Erin Peterson was not looking for a new chapter when a Facebook advertisement caught her attention in 2023. She was a retired Air Force nurse, a 23-year military veteran who had spent her career steadying other people through their worst moments. Peterson had also buried two husbands in the span of five years, navigating the silence that follows sudden cardiac death and, later, the slow devastation of gastric cancer. She was not searching for community or clarity. She just recognized Tim Tebow’s face.
“I didn’t know what Life Surge was,” Peterson said. “I just knew Tim Tebow was coming to Colorado Springs, and if I paid extra, I could get my picture with him.”
She bought the tickets, brought her mother, and walked into a room that turned out to be something far larger than a celebrity appearance. The speakers, the testimonies, the candor about faith and hardship; none of it matched what she had expected. Peterson left that 2023 event in Colorado Springs with a phrase she would use repeatedly to describe the experience: blown away.
Loss Upon Loss
To understand what the event meant to Peterson, some background is necessary. Her first husband, Ted, died at 52 from an apparent cardiac event while she slept beside him. Peterson was a nurse. She had urged him, more than once, to go to the emergency room the night before. He declined. The next morning, she found him unresponsive in a recliner and performed CPR on the living room floor while waiting for paramedics.
Her second husband, Jeff, was her high school sweetheart. She reconnected with him through Facebook, married him, and then spent the following years flying back and forth between Colorado and Florida as he endured a series of surgeries for gastric cancer. He died in early 2024, two weeks before a Life Surge event the two of them had planned to attend together in Denver.
Peterson went without him.
“I contemplated not going,” she said. “And then I thought back to how good I felt after 2023. Something inside me said: you are absolutely going.”
What She Found at the Event
Peterson described the 2024 Denver gathering the way many attendees describe their first Life Surge experience: the warmth from strangers at the door, the ease of a crowd that felt less like an audience and more like a room full of people carrying real weight. Two weeks after losing Jeff, she sat among them and listened to people she did not know tell stories she recognized.
Life Surge has built its entire approach on the conviction that faith and financial responsibility belong together — that the two do not conflict and that separating them does people a disservice. The organization draws more than 117,000 attendees at its live events as of January 2026, with crowds that can exceed 5,000 per city. Speakers across the tour include prominent Christians who speak directly about stewardship, purpose, and leadership. None of the programming promises financial outcomes. The focus is on equipping people with clarity and tools, grounded in a God-First Educational Approach to financial education.
For Peterson, none of the wealth-building frameworks landed as hard as the act of listening to other people’s grief and watching what their faith had done with it.
“Just witnessing all these tremendous people and their faith and their stories,” she said. “It is life-changing. It really is.”
The Impact Classes and a Decision to Go Deeper
Peterson had signed up for an Impact Class on trading as far back as 2023, though caregiving responsibilities had made follow-through impossible. After the 2024 Denver event, she tried again. Some attendees leave a Life Surge gathering and choose to continue their journey by participating in optional three-day introductory experiences, known as Impact Classes, which provide an overview of real estate and stock market concepts. During these Impact Classes, additional training programs are offered for purchase. Attendees who are interested in pursuing further instruction may elect to enroll in those programs, at an additional cost, which provide practical insights from real estate and trading instructors. More information is available at LifeSurge.com/impactclasses.
Peterson attended an Impact Class just weeks after Jeff died. The instructor, she said, noticed she was standing alone during a break and walked over.
“He came over and pretty much stood there and talked to me the entire break,” she said. “He was very encouraging. He told me not to give up, to lean into God.”
Baptism in a Hotel Pool
Peterson returned to Life Surge again in 2025, this time bringing a close friend who had recently lost her father and a young man she had helped raise. At an Impact Class that year, Steve Champa taught the session. Peterson had taken notes in his class two years earlier and brought the same notebook back.
At the end of the third day, an invitation was extended for anyone who wanted to be baptized. Peterson walked up to Champa, showed him the old notebook, and told him she was ready.
“I need to show God that I am his child and he is my father,” she said, “and I want everybody to know it.”
The baptism took place that evening in the hotel pool. Ten to 12 people participated. Others gathered to witness. Champa, she said, hugged her and told her he was proud of her.
A Full-Circle Moment
After the 2025 event, Peterson received a standard follow-up survey from Life Surge. She filled it out with more than a rating. She wrote about three events, two losses, an Impact Class she could not finish and then came back to finish, and a baptism she had been waiting decades to mean something.
A follow-up message arrived: her story was powerful, and the organization wanted to talk.
She flew to Houston. She sat across from a camera. She told the whole thing again.
“I am sure I am just one of many people with similar types of stories,” Peterson said. “But if I can comfort one person and show them that you can get through it, that is what I want to do.”
Life Surge Founder Joe Johnson has described the organization’s mission plainly: to inspire, train, and equip people to surge their resources and influence for Kingdom impact. Peterson’s story did not begin with financial education. It began with a ticket, a photograph with a football player, and a room full of strangers who somehow made her feel less alone. The rest followed from there.
Life Surge holds live events across the United States. Tickets and event details are available at LifeSurge.com.
