Letter from Barbara Peters

Darin,
We are taking you up on your offer to introduce ourselves. My name is Barbara and my husband's name is Marshall. We got wind of your site because of listening to the God Journey. We have just finished reading your book these last two days as we traveled from Pennsylvania to Kentucky for a family wedding. We were both so blown away by the revelation of the Father's heart. It has truly changed us.

We were both raised "in the church" from out babyhood. My husband, in the Southern Baptist and I in Fundamentalism. I went to school at a school like Bob Jones University and he went to a Southern Baptist school and then Seminary in Texas. Along the way we got interested in what the whole Bible had to say and after church planting up North with the Southern Baptists we started a small Charismatic church. God soon led us from there to Pennsylvania to help begin a work here already started by a friend who had also moved out of the Southern Baptists to a more Charismatic expression.

We were in this church for almost 20 years. Many referred to us as the "pillars." We were loyal and helped to keep everything together. We served as elders, teachers, counselors, janitors and whatever else was needed. We have 7 children. I home schooled for a while and then decided to put them in public school. Marshall ran a chimney business that we started when we moved here. He has since moved to a company as a Stockbroker/Financial Advisor in the past year and I now run the business until he is stable and able to carry the finances.

Our world started falling apart about 2 ½ years ago. Our then 16 year old daughter came home smashing drunk from a New Year's party. This, after our "testimony" the same night about how blessed we were and how much peace we had at home. This threw us into the hardest year ever. We soon learned that we could not change her heart and decided to just love her. She has since moved out and living with her boyfriend but God enabled us to maintain a love relationship with her as we grew in understanding of his Grace and how we were to show her that. This began our journey away from Religion. (Note - just this month she has actually moved back in to go to school. It is a continuing story of grace and redemption in process!)

A year ago we finally could not stomach the whole direction our church was headed. (Marsh had "challenged" the Apostle years earlier that he was headed toward a Papal Hierarchy - which indeed proved true.) We had seen problems with some character issues in the leadership for years but when they started to insist that they were "Apostles" (International Coalition of Apostles under Peter Wagner and John Kelly), were to be addressed as such, that they were not to be questioned even by the very people that loved them and had served them, and when they told us that they had the ability to hear from God for us, we could no longer be silent. To stay and say nothing was to give aid in putting others in the same bondage. We had to leave. I wish today we had not left without saying something publicly.

As we had our final meeting with the leader and his wife we begged them to stay in relationship with us but the final evening of our last meeting a church meeting was called and they told people that it would not be healthy to contact us any longer. Our home went from loads of friends to only about 5. Lifelong friends now would shun us in Wal-Mart. Our Pastor and his wife and family, whom were like family to us, would not even acknowledge us any longer. We were out from under their ‘covering‘, had ‘broken covenant' and had ‘lost our destinies' as well as having ruined our children's destinies.

My world was totally destroyed (or so I thought). I did not know what to think about what I had been taught over the years. I studied everything that I had formerly believed. I read the New Testament through 3 times. I realized that much of what I believed about covering, spiritual warfare, church government, leadership, accountability and so much more was simply bunk! I knew NOTHING of the heart of God. I knew almost NOTHING about loving others.

I would have gone crazy if I had not found people on the internet that had undergone the same experiences of leaving a "church." I told a fellow blogger once that I either WAS her or KNEW her. I was sure that we would have not had the same experiences in two different places. Unfortunately, I found many who had. I began to read as much as I could. I found Wayne Jacobsen's site and the relief I felt in finding it was immense. Marsh and I read his book, "So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore" and about cried with the truth in it. His book, He Loves You has changed our lives forever.

We still are not attending anywhere, we mainly "church" at the God Journey podcast and meet with individual believers. It has been so hard to wait for the Father to grow the Church around us again, but slowly as we were weaned off the fake, we are finding the real. We feel more healthy than we ever thought possible. At a family wedding this fall, we were thrust into the whole "Church" mindset and we turned to each other and said, "We don't even speak the same language anymore."

That is a brief (really brief) glimpse into our lives. Not unlike the passing train and the windows that you described in your book. All I can say is this. I blogged on Grace one day on a blog that I began after I left our ‘church.' I mention how the message of Grace was almost like a cloth being dipped in the dye for the first time. (http://retrofited.blogspot.com/2008/04/dying-cloth-with-grace.html) I felt I was changed but only a tiny bit by tiny bit.

It has taken almost two years of Grace for us to understand how much we have been changed by the message. The more we learn of the Grace of the Father the more we realized how much we needed Him. Grace is no longer a concept. It is a Who, A Person, a Being.

Your message in The God's Honest Truth has been a major part of that dying process. We believe in your message of the heart of God and want to help you as much as we can to get it out. We would love to invite you to our little burg of PA but unfortunately we couldn't put 10 people together if we tried. Please let us know if you are ever near here though. We would love to meet up and personally get to meet you.
Blessings,
Barbara (and Marshall) Peters