My Name is Julio Cesar Ruiz; the Lord has blessed me with a wife and our six children. Currently we reside in the United States, in the state of Illinois about 53 miles south from Chicago in a small town call Sun River Terrace. There are a lot of churches in this nation. However, it seems like the godly values are been disregarded by many families, so I think this is the time to proclaim the gospel of Christ and bring back to God all the people. Thank God we have freedom to preach and work with liberty in any Christian ministry,
My experience with CLI has been tremendously blessed; having the opportunity to be educated for free is something I’ll appreciate, honor, and thank for the rest of my life. Since I became a Christian my time, strength, love and passion has been concentrated toward my relationship with God, my wife, my children and church and I will not let anything stop me or change this priority, The educational opportunity that CLI offers through a virtual mode is something that does not interfere with any of my priorities, on the contrary, studying at CLI has reinforced my relationships and ratified my convictions.
Being ordain will help me to go forward in the ministry. Ordination will also help me grow more as a Christian, to develop myself, to help the congregation and keep on proclaiming the gospel. Most Christians expect that their pastors show proof of education and training. I think is fair and just to request this fundamental evidence of training and legitimacy.
In my walk of serving God, I’ve learned than anyone who wants to serve in the church needs to be prepared to serve with joy and happiness in any of the ministries of the church. Doing pastoral work, evangelism, lead small groups, youth leader, church planting, etc. we must be ready to do any of this task at some point of our ministry. I do know tough that every Christian has a different gift and different calling, and we must also need to pray God to help us find it. My calling I believe is to be pastor and teacher this is where God has guiding me to do.
Ever since I started studying at CLI, I’ve also started working more at our church. I’ve learned that if you want to discover your gifts then you have do service at church because by doing so you will identify where rejoice, enjoy, and you succeed the most. I remember that one of the first class I took at CLI was pastoral care and marriage, I’ve learned so much from that class. I felt that I was ready, and even though at the moment I’ve still lacked a lot, that class helped me to dealt better with our congregation and to love and show love to our congregation. It has been learning and practicing process for me, and I do not regret it.
The challenges I will face in our area are materialism. When people have what they need material wise, is more difficult to accept a savior. Many people today do not believe the need a savior because they feel like they don’t have a need for it. Prosperity sometimes brings idleness where people feel like there’s no need to do service or work. In my time in ministry, this is the one challenge I’ve faced, which people don’t feel a need for Christ due to their wealth.
I’m very blessed for being part of a very supportive local church. Ever since I started studying, I’ve received a lot of support from our congregation. My mentor who is my pastor he always kept motivating me to finish this calling. I’m blessed; I have seen the people praying for me. My pastor also supported me by giving me the opportunity to be a leader at our church, even though I had not much of experience. I think God will provide the knowledge and also the work to use the knowledge this is something I see at my church where learning and practice are to connected subjects that have to maintain together.
I thank God for giving me the opportunity of becoming a youth pastor three years ago. It was a tremendous blessing working and helping teenagers and also their parents. Five months ago I stared a church in our area; I also have Bible study groups at my work. I love preaching and teaching. I would like to keep working in our church, develop leaders and make a difference in our society in Christ name.
For a few years, I kept on praying God to become ordain. However the money was always the issue, when I knew about CLI I didn’t stop to think. Instead, I immediately got registered I knew this is what God had for me, and CLI has been a great blessing for my family. CLI has impacted me; the Institute has great teachers, great classes, great opportunities, and is free, hard to believe but is true. I have been thinking since I started studying at CLI, if I got my education free I must give myself freely for the gospel.
Please pray for me and my family, the ministry is not easy, it requires many sacrifices from the whole family.
My name is Gil Paiz, I am 28 years old, husband of a beautiful and amazing woman, father of a very energetic and special little boy named Isaac, and son of a Christian church pastor, now a missionary in Honduras. I lived my childhood and part of my teen years in Honduras where I was under the care of my two aunts because my parents had divorced. After that they both moved to the United States but in 2001, my father brought me to the states where I resided in Maryland. My dad was a pastor of a small hispanic church there. Recently I moved to New York where ministry is easier than other places, we are not persecuted for preaching and still have freedom of religion. It is also challenging, since people have greater opportunities to get all the material stuff they want, they are focused on working every second of their lives to pay for what they have.
