Displaying posts from today forward - wordpress

Question

I have a site that was developed by the developer before me and I am the lucky one that gets to try to figure out how to resolve his issues.
I am currently trying to display events from today forward. This is a CPT and has custom fields. I am not sure if I have just looked at this code for to long and am just missing the answer or what but I just cannot see where I am going wrong.
Not only am I not getting ANY results I am getting "Fatal error: Call to a member function format() on a non-object" in my "Dates:" section.
I have read and tried countless possibilities without success. I am hoping that a fresh pair of eyes can help me out.
Here is the code:
<?php
$today = current_time('Ymd');
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'posts_events',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => 'start_date',
'compare' => '>=',
'value' => $today,
)
),
'meta_key' => 'start_date',
'orderby' => 'meta_value',
'order' => 'ASC',
'paged' => ( get_query_var('paged') ? get_query_var('paged') : 1 ));
?>
<!-- CONTENT STARTS -->
<div class="wrapper">
<div class="container_16" id="event-list_container">
<div class="col_14 prefix_1">
<?php
$taxonomy = 'sbts';
$orderby = 'name';
$show_count = 1; // 1 for yes, 0 for no
$pad_counts = 0; // 1 for yes, 0 for no
$hierarchical = 1; // 1 for yes, 0 for no
$title = '';
$empty = 0;
$args = array(
'taxonomy' => $taxonomy,
'orderby' => $orderby,
//'show_count' => $show_count,
//'pad_counts' => $pad_counts,
'hierarchical' => $hierarchical,
'title_li' => $title,
'hide_empty' => $empty
);
?>
<ul class="taxonomy-list-links">
<?php wp_list_categories( $args ); ?>
</ul>
</div>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="container_14 prefix_1 suffix_1 event-list">
<?php $background_image = MultiPostThumbnails::get_post_thumbnail_id(get_post_type(), 'event-thumb', $post->ID); $background_image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $background_image,'event-thumb' ); ?>
<div class="col_5 event-photo" style="background-image:url(<?php echo $background_image[0]; ?>);"></div>
<div class="col_8 prefix_5 event-content">
<h2><?php the_title(); ?><?php if($today > get_field('end_date')) echo '</h2><p>Past Event</p>'; ?>
<?php $firm = get_field('host_firm'); ?>
<h3>Member Host Firm: <span class="event-p"><?php echo $firm[0]->post_title; ?></span></h3>
<h3>Location: <span class="event-p"><?php echo get_field('event_location'); ?></span></h3>
<h3>Dates: <span class="event-p"><?php $date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Ymd', get_field('start_date')); echo $date->format('M j, Y'); ?> - <?php $date = DateTime::createFromFormat('Ymd', get_field('end_date')); echo $date->format('M j, Y'); ?></span></h3>
Event Details
</div>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<div class="wrapper">
<div class="container_16 nested" id="page-navigation_container">
<div class="col_14 gap prefix_1" id="page-navigation"><?php theme_pagination(); ?></div>
</div>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
</div>
<!-- CONTENT STOPS -->
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Answer 1

You need to use a new query with the args you want to pass for the loop:
Check the wp codex
// The Query
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );
// The Loop
if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
echo '<ul>';
while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
$the_query->the_post();
echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
} else {
// no posts found
}
/* Restore original Post Data */
wp_reset_postdata();