Partners Of Gbm Academy
First Name: Leslie
Last Name: Crause
Joined: 03 January 2023
Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng, , South Africa
Status: Apostolic Father
Details:
My Bio
Early Life
I grew up in a Christian home, the second born of three boys, and later my sister was born.
Because my physical growth was stunted, largely through many childhood diseases, I grew up an insecure person with very few friends. But I had a good intellectual ability and although lazy, I was always in a higher class stream at school.
My Dad was a Sunday School superintendent and an elder in the church, so I was always very actively involved in the activities of the church. But because of my insecurities I never tried to take a visible part in anything.
The biggest transformation came when at the age of 20 I had a powerful experience with the Holy Spirit at a youth camp. After that a new passion was born in me to work for the Lord, and realized that He had placed a calling on my life.
I quickly let go of all desires to pursue a career, although I had previously desired to become an electrical engineer. All I wanted to do was dedicate my life to the Lord and to His work.
Preparation For Ministry
I started studying through a correspondence course and spent a large portion of my monthly income on books. I felt that I really needed to know more of the Word before I could go into ministry.
Because I had no opportunity to stand behind the pulpit (few Pastors ever allow others to be there) I imagined myself standing up there preaching and pouring into writing how I would do it.
I was finally given an opportunity to preach in our Youth Group, and my Pastor was so impressed that he told me he envied my preaching ability.
I also impressed a young lady who was visiting and this led eventually to me moving to her church, where the Pastor also recognized my ability. And it was a matter of time when I left single hood and became a married man.
But even though I had a great desire to go full time into the ministry, it seemed few Pastors, including my Pastor, were prepared to put me into the ministry. I had to leave that church and find one that was finally prepared to ordain me as a Pastor and give me a church to run.
Becoming A Pastor
My first experience at being a Pastor was not a pleasant one, because I was given a church that had problems previously and I lacked the maturity to get things going.
They needed someone with an evangelistic emphasis but my greatest passion was to teach the Word. I had experienced so many problems in life, that I yearned to show believers how to overcome problems using the Word.
Then the Lord told me to move more into a prophetic orientation and I fought it at first, because I preferred teaching. So they moved me to work as assistant in the main church in the country at that time. I was living in what was known as Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe.
Soon political and economic difficulties in the country forced me to leave both the ministry and the country and move down to South Africa to find employment.
I tried to settle into a normal church and get involved in some way, but my teaching ministry was often so popular that the Pastor of the church felt threatened.
I finally found a church where I thought they would accept me as their Pastor, because the people really loved my ministry. But one night as I sat in the prayer meeting, the Lord spoke loudly and clearly in my heart, telling me to leave because He wanted me in my own ministry.
Going Full Time
After that I felt that Lord calling me to give up my job and go full time on my own into the work of the Lord. This meant living by faith without a guaranteed income which was really tough.
I spent nine months waiting on the Lord and learning from Him directly in the Spirit, until the time came when He told me it was time to move into the next phase of my training.
During my months of waiting on the Lord, I was trained as Elijah was at the Brook Cherith. I sold up all our possessions and bought a small caravan and moved my family down to a coastal city where my in-laws lived.
There I committed to attend a large progressive church who had an emphasis on faith, but my prophetic ministry began to flourish and I was invited often to either preach or minister prophetically to small groups who were meeting in different places.
This is where my prophetic ministry came into full bloom, and combined with my teaching ministry to prepare me for the next step in my journey. As I received prophetic ministry from other prophets, the Lord showed that He was gearing me for a higher level ministry and I was to move back to my original location in Johannesburg for this.
Back To A Normal Job
This meant going back to normal work again, and I got a job as a computer programmer. I found an old friend who had started his own church and was setting up a training school in his church.
He invited me to come and be assistant pastor and a lecturer in his school. And once again my teaching ministry flourished and I really felt at home with the people.
But then the enemy struck and without my knowledge, my wife began to be involved with someone outside the marriage. She found the pressures of ministry too great and did not fully share my passion for the work of the Lord.
Divorce Spells Disaster
My whole world came crashing down as the unthinkable happened and I went through a divorce. And although the Lord was in the middle and we parted in His blessing, I felt I could not go on in ministry until the Lord gave me a wife who fully supported me in the work.
I had taken custody of my three daughters so my new wife would have the difficult task of becoming mother to my three girls.
I cried out to the Lord and told Him very clearly and specifically what kind of wife I needed. I was not going to marry someone who did not share my passion for the ministry.
I made a list of about ten points that were essential in my new wife, with a few additional points that I hoped for but felt I could not insist on.
Wife Of My Dreams
The Lord heard my cry and brought me the wife of my dreams. She not only fulfilled the points I had written down, but also the ones I secretly wished for. I learned that when the Lord gives you a gift he always gives the best.
Daphne was not only the Lord’s gift to me, but she was the perfect partner to walk with me through the next stages that God was about to bring in my life and ministry.