Being a preacher’s son gave me the opportunity and blessing to be raised at church, I had my times of “rebellion” but always returned to the right path. In one of those times I decided that the church I was assisting at was not for me, I wanted to serve the Lord but the church never gave me the opportunity, so I started going to my cousin’s church. I went to their Sunday school where they were talking about the prodigal son, which made me think about my spiritual situation. When the class was finished all the classes got together and the pastor gave the call to receive Jesus as Savior, I went forward, I knew it was the day the Lord had prepared for me. About a year later, I got baptized, and started serving the Lord as a kids club leader.
I have been through a lot of things in my life, and I had no one there to tell me not to do the things I was doing. I am not making excuses for what I did, but one thing is for sure, I would have loved to have had someone there to guide me. That’s my ministry dream, to help youth come to know the Lord, to help them learn how to walk with God, and to be of assistance to them with any questions, doubts, or issues the enemy brings into their lives and hearts.
Personally I identify myself with the ministry of a youth leader, even though I have been called pastor many times.
When I was in Maryland, my pastor always treated me like a leader. He used to sit down with me and tell me about the ministry and the church; he even told me that I looked like a pastor. In July of 2013, God opened the door for our church to go to Puerto Rico as missionaries, during our visit to the various places, the local church leaders called me pastor all the time. I did not see that as a call from God until the last day we were there, at a dinner with the main church in Puerto Rico, one of the local pastors came to me and said, “you have a calling to preach the word of God.” After that he gave me a book about pastoral ministry. To me, that was a calling from God.
I mentioned in the beginning that ministry in NY can be easier because Christians are not persecuted here, but it is also challenging because people have their hearts set on material possessions and addictions, especially in the area where our church meets, it is filled with drug addicts and dealers. However, we understand that the Lord has placed us here for a reason.
My church supports me in everything the Lord tells me to do, but as for this part of my life and ministry, they still do not know that I am taking classes or pursuing ministry training, but I am sure that if they knew about it they would support me 100%.
I come from a family of ministers, or so I have been told, my great grandfather was a missionary, and my father a pastor, church planter and now missionary.
A CLI scholarship would be of huge help in my calling to serve the Lord. Right now I am in charge of the youth group at my church, by getting the scholarship I would be given a chance to learn the bible a lot deeper and to pass that on to the group. I looked for an affordable option for ministry training but unfortunately without a job for almost a year, I could not find anything. I came across CLI and fit right in. By finishing the getting started class, I proved to myself that not only could I do it, but also found that this is a really high quality training.
Please pray for my spiritual life, to not give up on this new part of my life and for my family to always understand that I am doing this for the Lord, not for me. And also for them to help me get through each class with their support.
My name is D. Zoe Young. I am currently living in India and doing bi-vocational ministry through teaching and reaching out to a local village and tribal area. Previous to this, I was in Turkey and had the opportunity to share a “first Bible moment” with a family of Muslims.
It all started with a phone call and an invitation to go to the UAE to teach Kindergarten.
I sat in my mentors living room and heard the Spirit call to my heart, “Will you tell them about me?”
The answer from my heart was “Yes Lord”.
Four days later I was on a plane to Dubai.
That was four years ago.
From the time I started this course to now many things have changed. I thought I was going to join a church and be an assistant pastor/teacher. I never dreamed that I would be journeying around the world. Even as I began this incredible journey, I didn’t see the ministry that God had already laid out in front of me. It never entered my mind that my teaching profession could lead into a place of ministry. But it has and it is quite amazing to me how I missed that!
I started the CLI courses with the intent of getting the “paper” that seemed to be needed every time I tried to move out into ministry. Having taken these courses (and I intend to keep going) God has revealed so much to me in regards to my ministry calling, my own growth in Him, correction, re-evaluation, and truly a sense of being “re-born”. God used each different course to show me an area of my life that needed some work, or cleaning up. I never thought that courses like this could have such a profound effect on my walk with Christ. I am excited to be an Officiant Ordained Clergy.
There are many things that I do as a bi-vocational missionary that are covered under this ordination, and now I will have the training and the paperwork to add credibility to what I have been doing in the Kingdom work. As I move further down the road of missions, I feel more prepared to face the challenges that will come. I know that even just the growth from taking the courses that I have experienced has been a “mission” all its own.
I am very thankful to all the teachers of CLI for their own dedication, time, and talent that they have lavished on us.
I am looking forward toward the next “unexpected journey”.