Our Founder’s Story

Kathleen, along with her older brother, grew up in a poor, industrial neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Enjoying a typical childhood, they rode the bus to school every day, played at the park with the neighborhood children, and attended church with Grandma. Kathleen remembers the day as an eight year old girl that she saw her brother in tears as her dad drove away for the last time. Once the divorce was final, these two children would spend the rest of their childhood being raised by a single mom. A strong bond was formed between Kathleen and her brother, and that continued until his death at age 55.

Education was pushed strongly by Kathleen’s mother, so after graduating from high school, Kathleen enrolled in the University of Florida. While there, she took a class called Religions of the World and came out an atheist. Though she had attended church as a child, she did not have a personal relationship with the Lord. The professor of this class really did a great job at ruining what little faith she did have. She searched for answers, tried to talk to different people about it, but no one could truly help her find meaning and purpose to her life.

Upon graduation from college, Kathleen asked herself, “What’s next?” Being a very goal-oriented person, she mapped out a plan for her life and put it into action. She married, had three children, and became a career woman, but nothing ever really satisfied her. She became an entrepreneur, starting a magazine and a children’s book store. Various family decisions moved her from Florida to California and finally to North Carolina.

In 1995, Kathleen and her husband, Anders, moved to Raleigh and joined a church. Joining a church was more because it was “the thing to do” and not for any religious reason. At that time the women of the church were going on a retreat, and Kathleen decided to go. In one of the sessions the speaker said, “If you’ve never invited Jesus into your life, you can pray now.” Kathleen’s first thought intellectually was, “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard!” But in the very next second Kathleen testifies to actually feeling the movement of the Holy Spirit in her heart. Immediately, she bowed her head and prayed for Jesus to come into her life. And He did!

Her life changed dramatically — not necessarily on the outside, but on the inside. She had such a thirst and desire to know God. She arrived home from the retreat and told Anders that she had accepted Jesus. When she told him that God was now Number 1 in her life, he replied, “Well, I better be Number 2!” Because of the testimony and life Kathleen lived in front of her husband, Anders accepted Christ nearly six months later.

Kathleen longed to grow in the Lord. An insatiable desire to know God developed a passion for His word. In addition to reading the Bible, she started reading Christian books. Every time she had a question, God would bring just the right book at just the right time. It was through the power in God’s word and the Christian books she read that Kathleen was discipled. Within that first year after her salvation experience, Kathleen realized the tremendous impact these Christian books were having on her life and wanted to share them with others.

She started praying. After all, she had learned from all the scripture and Christian books she had been reading that prayer was vital to the Christian life. In 1996, nearly a year after her conversion, God laid on her heart the ministry that would become Christian Library International. Kathleen decided then that prayer would always be a pillar of this new ministry. She prayed this prayer to God and wrote it out as a testament for the next 25 years of ministry:

The burden of how to get these Christian books that had influenced her so greatly into the hands of others still weighed heavily on her heart. After much prayer, Kathleen sought some advice from Anders about what to do with these books. Anders said, “Why don’t you go down to the YMCA, and see if you could put some books there?” So she did, and the YMCA was very excited about it. She started with about 100 donated books — some from friends and the rest from her personal library. What began as a self-checkout system in one YMCA spread to all of the Raleigh YMCA locations. Soon she had so many Christian books that she began to donate them to the local homeless shelters as well as sending them to missionary families across the globe.

From the very beginning she recognized that it was the hand of God moving in her life and the lives of those to whom these books were given. In 2002, Kathleen and Anders Skaar counted the cost. These two young Christians were ready to be all in — together. Anders quit his job and joined Kathleen in full time ministry. Until then the ministry was being run out of their house. Anders began calling prison chaplains to tell them about the extra Christian books they had. Their response was immediate. All the prison chaplains kept saying, “You have no idea what an answer to prayer you are! We don’t have the money or the resources to provide Christian materials to the inmates who so desperately need them.” Prison chaplains are often responsible to ministry to between 2,000 and 5,000 inmates. Their need was great, and once again, God’s hand was seen moving His ministry forward, now into prisons.

With the ministry’s growth also came trials. Still young in their faith, the Skaars had launched out into the deep. Having depleted their savings account, funds became tight. They trusted God but wondered how they were going to make it financially. They sold their home and other possessions to make ends meet. They downsized in order to invest more of their resources into the ministry God had begun in their hearts. Financial partners and volunteers became the life blood of CLI. Others were catching the vision and wanted to be a part of this growing mission of advancing Christ’s light in prisons.

In 2005, with nearly 500 prisons receiving Christian books and Bibles from the ministry, another need was presented from the chaplains in these facilities. Passionately serving the inmates, these chaplains longed to see the men and women under their care begin to make substantial growth in their walk with God. Most of the incarcerated under their care were new Christians and needed to be discipled, but one chaplain could not do it all. Kathleen wanted to help, but how? It was as if she could hear the Macedonian call from the Apostle Paul’s vision in Acts 16:8. Having already completed seminary classes, Kathleen now had a purpose greater than herself to complete her Bible education degree. She eventually graduated with her Masters of Divinity and began writing Bible studies specifically for the purpose of making disciples in prisons.

Today, there are three sets of Bible studies available for inmates to complete. These three studies include 35 lessons teaching prisoners who God is, His leadership by His Spirit, and how to truly become a disciple of Christ. As of 2019, nearly 60,000 lessons have been completed by over 13,000 inmates. More and more volunteers have joined the ranks as Bible Ministers, Letter Ministers, Prayer Warriors, and on-site workers. Serving nearly 1,400 penal facilities, CLI has become a prison ministry alliance serving alongside chaplains, churches, businesses, donors and publishers.

On April 22, 2021, CLI celebrated the retirement of Kathleen and Anders Skaar, after leading the organization for twenty-five years. She recounts,