Life in the country was a challenge financially but our entire family thoroughly enjoyed rural living. Most of our children look back to those days with much fondness. Our daughter Kate especially enjoyed playing outdoors in an old chicken "brooder" house, often with her best friend, pretending they were Mary and Laura Ingalls of "Little House on the Prairie". We were living a few miles from the farm where Becky grew up and where her parents as well as her brother's family were still living and farming. After visiting and being a part of two different churches in the area we ended up joining with two other families to form a house church. I had become good friends with the fellow who was initiating the church, having participated with him in a variety of home gatherings and prayer groups. He was a very zealous and dynamic kind of guy who, though younger than me, I was drawn to because of his spiritual drive. I saw him as a real kindred spirit in my own quest to draw closer to God. His daughter became close friends with our eldest daughter, and one of our boys was also good friends with his son. The other family who joined with us in forming the house church were new neighbors, living only a stone's throw away. They moved from the same college and suburb that we had moved from and we found we had similar homesteading-type interests.
Things went along fine for a while in this house church. A fourth family joined with us and we were enjoying this new-found freedom of worshipping with others of like mind in the context of a home where we could share a meal together after the meeting and where the children had plenty of room to safely roam and play. But things took an unexpected turn when I began to take a serious interest in reading some books by someone that M. (the house church leader who I, by then, considered by best friend) had reservations about. M. and I exchanged some letters where we laid out more clearly what our thoughts were. When that didn't resolve things, M. called a meeting where he asked the leaders of another church that he respected to be present. At that meeting I was basically quizzed about the books I was reading and, at the end, was strongly encouraged to stick to the Scriptures as the only true and authoritative guide for life, which I was more than happy to be in agreement with. But, because I didn't see any contradiction between the teaching in these books and the Scriptures, I didn't change my own thoughts, and M. felt it necessary to make a break with me since he could not accept the validity of this teaching. As he put it, he saw us walking down separate paths, paths that would only increasingly move further and further apart, so he felt the need to make a clean break "for the sake of our children" (who were best friends!). The longer we waited to make the break the harder it would be, was his line of reasoning. I remember saying to his face at some point in this process (I don't remember the exact context) that I felt like he was stabbing me in the back. It felt so much like betrayal and treachery, certainly the most wrenching experience I had ever (up till then and since) had. K. was the most devastated of our family since she was so close to M.'s daughter. It would be many years before that wound was no longer a tender spot in her soul. Also, our new neighbors took the same position as M., and all of a sudden it was like an invisible concrete wall had sprung up between our homes. No more contact, no more nothing. I had heard and read about shunning. Now I and my family were experiencing it.
Within a couple years we had picked up stakes and moved to the Southeast where I planned to attend the SMF school of ministry. J.R., whose books had created this rift between M. and me, had a church and school and I decided that that was what I wanted to help me in my pursuit of God. One of J.R.'s books had been instrumental in helping me make sense of this horrendous experience I had just gone through with my family. Would SMF be the help I needed to discover a "ministry" that I could devote myself to as a life's vocation or "calling"? I was sure hoping so.
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