Leen and Ria La Rivière started as pioneers the ministry of the Continentals in Europe in 1969/1970. Via those tours they saw a growing need for education, training of christian talented youth. That resulted in the first International Christian Artists Seminar in 1981. Since that year this annual seminar has been organised. First at de Bron, from 1993 at the SBI, from 2010 at the KSI. All contacts, responses from students made clear that more should be done. So with the help of the EU (Grundtvig program) a European modular internet academy came into being in 2006. Unfortunately the system was too complicated, so it was taken offline and got started again in this new set up in 2013.

History of the Continentals, see www.continentalministries.org ;
history of Christian Artists, see www.continentalsound.org ;
the teaching programms of the annual Christian Artists Seminars, see www.christianartists.org
Both ministries have developed strongly in a kind of family, tribes, communities. It is such a blessing to be part of  that.

THERE IS NO SHORT CUT TO EXCELLENCE
To come to a master level in your profession, art-form it takes a long time with every day practise. Here the stages as seen in the life of many professional masters and being true as well in my own (Leen) life:
-period 1: 4-5 years to train and nurture your talents to move to a level of professionalism
-period 2: 4-5 years to grow as professional
-period 3: 4-5 years to grow to the level of a master, producing ongoing masterpieces

What is the content of every days practise:
That concerns 2 aspects of life:
A. Growing in quality; that deals with your metier, competencies, innovations, practice work, experiments and such
B. Growing in identity;  that’s deals with character, endurance, servanthood, call, destiny and such
And for A and B you need to organise: feedback, discipline, inspiration, authenticity and such. And do not forget to fight the dark powers of creativity, like: competition (if we all focus on our own gifts, call and destiny, there is no such thing as competition…), pride, manipulation…

If I (Leen) put this time-table on my own life, these stages and needed growth has been totally true: I have written now 27 books; 7 are masterpieces and in the process to many translations. I have done, staged, organised thousands of concerts, music and theatre-productions; but the great annual concerts in De Doelen (concertbuilding of Rotterdam) from 1986-2008 were master pieces. Masterpieces were too the great theatre productions we did in the years 1988-1991 with Adrian Snell.  The Christian Artists Seminars are as well master pieces

We want to encourage you to keep on studying, working on your talents and your character.
As that IS part of the Kingdom of God. By doing so, it will glorify God and it will (and should) have impact on society.

There came out a great book written by Paul Donders and Chris Summers, explaining in detail this learning process from ‘student’ till master and beyond.