting at the Christian Leaders Institute.
My Early Years
In my early years, I grew up in a Methodist church home. My mother was a full member of the church. As black South Africans, things were not easy for us. My father was working in Johannesburg, far from home. He was at home only for three weeks in December every year.
After I passed Matric, I went to Johannesburg, where I heard about salvation for the first time. I was born again. However, I had to go back home and pursue my teaching career. Then, I married and went to my husband’s church. I longed for what I experienced in Johannesburg, but no church preached salvation nearby. After some years, I bought a house in Queenstown, a nearby town. There I joined a vibrant church, His Grace Tabernacle Church. God brought me back to life again.
Calling and Formal Training at CLI in Church Planting
I discovered a side of me I did not know existed. The problems I had in my marriage became insignificant. My life filled with inexplicable peace and joy. I experienced the power of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. I found myself preaching to groups of women. Naturally, I am a shy kind of person, but when I stood up to share the gospel, I amazed myself. Something was burning inside of me that was not easy to contain. My pastor invited all the people who had a calling from God to a two- day seminar. He encouraged us to pursue God’s calling. He helped me to start church planting, so now I am a church planter.
Whenever I face challenges in church planting, there is a little voice that tells me that I am not qualified in ministry like I am in teaching. I want to dedicate my life to being a fulltime minister. With the Christian Leaders Institute’s formal training, that little voice will be silenced. I will be more effective and confident in ministry. I also want to grow in my relationship with God.
With CLI’s formal training in church planting, all my dreams will be fulfilled!
Learn about ordination at the Christian Leaders Alliance. Interested in a low-cost degree? Check out the CLI’s Leadership Excellence School.
Free Training at CLI for My Youth Pastor Call
My name is Daniel Schippers, and I am receiving free training at CLI for my youth pastor call. My family and I currently live in Coopersville, Michigan. I am 37 years old. Although I have believed in God my entire life, I didn’t become a Christian until I was 30.
My path to Christianity was a long and rough road that went through my parents’ divorce, firefighting, the military, lots of death and depression, a special needs child with lots of surgeries and trips to the hospital, as well as my divorce.
Realization and Salvation
After a long downhill struggle, I finally hit rock bottom during the summer of 2012. It was the middle of the night, and I was sitting in an empty parking lot in downtown Chicago. I was at the end of my rope; broke, lost, and in a car that was breaking down.
I saw a bumper sticker that read, “In God We Trust.” Then I remembered what my ex-wife’s Grandma said to me once. Grandma said that she couldn’t pray for our special needs daughter because she prayed that God brings my wife back to Him so she couldn’t question His means.
Now, although I do not agree with her statement, it made me come to an important realization. Everything that I went through was not God punishing me, it was God testing me, and up until this point, I failed. Everything that I had gone through was meant to bring me closer to God. He wanted me to rely on Him; I was relying on myself.
After I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, my life turned around. God led me to the love of my life, a beautiful Christian woman. With my two daughters and her two daughters, God made our fantastic family of six. After trying a couple of different churches, we finally found our church home in 2013 at Coopersville Reformed Church. We have been there ever since.
Church Involvement
In more recent years, my wife and I have been getting more involved in the church. I felt a strong calling to go into youth ministry. Therefore, I volunteered at what we call “The Nest.” I drove the bus to pick the kids up and cook breakfast for them. I felt I wasn’t doing enough, so I started substituting for Sunday School teachers. Still, I felt I wasn’t doing enough, so I helped out with the Middle School and High School youth groups.
In the High School youth group, I felt my calling. So I became a leader and have been there for two years. I love being a youth leader. However, I still felt I wasn’t doing enough. That’s when God told me that it wasn’t “how much” but “what” I was doing. At a fall men’s retreat, He said to me that His path for me was to become a youth pastor.
Youth Pastor Call and Study at CLI
About this time, I was also nominated for the role of deacon at our church. I wasn’t feeling a calling to be a deacon since I felt a strong pull to the path of a youth pastor. I brought all of this to a pastor at our church. He told me to accept the deacon role and to start taking classes through the Christian Leaders Institute. Taking free training at CLI for my youth pastor call is what I am doing, and I became a deacon. I am pleased with both choices.
My spiritual goal is to keep young adults in the church. After High School, so many leave the church. I want to excite High Schoolers so much that they don’t want to leave the church. I wish to light a fire in the youth of the church that nobody can blow out, no peer, no professor, not the Devil himself. To God, be the glory!
Learn about ordination at the Christian Leaders Alliance. Interested in a low-cost degree? Check out the CLI’s Leadership Excellence School.
Study at CLI to be a Wedding Officiant
My name is Terri Krause, and I am studying at CLI to become a wedding officiant. I live in Elkhart, Indiana, USA. I grew up in poverty. However, my parents were Christians, so we grew up in the church. My view of God was skewed. I saw Him in heaven, holding a huge stick, waiting to beat me if I made a mistake. But, while I didn’t understand my Loving Father and His grace, as a small child, I memorized a lot of Scripture that later proved to help me grow in my faith.
During my senior year of high school, I received a scholarship to a private Catholic University in the Midwest (USA) and earned a BBA in marketing. I had no relationship with Jesus because I didn’t know you could have one.
Saved by God’s Grace
With an excuse not to attend church, I drew further away from God. I married and divorced, met another man, graduated, got pregnant, and married again. With a baby and a second marriage filled with pain, the Lord reached out to me. He spoke to me. I turned the television on one Sunday morning, and a Scripture was at the bottom of the screen. Jeremiah 29:11—”For I know the plans I have for you,” saith the Lord. “Plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Suddenly, I knew God was real. He reached out to me in my grief. I gave myself to Him, and He began to teach me, bringing up the scriptures buried deep in my heart. Now, however, I understood what they meant.
My Work and Study
Today, I have been a Christian for 40 years. I wish I could say I always made the right decisions. That is not the case though. But, God has never abandoned me or condemned me. Instead, He assures me of His love and is gracious to help me. I own a small web development company and have held several managerial positions over the years. Then, in 2009, I was asked to work with an organization helping first-generation students finish high school and go on to college. It was a fantastic experience, and I fell in love with my students and their families.
In 2013, I went back to school to get my Master’s in Education because I felt I needed a learning theory to help my students succeed. Then, I was offered funding to do my doctorate in Learning Design and Technology. My dissertation is on the viability of a fully remote apprenticeship delivery system. I desire to not only expand access to an apprenticeship for students such as mine; but, also to help provide authentic apprenticeship opportunities to pastors in remote areas of the world. I am finishing my dissertation this Spring. We are implementing our first fully remote apprenticeship system in Arkansas this year.
Studying at CLI to be a Wedding Officiant and More
I was directed to the Christian Leaders Institute by a friend because I was asked to officiate a wedding. I wanted to find a training program that legitimately credentialed me rather than merely buying a one-day license. Also, I have been contemplating becoming a Chaplain so that I could visit some of my incarcerated students. I have never been in a church that commissioned or ordained lay people to ministry, so I have not had the opportunity to experience that.
After going through a few of the CLI lessons, I am starting to see that God brought me to this place. I don’t know what He has in mind, just as I didn’t when He offered me the Ph.D. However, I do know He has a plan and is working it out in my life. To Him be the Glory!
Learn about ordination at the Christian Leaders Alliance. Interested in a low-cost degree? Check out the CLI’s Leadership Excellence School.