The School of Christ Founder

Biography of Bertram Hamilton Clendennen (1922–2009)
Founder of the School of Christ International

B. H. Clendennen was an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God for fifty-five years. In November 1956, he came to Beaumont, Texas and started the Victory Temple Church. In December, 1991, he felt the call to be a full-time missionary in Russia. In 1992 the first School of Christ was born. Since that time the translating of the School of Christ material has been an ongoing project.

He was an internationally known speaker, author, radio, and television minister. Over the past fifty-five years of his ministry he had brought hope and deliverance to those in bondage all over the world with his anointed message of truth from God's Word.

Pastor B. H. Clendennen
and the School of Christ International     (Updated May 2010)

Rev. B. H. Clendennen was the Pastor Emeritus of the Victory Temple Church of Beaumont, Texas. A distinctive Pentecostal Church with missionaries in many countries of the world.

Through Radio and Television, Brother Clendennen had reached into nearly every major city in America. The Victory Temple telecast a line production from the church has brought the power of Pentecost into millions of homes.

In 1967 Brother Clendennen ministered five weeks in the bush country of Tanzania, East Africa. Many souls found Christ during that time. The need for church buildings was go great that when Brother Clendennen returned to the U.S. he raised the money to build fifteen block and steel churches. In one year missionary Morris Plotts had the churches erected. In April 1968 Brother and Sister Clendennen returned to East Africa to minister and to dedicate the new churches.

From East Africa the Clendennens went to Iran to minister and participate in the ground breaking for the first Bible School in thirteen hundred years to be built in that land.

In December 1968 Brother and Sister Clendennen journeyed around the world preaching in Spain, France, Rome, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. In Southern India, above ten thousand people gathered to hear the Gospel, hundreds were saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. In Vietnam God opened the country to the Clendennens. From 1968 to 1975 when American forces pulled out, they were there most of the time. The work became such as to demand full time workers with the American serviceman alone. It was most successful. Under the ministry of the Clendennens Pentecost came to Vietnam for the first time.

In 1971 the Clendennens were invited to Zaire (Congo) for a crusade. For twenty-one days God's power fell upon the crowds estimated by the police to be sixty-five thousand people. Every year after that Pastor had held at least one crusade in Zaire.

In February 1980 Brother Clendennen was invited to minister in Yugoslavia, Hungry, and Romania. Every church Brother Clendennen ministered in was filled to overflowing and people were standing out in the freezing cold looking in the windows. In 1981 Brother Clendennen returned to Bulgaria and Romania to find the Spirit of the Lord still moving and the churches growing.

Also in 1981 Brother Clendennen returned to hold a Crusade in Zaire, South Africa. There were thousands out every night to hear the Word of God. In December 1981 he returned to Zaire to hold a Preachers Conference for the native pastors. There was a real moving of the Holy Spirit and the pastors returned to their churches renewed in the Lord. Every year since then Brother Clendennen had returned to hold the ministers seminar. This seminar includes the ministers and their wives, plus all of their food and lodging for the week. This is totally funded by Brother Clendennen himself. This has become a time of real Spiritual growth and development for these ministers.

Brother Clendennen felt through the leadership of the Holy Spirit, several years ago to have a Pastors Seminar here in the States. This has become an annual event at Victory Temple. The pastors and their families were fed two meals a day plus lodging at the Hilton Hotel. Every year ministers come from all over the United States to be uplifted and renewed by the Holy Spirit.

In December, 1991 Brother Clendennen felt that it was time for him to leave Victory Temple as Pastor and go into full-time mission work. The door to minister in Russia had been opened to Brother Clendennen since September, 1991. On his first Sunday in Moscow He preached in an underground church, there was over one thousand people present. Among that congregation were the bishops of the Pentecostal Church of all USSR. They ask Brother Clendennen to come and minister in their churches and train their Pentecostal preachers. In December, 1991 Brother Clendennen purchased and distributed thirty thousand New Testaments and thirty thousand "Books of Life". The Mayor of Kiev asked that he give a Bible to every student in school. For one hour he was interviewed on one of the most powerful radio stations in Russia that reached approximately nine million people, and articles written in the local newspapers about the crusades. On December 1, 1992 Brother Clendennen resigned as senior Pastor of Victory Temple to become a full time Missionary and Evangelist.

In February, 1992 Brother Clendennen was once again in Russia preaching crusades and making arrangements for property, so that he could start a school for Russian ministers. On September 21st, Brother and Sister Clendennen moved to Moscow to get everything prepared for the opening of the Bible School. Brother Clendennen taught Bible four hours every day to the Russian students. Classes began at the International Pentecostal Bible College of Moscow on October 1, 1992 with one hundred and two students from all over Russia and the Ukraine. From that one school in Moscow the School of Christ had expanded all over the former Soviet Union and we now have schools in Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzia, Ukrain, Vilnus, Perm, and Rostov. We have now graduated over twenty-five hundred students and started over two thousand churches. We have also sent out and equipped fifty full time evangelists with their own van and sound system. In the work there we found that not only was there a great need for spiritual food but for physical food and medical supplies. Through our contacts here in the states we have been able to send eleven forty foot containers filled with rice, pasta, baby food, and medical supplies so desperately needed for the families and children of Russia.

The Lord opened the door for us to translate the School of Christ material into the Spanish language in March 1994. The first school was started in Haunuco, Peru. We now have schools in Lima, Pasco, San Martin, Iquitos, Pucallpa and Haunuco, Peru. There have been two hundred and ninety-three students graduate from these schools and ninety-two new churches started. In Peru there were two hundred and one who did not start new churches, but are currently pastoring existing churches.

The School of Christ has expanded into Ecuador, where our first school was started in January 1996. We have graduated fifty-one students and started twenty-eight new churches. The first School of Christ was started in Chile in January 1997 and on April 15, 1997 we graduated twenty-one students and sixteen students plan to start new churches. We have opened new schools in Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil. The School is in, or is in the process of moving into every country in Central America. At the end of 2000 the School of Christ was in every Spanish speaking country on earth. In every country where the School is functioning the results are the same.

Since 2000, the School has literally been around the world. Brother Clendennen just recently returned from China, Europe and Russia with the School. Our latest report out of India is the testimony of revival, a nation where one of every six humans live. We are graduating four hundred students a month, and they are spreading the flames of revival across the sub-continent. The School has been into Eygpt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and will be going into Israel soon. If all goes as planned, in the next twelve months we will have the School in every Moslem nation.

The first week of October 2004 we open the first School of Christ in Albania. Albania is the modern name of Illyricum mentioned in Romans 15:19. From Albania, in the next eighteen months, we will disciple Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Greece. We will rekindle the fire started by the Apostle Paul two thousand years ago.

August of 2004, the School of Christ was named the official voice for sixty-nine prisons in twenty-seven states. The prison officials have given us two hours a day, five days a week.

October of 2010, will be our eighteenth year. In that short time, the School of Christ has literally covered the globe making it perhaps the most effective missions tool ever. We are now in well over 100 countries and the demand for the school continues to grow. The pace at which the school is now moving defies imagination, this can only be by the workings of the Holy Spirit.