Bill Fields & PeaceMakers International

by Ron Henzel

Mark Twain once said, “To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail.” That pretty much sums up the “counseling” ministry of Bill Fields. He’s been beating people over the head with his hammer in God’s name since at least the early 1980s, and probably long before then. I should know. My wife and I spent five and one-half years in a small group he ran as part of his PeaceMakers International (PMI) “ministry.” (Note: PMI is not affiliated in any way with Peacemaker Ministries of Billings, Montana.)

We were introduced to PMI by a prominent local pastor just as we were coming out of a difficult period in our lives. If you’ve read much literature on cults and spiritually abusive groups our story will sound all-too-familiar: things started out so wonderfully at PMI, and ended so horribly.

As for Bill: he’s ridden several different hobby horses over the years, depending on whatever his current agenda has been at the time. When we met up with him his emphasis was on healing from abusive situations in the past. Unfortunately the way he handled it led to many false accusations of abuse against members’ parents, and he even instigated a case or two of False Memory Syndrome.

Bill’s always displayed an unrequited hankering for status in the evangelical Christian community, and for some reason he thinks he can achieve it by subjecting prominent evangelical leaders to his own special brand of “church discipline.” So since the late ’80s he’s worked hard to discredit Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and at times that effort has been practically his sole emphasis.

Lately his major emphasis has been on church discipline and contemporary evangelicalism’s lousy track record in practicing it correctly. I’m afraid I have to agree with him here, but not for a reason that he would like. You see, the biggest case in point here is Bill himself: he was excommunicated from the Wheaton Evangelical Free Church (Wheaton, IL) in 1986, and yet for years afterward other well-known evangelical churches and individuals continued supporting him, enabling him to continue spinning out of control.

I often wonder how many Christians and their families would have been spared years of anguish and torment had the Wheaton Evangelical Free Church and others taken the responsibility to do the kind of follow up that is necessary for a church discipline case such as Bill’s. Many people who get excommunicated from local churches simply leave the church altogether. Some fall completely away from the Christian faith. But many others simply find another church to attend, and often remain there for years without even being questioned about their previous excommunication until that person’s sins become obvious to the leadership. In Bill Fields’s case, he dropped out of local church life altogether, but continued “counseling” individual Christians (sometimes through pastoral referrals!), stealing them from their local churches into his PMI group at every opportunity, the whole while that he’s openly attacking evangelicalism for its sins!

And all that time the Christian churches in the area did nothing. They continue to do nothing. This is probably mostly due to the fact evangelical churches have little history of or experience with interdenominational cooperation in matters of church discipline. Additionally, during the 1980s there was a prominent court case involving a woman who sued her church for publically placing her under discipline. This had a chilling effect on the legal atmosphere in which churches are forced to operate, and many completely backed off from the practice.

But the responsibility of local church leadership to correct Christ’s sheep and protect them from false teachers who rise up in their midsts remains. What happens when a cult leader is forced out of one church and simply goes down the street and tries to take over a neighboring church? Doesn’t the previous church have a responsibility to warn the new church of the danger?

May God grant us all a new level of awareness and sensitivity to this growing problem.

Articles from the Midwest Christian Outreach Journal:

“Blessed are the Ex-PeaceMakers: Bill Fields’ War on the Church,” by Don Veinot.

In our “Special Presentations” Department:

“PeaceMaker Wars”

Articles on
Other Web Sites:

Bible-Based Cults

Bill Fields’s
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