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Getting to Know Pastor Brad Peters..............................Pages

Page 10 His Grace Magazine! February 2022

Pastor Brad Peters

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"A Likely Story"

Imet 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

February 2022 His Grace Magazine! Page 11

Pastor Brad Peters

away from the church. We are not in the Christendom church any longer, but we are still influenced by it. So these foundational things are still there, but not everybody knows the back story to how the first generation of naturally born people could go so wrong so quickly. There’s a lot of stuff in the Bible and so much importance in these stories; they are relevant and they resonate still. So we need to reintroduce these biblical life lessons to people who don’t have a solid biblical knowledge. Every family has family issues, so what does the Bible say about this? We live in the most egocentric era of history ever… we share the most mundane things, because we’ve all bought into this thing that we’re the star of the show, that it’s all about us! But this is just not ever been the way it’s been modeled. So where do we look for an example of that? Moses was the focal point and out-in-front man, but Aaron, his brother, was fundamental in everything that happened. So how did Aaron deal with that?”

Brad challenges his congregation fairly regularly with the parable of the talents, where, ”We are given so much, and what did we do with it? Did you take the talent that I gave you and bury it, did you use it for TikTok? Or porn? Did you make much of it? What is your return on your investment? It’s the spiritual gifts and evangelism technologies that we have. We will be called to respond to our Master when we are called home, to answer, “What did we do with our talent?”

Available on Amazon at amazon.ca Kindle Edition $5.99, Paperback $10.00 While Brad was still in seminary, he pledged that he wasn’t going to preach anything that he didn’t need to hear. He still writes a faith column, but he was moved one day when he thought that he had been given the platform to write, but what was he doing with it? He needed to use this opportunity to take advantage of it. “We never know what the Spirit will use to trigger someone some day, and maybe some day, someone will think differently about the gospel.”

So frequently when he’s delivering a sermon, someone will come up to him and say that the message was meant for them. The Spirit knows what a certain person needs to hear, and he’s hoping that the same thing will happen with the book, especially with the importance of the cross. The last chapter, 'Love

Wins,' focuses on our Lord’s death and resurrection as the greatest love story ever told, and he hopes it speaks to someone who needs to hear that message. God has given him this opportunity and he will use it. And someone on the other side of the planet may be moved by something that the

Spirit had him write; that is our

God and that is phenomenal! “The book ends with the great commission; Jesus doesn’t ask us to go to the ends of the earth, preaching, teaching and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and the

Holy Spirit; He commands us to do those things. We need to recognize this sense of engagement and we need to equip people to do this. “A Likely Story” helps people to get acquainted with the stories in the Bible so we can all share the deeper truth. The book is grounded in the Word and each chapter ends with a prayer. So many generations are unchurched and because of this, many people don’t know how to pray. If we can take these stories in Scripture and see how they apply to our own lives, we can all learn to pray.”

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