Pastoral Leadership Training A Necessity For The Youth
Through the juvenile court system, the United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world. In 2002, approximately 126,000 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone. With an astonishing 500,000 brought into detention centers in a given year. That is just too many of our youth in need of an introduction to a Savior.
How many teenagers do you know that are actively pursuing a life with God? For most of us, there’s not many that we can name. For the most part, teenagers and kids today would much rather be consumed with the things of the world than sit in a pew. We live in a godless generation where God is no longer desired, sought after, or made our first love. So how do we reach our youth? Authentic love. That love that is truly genuine. That love where when someone feels that no one will listen to them, you can be that one person who says, “I will.” Through love, and authentic love, the love that Jesus was truly about…may walls and guards be torn down. Let people see our light and profess, I want what they’ve got. Let us love! Without love, we will lose many battles. We will lose our youth. With pastoral leadership training, Christian Leaders Institute can equip you with guiding our youth today.
Here is the testimony of one of our students receiving pastoral leadership training. He has a passionate heart towards the youth and he is ready to reach them.
Pastoral Leadership Training Desired By Mark Younghans
My name is Mark Younghans. I am from the United States of America. Born and raised in St Paul, Minnesota. I did not grow up in a Christian home. I don’t remember ever seeing someone pray or read the bible outside of church, unless it was prayer before Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. I am the youngest of 3 kids. We were sent to church more as a daycare, but we stopped going when my older siblings got to the independent age around 16. I started going again when I was around 16 and started driving myself. I had grown up in the same church, but my faith was never real to me. I lived like the world, ASSUMED that I was forgiven so I could live in my sins. Christianity did not become real to me until after I graduated from college, started a job, opened a business, bought a house and partied like there was no tomorrow. One day I realized how much God had blessed me with. I was 22, 23 years old and I showed God no appreciation for what He had done for me, no appreciation for where He had brought me from in my neighborhood and where He brought me to with success.
After graduating college and coming back to St Paul, I started attending my old church again. One day the pastor gave a sermon on there needs to be a clear difference between believers and none believers. At that time, I had a guy working for me who was an atheist, with demonic tattoos skulls, snakes, grim reapers all over his body. We worked 40-60 hours a week together and then partied 1 to 3 nights a week, got drunk, messed with girls, got into fights. There was no difference between me and him and I showed him no reason to want to get to know God or to come to church. The Holy Spirit led me to start changing. First, I gave up smoking weed. Then drinking like I was and then sex. It has been a rough road, a roller coaster, up and down, left and right. But God is good always. I have my degree in Corrections and minor in sociology. With it, I work with kids that are locked up 6-9 months for various crimes. I’ve been there part-time since I graduated 5 and a half years ago. I am a Licensed real estate agent and real estate investor. I have a few side business ventures that I do from time to time such as house moves labor. God has definitely placed a spirit of entrepreneurship in me. Finding a balance, or really keeping God fully in first place, family next, and business next is a struggle sometimes.
In ministry, God led me to start a ministry called “Get 2 know God.” I started a youtube channel to post bible studies, sermons and spoken word videos. Prior to this, I worked with few leaders and we created a program called God’s Gangsters, reaching out to inner city youth. This was a live conference call that took place every Tuesday night, where anyone in the US could call into this line and hear a 15 minute service. Which included key information and tips, music and a 7-10 minute sermon. And that is where my preaching started. I started the youtube channel, writing sermons, and doing bible studies on video. After doing this for over a year, my church had a need where our pastor up and quit. On Dec 23, 2013, I went to church with the intent of saying good bye and letting everyone know I was leaving. Reason was differences in opinion between me and the pastor and his leadership. Also, because my ex girlfriend. The two situations were causing issues and it felt like the right time to leave. The pastor to a certain extent begged me not to leave, said he needed me for the new year, that I was a worker and listened to him. He talked me out of leaving the church. The next week was my birthday, I was not in church and had a full day planned. He quit that next Sunday, Dec. 29th, 2013. He did not say good bye to the congregation. After the service he gave the keys to another leader and said he was done. The following Sunday, we had a church meeting with the head of our church conference. He asked us what do we want to do? Either close the church, try and bring in a another pastor (two had quit within the past 2 years which really effected the young people), or to use what we have which meant Pastor/leader Cookie be the lead pastor of our church and I help her preach 2 to 3 times a month. I accepted the challenge. That started in January 2014, so 7 months in and it has been a journey. My goals are to be a better well rounded servant of God. To gain wisdom and knowledge through the Holy Spirit to better explain and preach the word of God. I felt called to start a youth church since I was 22. Currently our church is small 15-25 people plus kids, and they are mainly youth 19-27. I am walking through doors as God opens them.
