Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Paul and Jana Kloppers from the Creative Arts Academy.

Paul and Jana Kloppers

Jubilee Training Centre in Maidstone, Kent, practically equips, raises and releases leaders within the Church, community and business world. One of their five schools is the Creative Arts Academy; a year long course that focuses on placing God centre stage in life while pursuing excellence in your talents. The leaders of Creative Arts Academy, Paul and Jana Kloppers, visited Cross Rhythms and spoke with Jonathan Bellamy.

Jon: You are the heads of what you call the Creative Arts Academy. What is that?

Paul: The heart of the Creative Arts Academy is to raise up young people within the Arts to make a difference in the community. That is the heart of the whole Training Centre. We've got five different courses and Creative Arts Academy is one of those courses. We've got a saying, that we don't train them for ministry only, we train them for life and it is to make a difference in the community.

Jon: Something that's fascinated me, is you have people come from all over the world to be a part of this training centre.

Paul: Yeah, that's right. We've got people all the way from Australia, we've had someone from Uganda, Canada, Germany, South Africa, Belgium and Spain, and so there are a lot of nationalities represented.

Jon: What's that like in the Training Centre? There must be a global sense of community when you are all together. Is that right?

Paul: Yes and what makes the courses different is we live in community, so having different nationalities present in one house can create lots of interesting situations.

Jon: Who cooks the best meals, I mean what cuisine?

Jana: It has to be me!

Paul: I have to say we've had some interesting meals, but we've had some really good ones this year so far.

Jon: What do you focus on to help your young people grow and mature?

Paul: Our focus is equipping for life and not just for ministry or church. Part of that is we want the students to get to a place where their past is not dictating the future. In other words we don't want things that have happened to them in the past to determine how they would react to new situations. That's what we mean when we say, 'wholeness', or, 'not letting your past dictate your future'.

The second area is we want to grow them in character. Character is what happens behind closed doors, or what happens inside when a situation arises. So again we say, 'it's not what happens to you, but it's how you respond that matters'.

Jon: How do you do that? How do you develop someone's character?