Contenders Discipleship Initiative History
Village Missions, a ministry devoted to sending pastors to rural areas, is launched on September 9, 1948. Rev. Walter Duff, Jr. is appointed the National Director, and a Board of Directors is formed.
Ron Sallee begins teaching “How to the Study the Bible” and “Christian Doctrine” at Camano Chapel on Camano Island, Washington. This church was in partnership with Village Missions. These two courses formed the foundation of Contenders Bible School (CDI).
Ron & Marilyn become Village Missionaries. They faithfully served the field of Arago, Oregon, for 6.5 years.
Ron & Marilyn move to Machias, Washington. They faithfully served this field for 31.5 years.
Contenders Bible School begins at Machias Community Church. From this program, God called people into full-time ministry, some with Village Missions. This program eventually grew into today’s Contenders Discipleship Initiative (CDI).
First graduates begin serving as Village Missionaries in Tensed, ID.
Ron Sallee commutes to McKenna Community Church south of Tacoma, WA, and starts a Contenders Bible School there.
Village Missionary Raul Corona teaches a “Bibliology and How to Study the Bible” class using Contenders notes and PowerPoint slides translated into Spanish. This marks the beginning of Escuela de Evangelistas Alberto Motessi in Avenal, California.
Village Missionaries Russ Richardson and Rob Dore start Servants Bible School in Oregon, modeled after Contenders Bible School.
Village Missions receives a generous estate gift, which proves an immense blessing to our ministry. Combined with Executive Director Brian Wechsler’s passionate vision and support to expand Contenders Bible School and make it accessible to people and churches across rural North America – and around the world! – this gift…
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The groundwork begins for the creation of CDI. Videography: Jeff Haugen. Project Manager, Web Designer & Guidebook production: Cindy Kitts. A host of volunteers assisted them.
Contenders Discipleship Initiative (CDI) is launched as a two-year program offered by Village Missions to equip Christians for ministry within their local church and to prepare those called for full-time ministry as missionary pastors. The first course on the website was Bibliology and How to Study the Bible.
Servants Bible School sends out its first Village Missionaries, Mark & Karen Woolbright, to Helix, Oregon.
After 38 years of faithfully serving as a Village Missionary, Ron Sallee steps into leadership to oversee the development of the CDI program.
Works begins on translating the CDI guidebooks into Spanish for Servants4Him to train pastors in Guatemala.
Retired Village Missionaries Rob & Linda Dore take the CDI (loaded on Kindle Fire Tablets) to Malawi to train pastors.
Ken Ainsworth becomes the CDI Administrator, handling Help Desk and web inquiries and administering the CDI Learning Management System.
After 4 years, the final CDI course is finished, thus completing the program with 6 courses. The final course is Evangelism, Teaching and Preaching.
Rick & Stephanie Sherman, who completed the CDI program at a Village Missions church, are the first CDI graduates to attend Village Missions Candidate School. A few months later, they were placed on their first field of Lookingglass, Oregon.
Contenders graduate and Village Missionary David Carr works to assist those with hearing impairments. A generous group of volunteers created English closed captions for all the CDI videos.
After several months of hard work, the first course in the CDI program is available with closed captioning!
The ambitious work begins to translate CDI closed captioning into other languages – including Spanish, Portuguese and Farsi.