My Christian Leader Journey
My name is Krista Ballard. I am on a Christian leader journey at CLI. I am from Pennsylvania in the USA. To be a Christian leader where I live means a lot of encouragement and boldness and support. Being a Christian leader is having the confidence to be a voice in your community against all odds. There are everyday struggles or the intensity of different failures that take place in different neighborhoods. So as a Christian leader, it is important and gratifying to be different in action and staying strong for Christ.
I was raised in a Baptist Church. I enjoyed Sunday school, participating in plays, and being in the choir at my church. I also was a military child. I got to move around a little bit and experience different cultures and different church settings, like Pentecostal churches, big megachurches, and little up and coming churches where there are just a few people.
I came to know the Lord as a child. I had lots of family members and cousins who attended church with me and it was exciting and fun. I’ve always wanted to be a Bible teacher because I had a very good Head Start Bible teacher who was a teacher at the elementary school and a Bible study teacher for pre-k students at the church. She made it fun and exciting when we thought it would be very boring. That’s one thing that made me change my mind as a little girl to bring joy to people’s lives through God’s stories.
My spiritual dream is to counsel people and give them guidance into having a better life through God’s ways. I would also like to provide an excellent food service by feeding the people and families with food, with Godly counsel, and through good health. Overall, I want to teach them the Word of God and to share the knowledge of God. I want to help encourage others and to help lift up others from struggling relationships, abuse, injustice, and negligence. God has placed me in some strange situations to see things His way instead of seeing things my way. I was even forced to be homeless, and within that, I’ve seen things completely different in my spiritual life.
I am thankful to have found Christian Leaders Institute for this ministry training for becoming a Christian leader.
Learn about ordination at Christian Leaders Alliance.
My Pastor Heart From God
Hello, my name is George DeWitt and I have a Pastor heart for the lost. I live in the United States. I am a Pastor in the mountains of North Carolina. I love serving the Lord.
I was saved in 1992, in a small church in the mountains. I was not expecting that I was in need of a Savior as is everyone. Since that time I have grown more and more in the Lord. God put a calling on my heart that is so amazing that words could not describe. He has blessed me with a heart of a Pastor, to preach His word, see souls get saved, families reconciled and broken lives mended. I am so thankful I went to the Potter’s house many years ago, for He saw a broken vessel and put the pieces together.
I grew up in a foster home. My schooling was not very good and I didn’t care about that much but after my childhood and my wild times as a teenager and young man, the Lord came by my way. I heard the gospel story, how a man name Jesus loved me enough to go to a cross and die for me. The Holy Spirit started a work in me that day and He is still working on me. Amen and Amen. So anyway, I was looking for some high-quality education online to help me in my studies because studying and serving God just gets better and better and I found Christian Leaders Institute. I want to say thank you CLI for this opportunity for and chance to learn more and more. God bless you and this ministry and may it reach more than it has already.
Read on at Christian Leaders Alliance to discover how you can become Ordained.
“I am fascinated with the curriculum CLI provides. With each class, I find myself more immersed in my Chaplain calling.”
My Journey – My Chaplain Calling
My name is Arlene I. Salcedo, and I have a Chaplain calling on my life. I am married to Asdrúbal Salcedo, and we live in Valrico, Florida.
Early Life and Conversion
I am the eldest of three children, all females. I was born in 1968 in Puerto Rico. From an early age, my parents, who were college professors, stressed to me the importance of living a life of faith and prayer, reading the Bible, and having a personal relationship with Jesus as my personal Savior. At the age of eleven, I gave my heart to Christ and was baptized.
Calling to Ministry
At sixteen I received a calling for ministry, but being immature I postponed it, although I continued to live a life around the three principles my parents instilled in me. I graduated with a B.A. in Business Administration from the Inter American University of Puerto Rico, the Christian institution my parents worked for. Later on, I pursued a Juris Doctor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico.
In 2010, I fully surrendered my life and will to our Lord. This same year God told me that I had to move to Florida. After prayer and confirmation from my pastor, I sold what I could, gave away the rest to charity and relocated.
My faith was tested on multiple occasions as I went through divorces, infertility, unemployment, and sickness.
Ministry Training
From 2011 through 2015, I studied Theology online through Seminario Reina Valera (I confess I have yet to request my diploma.) From 2011 on I have dedicated most of my spare time to reading the Bible and enriching my spiritual life.
My renewed calling to ministry and CLI
Throughout my life, I enjoyed taking care of the ill in the family. I also enjoyed assisting friends during their convalescing. In 2018, our mighty God called me to be a Chaplain minister to the sick. After much prayer and confirmation from my pastors, I started to research about online training to fulfill my calling and God blessed me with finding Christian Leaders Institute.
I am fascinated with the curriculum CLI provides. With each class, I find myself more immersed in my calling. The course Ministry 101 is so interesting and comprehensive! The professors are very knowledgeable and the resources presented are vital for any practicing Minister or Minister to be.
My husband and I are members of New Testament Church of Brandon, where my calling has been welcomed and supported. My pastors are two of my mentors and they have given me opportunities to learn and serve.
CLI has been instrumental in my development as a Christian leader. The scholarship CLI granted me is the only way in which I could have pursued my dream of formally educating for a ministry. Being disabled and unemployed, I could not have afforded the education by traditional means. Thank you, CLI!!
Learn about ordination at Christian Leaders Alliance.