“I was so excited to find Christian Leaders Institute training. Actually I was lead to it by the Holy Spirit. It’s the only possible way that I can receive the training I need to do His work. I am so grateful to Christian Leaders Institute training for the opportunity to gain the tools that God wants me to have. As I begin His work I have submitted a picture of my family and I. They loved me so much that they could no longer stand to see me destroy myself in addiction. Please help me pray that God will reconcile me back to them, if it be His will. Of all my regrets, it is the one that breaks my heart the most.
God Bless you all!” – Michael Callison, student of CLI
Christian Leaders Institute Training- Testimony of CLI Student Michael Callison
My name is Michael Callison and I live in Lake Isabella, California. Life for me in the beginning was the absence of childhood. My first memories were of violence, pain, and despair. My mother married 9 times and each stepfather was more violent and abusive then the last. By the time I was 12, all I knew was that I no longer wanted to feel the pain and suffering I had known all my life. I was somehow born knowing that this was not how life was intended to be. I also knew without a doubt, that everything around me was somehow connected by divine creation. I had been allowed to spend a month or two going to Sunday school and was given the basics of God and His Son Jesus Christ, but was removed and not allowed to return.
So at 12, I turned to the streets for comfort and escape from the abuse. I immediately turned to drugs like so many do in an effort to suppress those feelings. For the next 39 years I remained an addict living in and through the most horrible forms of darkness imaginable. Through my years of addiction I would often cry out to God and ask for deliverance but it never came.
What I know today is that He had a perfect plan for my life. In 2003 I began to want to get well, but it was like being a rope in a spiritual tug-of-war. I hadn’t been abandoned, but I was unwilling to yield my addiction to Him by having faith in His Son Jesus Christ. I had no conception of what it meant to have a personal relationship with Him. For forty years I lived in a thought system of fear which was ruled by my ego. My ego believed that it was separated from God and therefore was unable to know God. It could only question His existence. I was truly an agnostic believer in God. I believed He existed, but I doubted that He could save me. On May 14th of 2014, I was on deaths doorstep. I had relapsed 11 times in the past 10 years and had given up all hope. I accepted that I would die in this illness, and quite frankly, I was so tired of wanting to get well and failing. After 47 day at the Salvation Army, I went back to Lake Isabella to stay with the only friend who had not given up hope for me. That was the day, while sitting under a tree crying and reaching out to God in a way I had never done, that I loudly, heard the audible voice of God.
I was told to stay there where He planted me. I was told to go to Faith Community Church and enter into discipleship under Pastor Scott, who had previously tried to help me. I was told to enter a well known recovery program that was divinely written by Him and attend every day. The last thing He said was, “Michael, I want you to tear down the fence that has been in your life. A fence that has separated you from me. Your life will be in the service for Me and I will transform you into the man I want you to be. If you ever rebuild that fence Michael, I will call you home to me.” It has been almost 180 days and I am unrecognizable to people who know me. I am a student of the Word. My life is dedicated to being obedient to Him and what ever He would have me do.
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“The dream to start a training school was planted in me at the time of my conversion. Almost immediately after I was born again I had an inner vision of some kind of college and I was teaching there. Since that time I have been teaching in many local church based Bible schools but I know one day I will start my own school. I have also been conducting leadership training in various parts of my country.” – Patrick Siame, student of CLI
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Free Internet Bible School In Zambia
My name is Patrick Siame. I was born on 9th November, 1957 in Mporokoso, a small town in the northern part of Zambia. Currently I am living in Kitwe, the second largest city in Zambia.
When I was doing my secondary school education I was a religious person but I was not a Christian. All that changed on 20th September, 1979 when I met the Lord, Jesus Christ. On that day I was invited by a friend of mine to attend a Scripture Union meeting. This was in a military camp where I was serving my 20 months compulsory National Service. After some prayers and a short bible study one of the leaders of the S.U preached a short sermon that touched me so much that I shared the same message with whoever I met in camp throughout that day.
In the evening I felt prompted to withdraw to a solitary place. I had no idea what I was going to be doing there but I started off for a quiet place I had in mind. When I got there I found myself kneeling down, confessing my sins and asking Jesus to forgive me and to come into my life. And Jesus did come into my life that day. The proof of this is four-fold: First, I was able to pray in my own words, something I could not do before. I’ve continued to pray since that day. Second, I felt clean on the inside and continue to feel the same today. My drinking and smoking habits were broken that day. I have never smoked or drank any beer since that day and I believe, by the grace of God, I never will. Third, I immediately had the desire to know the Bible. I had never owned a Bible in my life up to that moment but because I felt the hunger to know the Word, I went and bought a Bible three days later. I’ve been reading and studying the Bible since the 24th September, 1979. On a daily basis I see myself changing as I walk with the Lord and this is the fourth proof to me that Jesus had indeed come into my life.
My ministry dream is to start a Leadership Development Institute whose goal will be to enhance the skills of Christian leaders in every sphere of life: church, family, civic, and social etc. My primary calling is that of a teacher but I’m also comfortable doing pastoral work. In fact, I am currently pastor of a church I started in 2000.