Pastoral Leadership Training Through Christian Leaders Institute
God reopened this door to CLI. I started it over a year ago but was too busy and never made it through the first course. God has revealed to me through about 4 different people confirming that I should get pastoral leadership training. Even a few strangers, so it had to be the Spirit working. Getting pastoral leadership training through CLI will give me the opportunity to follow along this path and walk through the doors God is opening. There is no way I would be able to commit to seminary right now if I had to pay out of pocket for it. So this program to receive my pastoral leadership training is offering me the chance to move forward with Gods call right now.
Click here to enroll with Christian Leaders Institute today to begin your Pastoral Leadership training! Also check us out on facebook!
It’s a given today. If you want to be a pastor, you need to go to seminary. Don’t worry about the tens of thousands of dollars of seminary debt you’ll pick up along the way. All you need is one of those upper middle class pastoral positions and you’ll have the debts paid off in no time, right?
This is much less true than it was many years ago. Positions for full-time pastors and associate pastors are becoming more scarce, and in many instances the pay for such positions is much less than it once was. This is illustrated by a story published in The Atlantic on July 22, 2014. The story talks about a seminary graduate named Justin Barringer. Barringer was unable to obtain a job after applying to over 200 churches, according to the article, and now works three different jobs with little hope of paying off his seminary debt. Justin says he does not harbor any ill-will toward the church. He also says, “I wish someone had advised me against taking on so much debt in order to be trained for ministry.”
Justin isn’t the only one in this predicament, though. In 2011, Forbes Magazine published an article about the massive seminary debts acquired by many who wanted to be pastors. This article, like the one in The Atlantic, demonstrated the unavailability of sufficient positions for the current number of seminary graduates. Still another story featured on PBS talked about seminary graduates who were unable to put their training to use upon graduation.
Can You Get Training Without Seminary Debt?
So what course of action is available to you if you feel that you are called to preach the gospel? Taking on mountains of seminary debt will only guarantee you mountains of seminary debt. Is there another way to receive training that won’t leave you with more bills than you can pay?
Most seminarians would say no. Seminaries have been around for years. They have time-honored traditions, thousands of books concerned with the exposition of religious doctrine, tenured professors, and the full weight and authority of their church behind them. Seminary is the only way to get great, authoritative training for ministry in the church.
Jerry Bowyer, a contributor to Forbes Magazine, has a different approach to this idea. He says that we should return to the original method of training church leaders that was modeled for us by Christ: apprenticeship. Apprenticeship doesn’t require that enormous seminary debt be required to pay for training. Additionally, it has the benefit for the student of actually experiencing the life and ministry of a pastor. This, Bowyer says, is worth more than the hours spent in a seminary classroom.
But What About Theological Education?
Theological education is important. Jerry Bowyer acknowledges its importance in his article, “Bursting the Seminary Bubble (part II),” but he offers a solution for that as well. Get your education for free! Bowyer points to a few different sites and resources around the internet that offer some materials that will assist with theological education. There are even resources to assist ministry aspirants in learning Biblical Greek and Hebrew. Bowyer talks about a class his daughter is going through about the theology and impact of C. S. Lewis. There may be some searching and piecing together to do, buy Jerry Bowyer points out that all the education you need is available without the necessity of a seminary building.
But what if somebody had all these materials in one place? What if a prospective pastor could get access to all the theological education he needed without accruing mountains of seminary debt, and without piecing together a hundred different internet resources by himself? What if there was already somebody there in 2011 when Bowyer wrote the article who practiced the free model of seminary training, hand-in-hand with the apprenticeship model?
Christian Leaders Institute Leaves No Seminary Debt
Another word for apprenticeship is mentorship, and Christian Leaders Institute has been vocal about the mentorship since its inception in 2001. Students are encouraged to find and stay in frequent communication with mentors. Mentors are asked to participate in the student’s studies by encouraging them, listening to sermons and giving feedback, and guiding them through the theological education at Christian Leaders Institute.
Additionally, course materials at Christian Leaders Institute reside entirely on the internet. There are no classrooms for students to attend, which means no seminary buildings requiring millions of dollars annually to operate and maintain. With the low budget that is facilitated by this online method of bringing the training to students, Christian Leaders Institute is able to offer the training to anyone in the world without cost to them!
Christian Leaders Institute will not have any Justin Barringers with mountains of seminary debt, working three jobs to recover from their ministry training. Even in the event that a graduate of Christian Leaders Institute is unable to find a full-time pastoral position, she will not be weighed down with seminary debt in whatever calling God has for her. Christian Leaders who are trained at CLI can use their ministry training for any ministry role without having to be concerned with paying off their student loans. This also offers people the freedom to take the courses even if they aren’t planning to use the training for a high-paid job elsewhere. And CLI accomplishes all this without compromising on the quality of the ministry training courses.
