The GBM School of the Arts

Apostle Les D. Crause

This website is part of a new division of Global Business Ministries that is devoted specifically to a division of the spiritual life which we call The Social Road.

I would like to explain what this website is all about and share with you some of my experiences in walking this new road.

What Is The Social Road?

The Lord called me to the ministry very early in life and for many years I devoted myself exclusively to preparing and then entering the work of The Ministry.

But the Lord showed me over time that there were other roads to walk in addition to the Ministry Road. In fact, He showed me that there are three roads that we can walk in our spiritual lives, and that ministry was only one of those roads.

The second road he showed me, He called the Business Road, and for a season I left the ministry I had started in the care of others, while the Lord trained me to walk on that road.

Then I returned to the ministry road, but now I had two roads to walk on. They included both spiritual ministry and a more secular ministry, which involved helping believers to live a life of prosperity and success in the natural world.

The Lord also showed me that there was a third road to walk, which He called the Social Road.. I was not sure at first what this road involved, but over time He showed me that it involved using talents and natural abilities for the Kingdom of God.

Role of The Arts

Eventually, it became clear that this road involved much of what we call The Arts. It involved developing and using artistic skills, such as are found in music, writing, drawing, painting, and all activities that come under the banner of The Arts.

Since this area is one I was somewhat weak in, I avoided this road for some time, preferring to walk the other two roads that I knew well. So eventually the Lord took action to make me walk on this road.

He now told me to let go of both the ministry and business roads and walk exclusively on the Social Road. So I handed both the running of the ministry and the running of our business activities over to others and commenced what appeared to me to be a retirement from the ministry.

However, it seemed that the Lord was once again taking me on a journey of learning as He had done with the Business Road. And after spending some time on this new road, He told me that I would follow a similar process once I had completed my training on this new road.

I would once again return to the other two roads, and this time I would walk confidently on all three roads.

The Arts As Part of the Social Road

My first activity on walked exclusively on the Social Road, was to devote myself to those areas of the arts that I knew well, and had developed before. The main activities that I knew were writing and music. So started with writing, and began to write new materials.

It began with the launching of a course on Writing for believers, and I set up a school for this first. I invited believers to join this course and took them through a series of lessons and projects to teach them how to write.

Along the way I learned and developed some new skills for writing and added greatly to my previous knowledge. I communicated these all to those who had enrolled as students and began to also write some new materials on the subject of writing.

But there was far more to the Social Road, and the Arts than writing, so eventually, the Lord told me to close the writing course down and prepare for additional subjects.

Music and Singing

My next activity on the Social Road was developing my skills in playing music and singing. I began to develop my singing voice and also set about recording songs that I had written while adding new songs to the list.

In the process, I began to make full recording albums of some of my songs, which I eventually released on a website called Gbm Music. There are still many albums in the works and you can go and listen to the completed albums there by visiting the website here

https://gbm-music.com.

Time To Move Again

Things were going well with the music, but once again the Lord told me to put that aside because He wanted me to move into some of the others areas of the Arts.

And this time He told me that I should start developing skills in the area of what we generally mean when we speak of ‘art’. It was an area of my greatest weakness, and since my early days in school, it seemed clear that I was not destined to be an artist.

While others around me excelled in their skills at drawing and painting, I just could not get going in this area. Whenever I tried to draw the results were terrible. Clearly, I was not gifted to draw or paint., so why did the Lord keep pushing me to get into this?

Many times I had gotten excited about learning this, and I had even gone and bought a whole lot of materials to get started. But they lay rotting in my draw, and I just could not seem to succeed.

At one stage, while we were still in Mexico, I found a book on how to easily draw cartoons. I got so excited about it that I ordered extra copies for the whole ministry team. But neither I nor any of them followed through with it.

My son John was still very young at the time, but he showed an interest, and as he grew he picked up the passion that I had for making cartoons. Today he has his own series of cartoons which he publishes as part of his ministry, You can go check out his cartoons at

https://jays-cartooning.com

Lesonardo The Artist

Now that I had specific instructions from the Lord, I devoted myself wholeheartedly to learn how to draw and paint. I researched every avenue available to do this and began to invest in this new activity by enrolling in some study courses.

I guess I had expected the Lord to supernaturally cause this ability to fall on me since I was certainly not born with it. I had confidently taught that we can develop any skills we desire using the ability of our spirits. Now it was time to put my money where my mouth was.

There was now no turning back, and I knew that I had to sink or swim. Even if it killed me, I was going to become an artist. I approached the subject the same way I prepared for ministry many years ago. I read everything I could find on the subject and began to search for video tutorials that would show me more.

Today we are blessed to have the internet and there is so much available online on any subject. I located some really good materials, and even though they were from unbelievers, some of them became a real blessing to me.

And I made a wonderful discovery that filled me with excitement

I can develop the skills needed to draw and paint

It did not require me being born with these skills or having to receive some kind of supernatural impartation for them to function. As I put into practice what I was learning, I discovered that I could do these things.

And though I started out small, and my first attempts were hardly something worth publishing, I got better as I continued practicing. And I discovered something similar to what I did when I tried to use my mediocre voice to sing. I had always envied those who seemed to be born with a great singing voice.

But the evidence was there that:

“If you can speak you can sing”

It was just a matter of learning to make my voice do things that it did not do naturally. And with the Lord’s help and direction, and lots of singing tutorials, I finally began to see a breakthr0ugh in my singing.

Now I discovered something similar in this new activity, and someone said,

“If you can write, you can draw”

Well, I am proof that this is true. Because I am now beginning to produce drawings and paintings that are way beyond what I had ever hoped to do. I am documenting my progress on a special page on this website, and I invite you to go and check out my drawing progress and some of the things that I have learned in just a couple of months.