My Church has encouraged me in my calling by encouraging me to conduct teaching seminars on various topics. They have also allowed me to preach and teach out of station several times over the years. My family has also done the same. CLI’s free internet bible school is important to my ministry. I definitely will learn new things and I believe CLI will provide some teaching materials that will be useful in my teaching ministry.
Enrolling In CLI’s Free Internet Bible School
Ready for an opportunity to gain and strengthen your biblical knowledge? Join us here at Christian Leaders Institute where we provide our students with a free internet bible school! Click here to enroll! Signing up is quick and simple! Begin training with our free internet bible school immediately after sign up! God bless.
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“My job is very much pastoral: shepherding guys basically the same age as me, and calling them to Holiness. I have been spurred on lately by Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” The burden God has placed on my heart is to call everyone around me to righteousness. There is no time to waste in life pursuing meaningless activities, so I want to be seeking God’s heart daily, and calling others into that with me. I don’t have a clear idea for long-term pastoral ministry right now, but I know that God has called me to this ministry and this neighborhood for the time being. The local church I came from is supporting me financially, and I am currently being mentored by one of the pastors. As a ministry we have a good relationship with the churches in our neighborhood, and I have started attending one of them regularly.” – Joshua Stowie, student of CLI
Pastoral Love And Care From One Who Knows Pain, Brokenness, And Loss
My name is Joshua Stowie. I was born in 1994 in Grand Rapids, Michigan to my parents Gary (a fellow CLI student) and Kathy. I am the second youngest of 5 (three boys and two girls). I was raised in a Christian home by loving and God-fearing parents. As a family we attended church every Sunday, and I was a part of the middle school youth group. In the spring of 2008 we lost our house and moved into a rental home farther out of the city. At the same time we left our church of fourteen years and started looking for somewhere else to attend, all while transitioning from middle school to high school. It was during that summer between that I was introduced to the church where I have been attending for six years (I took out the now), and where I committed my life to the Lord.
My older sister and I became involved with the youth group there and was plugged in with small groups. Over the course of that year we built a great relationship bond and spurred each other on. That fall I committed my life to Christ on a retreat with the youth group. In June 2009 we went on a missions trip to Newark, New Jersey, which is where my passion for missions and love for Jesus birthed. Later that summer my sister and I decided to get baptized together by our youth pastor, Derek Taatjes. That marked the beginning of 5 very crazy, emotional, and transient years leading me to where I am today.
January 2010, 5 months after my baptism, I got a call early in the morning from my sister’s friend telling me that she couldn’t find Kristin (my sister). I woke my parents up, and we started calling around. Later that morning the County Sheriff came to our house to tell us that Kristin died in a snowmobile accident early that morning. That began the hardest week of my entire life. I look back on the week and know that the love and comfort of Jesus is the only reason I made it through the week, and the reason I can look back and still bless God for the time I had with her. After her death I went into a time of finding my identity in girls: the ones that would give me attention, and the ones that I could manipulate. This went on until the following summer when I went on a mission trip with the ministry for which I now work. From that trip on it has been a journey of learning to respect women and stepping up as a man of God.
The spring of 2011 brought about another tragedy in my life, and in our church. I woke up to my friend breaking into my house to tell me that our youth pastor passed away in a house fire early that morning. I knew him well, so it weighed on me a lot when I realized that both people I was in the tub with when I got baptized had now gone to be with our Father. Derek’s wife asked me to speak at his funeral, which was terrifying, and one of my first times speaking in front of more than a thousand people. I realized that day that I have had a unique experience with losing people close to me, and I have a message to share. It is these two events that have prompted me to pursue ministry; realizing that there isn’t time to waste in this life: Jesus is coming soon.
Throughout my high school years I was connected with the Bridge Street House of Prayer in Grand Rapids, and after I did one year of College, not feeling a direct calling, they asked me to come staff the mission school they were starting. I am now working there full-time, raising my own pastoral support over the past two years. My job is youth discipleship, and maintenance for our facilities. Our mission school is a discipleship training school; it is eight months long. The first phase is teaching and living in our community, the second phase is global outreach to either Guatemala or India, and the third phase is back in our community: being prepared to be sent out to live a life of mission.
I am going to be in pastoral ministry in some form for my entire life, and pastoral ministry training from CLI would provide me with the teaching that I need to be effective in it. Pray for me as I follow the Lord’s calling for my life. I don’t yet know if I am going to be in this same pastoral ministry next year, or if God is calling me to return to school full-time. In this time be praying also that God would provide me with the financial support to keep doing what I am doing, and not need to worry as much about whether or not the money will come in each week. God is good, and He has set my path before me.
CLI’s Pastoral Training Program
Is available online and given to all of our students FREE! Click here to enroll and begin ministry training for a pastoral diploma! Check us out! Read about us and other many testimonies/stories of our current students who attaining their pastoral diploma! See what God can do for others! See what God can also do for you!
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