Have you been called to the ministry? Would you like to get your training without the mountains of seminary debt that accompany it? Enroll at Christian Leaders Institute. It’s free to join, and you can get started with your first class TODAY!
Free Online Ministry Training with Christian Leaders Institute
Christian Leaders Institute provides all the tools necessary to equip those called by God to become a pastor, a minister, church planter, missionary, evangelist. Whatever ministry area you are led to go into, CLI can train you with our free online ministry training. Free doesn’t mean lack of quality. The professors of CLI have put together many courses from what they received with their seminary education. The courses have been made top notch and filled with nothing less than high quality education for you as a student of Christian Leaders Institute.
Here is a testimony from one of our dearest students of CLI taking full use of the free online ministry training we provide.
Arianna Found Free Online Ministry Training A Blessing
“My name is Arianna. I currently live in Michigan, USA with my husband Mike.
I am originally from the United Kingdom, although I immigrated to the USA in 2001. I was the only child of my English father and Persian mother.
My father was a business consultant and my mother was a stay at home mom. I led a privilege upbringing in many ways, materialistically, although neither of my parents were Christians. Due to cultural differences and emotional traumas in both of my parents lives, my childhood was very intense.
I was living in Saudi Arabia when I was saved, due to my fathers work at the time. My mother had some Persian friends and the lady was formerly a Muslim, who had converted to Christianity. Her and her husband were running an underground church in Jeddah at the time. They invited myself and my mother to their house church. It was there I heard about Jesus and having a personal relationship with him. I gave my life to Jesus at 15yrs old and was baptized in a swimming pool in Saudi Arabia.
For many years after my initial salvation, I struggled in my walk with God but at the age of 25 years old, God took hold of me and supernaturally healed me, both physically and emotionally from a number of debilitating issues. Jesus loved me back to life!
As a result of this experience and the great privilege of leading my father to the Lord 24 hours before he died of cancer, in Dubai, this has inspired a huge passion in me to see others come to know the healing, restoring love of God. I consider my core strengths to be in evangelism, teaching and intercession.
I am currently pursuing my dream of being a mentor/minister of the Good News of the Gospel. Myself and my husband have a plan to start a local Christian Mentoring Center in our community that helps those whose society and Governmental systems have been unable to help. We seek to provide any persons looking to better their current situation, with quality education, skills, mentoring and encouragement. We believe, that by showing the Goodness of God to people in our community and being a model of Christ to them, we will ultimately win souls automatically and produce sustainable, long term Christian disciples.
Eventually we would like to see these Centers set up in other communities and Globally.
Our local Pastor has been very supportive in encouraging us in our vision. However, the resources necessary for full ministry training were not available to us on a local level. Credible Christian Seminaries were all hundreds of miles away, which was not conducive for work and business, not to mention they were extremely expensive.
As a result we felt limited in our ability to move forward with our vision. We desire to be a couple of character excellence, credible and accountable. We both felt called to minister but we also believed that it was also important to be credibility trained in our respective callings.
I began looking online for alternatives to expensive seminary training. I looked for a long time and stumbled across Christian Leaders Institute. I was intrigued. After all, how good could FREE online ministry training be?
After doing my research and looking into the credibility and training of the provost and the other professors and discovering they were all legitimate, I was more at ease. Christian Leaders Institute website is fully functional, easy to navigate, with a great back office. The quality of the courses is indeed, as they stated, equal to Seminary style education. The fact that Christian Leaders Institute makes it easy to study, by using videos, as well as free course material is fantastic.
Overall, I have to say that I am more than pleased with my experience with Christian Leaders Institute so far. I would be happy to recommend them to anyone looking for free online ministry training. I have mentioned them to several of my friends and my pastor at church is looking at using them to train congregants who wish to pursue a ministry vocation.
I just completed the Basic Christian Leaders Institute course and I am looking forward to pursuing my next one.
I anticipate a long, happy lasting relationship with Christian Leaders Institute and am so eternally grateful that this resource was available. What a wonderful vision for the Body of Christ and for those wanting to pursue their ministry dreams, but up until now, not being able to because of finances, time or location was a hindrance.
Thank you to Christian Leaders Institute for your hard work and dedication to excellent education being available to all, for free! Bless you!”
Is Free Online Ministry Training Needed By You
Sign up now for free online ministry training by clicking here. Find for yourself the high quality education CLI provides in helping you with your ministry dreams or to even just better your understanding for your own personal walk with the Lord.