His Grace Magazine!
Page 10
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February 2022
Pastor Brad Peters
"A Likely Story"
met Brad in 2002 as we both worked for a daily newspaper called the 'Niagara Falls Review.' I worked in the pre-press department, and Brad was an editor. Where did you start your career? Brad grew up in Orono, Ontario, went to school in Oshawa, Ontario and when he graduated from journalism school, he moved to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan for his journalism internship. In 1996, Brad landed his first job as a journalist, but once he and His wife, Michelle, were ready to start a family, they moved back to Cornwall, Ontario to be close to their families. In 2002, he started working at 'The Review' in Niagara Falls and worked there until 2011. During that time, He became an interim part time pastor at a church in Niagara Falls. Why did you move to Peterborough? When Brad began working at 'The Review,' his daughter was only 2 years old and his son was just over 6 months old. In August of 2017, at his last year pastoring in Niagara Falls, Brad was getting the sense that the Lord was preparing him to move. But he didn’t know how to mention it to his wife, Michelle. A friend of his mentioned to him that a church in Peterborough was looking for a pastor and that his friend thought that Brad would be a good fit for that position and he suggested that
Brad contact this Peterborough church. When Brad mentioned it to Michelle, she started laughing because she was getting the same vibes from the Lord. So once the posting came up, Brad called the
church and their first meeting was online. They connected right away, and it was the easiest move because the Lord’s hand was in it. When they moved, his daughter was just going into grade 12; his son into grade 10, but neither one of them wanted to move. However, they moved at the end of July. It was a pretty miserable summer for the kids, but after about three weeks in school, they started to
love it. They began to flourish, earned scholarships and made new friends. It was the best move for everybody. Both kids are now at Trent University in Peterborough getting their undergrad to become teachers. Brad’s church in Peterborough is primarily an older church, but they are beginning to see a bit of a turnaround. It helped to make an awareness of foundational stories. Brad states, “We can’t take anything for granted… build from the basics. God has built it in such a way that when we go back to the basics, growth happens. Healthy things grow. The church is a living thing, but the reason why it isn’t growing is because it isn’t healthy enough because we don’t know the stories. We let weird agendas into our theology and we’ve deviated from our first true love. We make the same mistakes over and over. We just need to let God be God and let Him shepherd us. And let’s recognize that Scripture was not written to us specifically, but they were written for us. We need to be still and listen, because God still speaks.” Tell us about your book? The book, “A Likely Story,” came out the first week of November, 2021. “The reality is, when I was a kid, everybody had a church connection. I was raised Catholic, up to my high school time. But now we are about 5 generations