We met through a Christian dating club, and she had written on her application that she wanted to marry a pastor and go into ministry.
Not long after our marriage we were given an opportunity to take over a church from someone who had started a church, and we got our first experience with what it is like to function as a pastoral couple.
It was a tough experience and eventually the church folded and we were left without a ministry. So we just began to minister from our home. And the Lord would send us people who needed ministry.
Our home became a place of ministry and we began to house various young folks who stayed with us and received ministry in the home. This has continued to be the case for most of our married life, and we have always had someone staying with us to receive ministry.
At that time there was a political and economic crisis in South Africa and we were struggling to make ends meet. But the Lord provided an unexpected opportunity for us.
Going Overseas
A relative offered to take us overseas and give me a job to help set up a computer system for his offshore company. At first it was going to be in the Caribbean, but then the location shifted, and eventually ended up as Mexico.
By this time my first two daughters had left home and only my youngest came with us as we packed up everything and moved to a foreign land. And at first it was like a retirement.
We had a home just a few blocks from the sea in a holiday paradise, and were given a monthly income to live on. I did not need to work, but as a hobby I decided to set up a mailing list and send Bible studies out to people I knew.
Then suddenly our income was stopped and we were left stranded in a foreign country, where we were not allowed to work and our visa only permitted us to receive income from outside the country.
I had just brought my eldest daughter and her family over to join us from South Africa which made things even more difficult. We had many mouths to feed and no income.
Producing Materials For Income
So I waited on the Lord and came to a decision. The only way I could make an income would be to preach and sell our audio tapes internationally. This was a major task and we had no money for equipment to do this.
But we had a video camera we had bought, and so I began preaching in my living room and capturing the message onto the camera. And from there we took off the audio and put it onto audio tapes to sell.
It was not easy, but what began as a way of making an income ending up as a full fledged Prophetic School course, which we then began to sell internationally.
Shortly after that the Lord began to teach me about the Apostolic Ministry and I reached a place of knowledge and qualification where He showed that I was qualified to rise up into the Apostolic Office.
Now began a new series of teachings on the ministry of the Apostle. It took several years, but eventually we had a full curriculum for training both Prophets and Apostles.
Now finally we began to get some form of stable income as students around the world clamoured for our school training.
Establishing A New Ministry
We had established a ministry which we called Global Ministry Resource Network and were well established in Mexico, with a view to going into the USA for extended ministry.
As I began to look to the Lord for Scriptural ways of raising money and how to sell our products as a business, He suddenly took me in a new direction. He showed that He was going to raise up people who would be called specifically to do business as part of their calling.
I always have to live everything I teach, and in order to fully live this new calling, the Lord told me to let go of the ministry and concentrate exclusively on learning about the business calling.
Learning The Business Calling
So I handed the reigns of the ministry over to my elder daughter and her husband who had assisted us in getting things going, so that I could begin to preach and put together a whole new series of teachings on business as a ministry.
This continued for several years, until l had put together sufficient teaching materials for us to start a new school dedicated specifically to the Fivefold Business Calling.
The Lord now told me to once again take the reins of the ministry and combine this with the business training. We would now walk two roads together - the Ministry Road and the Business Road.
Unfortunately my daughter and son-in-law were not keen to hand the reigns back to me. They were enjoying being in control and had made some changes to the way the ministry was run.
So there came a division which led to our relationship with them coming to and end. It was a bit like what happened with Paul and Barnabas. Each went their own way and never worked together again.
Global Business Ministries Is Born
I established a brand new ministry which embraced both business and ministry and decided to call it Global Business Ministries. And now we could set up three different training schools - The Prophetic, The Apostolic and The Fivefold Business Calling.
But it was difficult to survive now, because most of our income was coming from the ministry and we no longer had control of that ministry. We were no longer able to justify our presence in Mexico and were forced to return to our home land of South Africa.
But what the enemy meant for evil, God meant for good. We returned with only our suitcases in our hands and started all over again. But now we could work with real people and not just online.
We set up live training schools in our home, using our double garage which we converted into a meeting hall and training centre. And now we began to flourish finally working with real people and training them fully.
Covid19 Strikes
It was all going well until the enemy struck again in the form of the Covid19 pandemic. We had to close down all our live schools and continue only online. The Lord once again told me to hand the reigns over to someone else while he led me into learning about a third and final road - the Social Road.
Then, as the pandemic came to end, it was time once again to pick up the strands and move forward into the full original vision that the Lord had given. It was a vision of walking on three different roads, all at the same time.
These were the Ministry Road, The Business Road and the Social Road. So we have now begun to re-etablish our training schools here in Johannesburg, South Africa and we are adding some new schools along the way.
Some of these schools will include training on the arts, which falls under the Social road. And we are looking forward to finally presenting to the Body of Christ the fullness of what the Lord has for us.