GOOD WORKS ENCORE
Giving in to God
Founder ‘argued with God’ before creating a school BY JORDAN BRADLEY photos by
BRIAN K. POWERS
When
Tree of Life Christian School founder Adam Sterenberg had what he can only describe as a vision from God about building a Christian school in an underserved neighborhood in Kalamazoo, he was a bit startled, to say the least. “It was a weird thing,” Sterenberg says, standing in the sunshine on the school’s 26 | ENCORE JANUARY 2021
front lawn, at 2001 Cameron St. “I’ve never had anything quite like that. And (nothing like it) ever since.” Sterenberg, a middle school math and Bible studies teacher at Kalamazoo Christian Middle School at the time, was sitting in a presentation at a conference for Christian educators in 2003 when the room suddenly
faded away and an image of a school and trees filled his head “like a daydream,” he recalls. “Then I hear this voice go, ‘I want a Christian school in the inner city of Kalamazoo, and I want it to be affordable to anyone.’ Then everything came back, and I looked around like, ‘Did anybody else hear that?’”
