Here a Church There a Church

My personal story enabled the plot of Pastor's Ex-Wife to romp through the contemporary American Protestant church scene because I have participated in a wide variety of denominations, para-church organizations, and churches in urban, suburban, and rural settings. I've grown close to the people - and usually especially to the people in leadership- and I learned how to respect and grow from each brand of church.

I grew up in a small German Lutheran congregation in New York City, part of the Missouri Synod.

In college I attended a liberal Episcopalian church in a smaller but still urban part of St. Louis.

After a year I joined a Reformed Presbyterian newly planted church in a predominantly African American section of St. Louis.

Since this was in the early days of the Jesus Movement and the Charismatic Renewal, I also attended a weekly mega-church service in a large non-denominational church.

After marrying we moved to a very small non-denomination charismatic congregation with Lutheran roots that met in a cow pasture- not really- but goats and sheep often wandered through the sanctuary on very hot summer Sundays.

From there we moved to a Latter Rain (Pentecostal-like) congregation in a suburb of Los Angeles.

We migrated back to the mid-West we joined a Church of God (Anderson) congregation where no one approved of any charisma but the congregation had mastered love one for another in a way we had never before experienced.

After we moved back to Missouri we spent 15 years in a small independent congregation which had broken free from the Assemblies of God denomination.

Then I got divorced.


You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.