Professor Doug Petersen from Vanguard University, with his wife Myrna, visited City Harvest Church these past two weeks and blessed the church with powerful messages about living a life that’s yielded to God. The couple shares aspects of their ministry and home life with City News in this interview.
“I tell my students you can call me Professor, you call me Doctor. You can call me Doug. Just don’t call me Mister. That’s for old people,” chuckles Professor Doug Petersen, who visited City Harvest Church with his wife Myrna this past fortnight and preached at last weekend’s services.
Prof Petersen is the first guest speaker the church has welcomed since 2019, no thanks to Covid. Having met CHC’s senior pastor Kong Hee through Vanguard University, where Pastor Kong is furthering his studies and where Prof Petersen is the co-director of graduate studies at Vanguard University, he and Myrna made their first trip to Asia to preach and to teach at CHC. Prof Petersen is also well-known as a foremost expert on Pentecostalism.
Over four decades ago, he and Myrna founded Latin America ChildCare, now known as ChildHope, an organisation that educates and feeds children from poor communities across Central America and the Caribbean. ChildHope has over 300 schools and has provided Christian education to more than two million children.
What impresses one about Prof Petersen is his humble and down-to-earth personality, buoyed by what is clearly an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit.
In his sermon on 14 August, he told the congregation about the “divine coincidence” that led to the founding of ChildHope. He happened to be home one evening, babysitting his young sons (“three under the age of 3”) when a TV commercial for World Vision came on, and he had a God encounter.
“I can’t tell you how, but I just knew that it was God,” he says. “The Lord had spoken in my heart in that moment, and He was going to change our life. And it made no sense to me at all. Because I had never done it before; I didn’t know how to do it. But that moment, I did know it was the Lord. You only have one or two of those in your whole life that are dramatic like that.”
(But it might not have happened had Myrna not been out of the house, practising self-care back when the concept did not even exist. “I had an art class which was about three hours long, like from 7 to 10pm. It would just give me such peace and calm, so I would go out and do my art once a week,” she explains, revealing the generous spirit present in their marriage even early on.)
Many Christians experience what they believe is a divine encounter, but not all bring forth fruit like ChildHope. What was it that Prof Petersen did? How did he keep things going? How much of it was human effort, and how much the leading of the Holy Spirit?
“From that point [of receiving the word from the Lord], I got determined. I just started working actively on getting support from people,” he describes. At that point the Petersens had one year commitment in another country. “So I put it on hold but as soon as I came back, I started back up again.”
AND SUDDENLY, THEY WERE MISSIONARIES
The beginning was not easy for them, but the word planted in Prof Petersen’s heart kept them going, making necessary decisions where needed, such as moving to Central America.
“When we started it was really, really humble. We couldn’t speak Spanish, so we decided we need to go to Latin America, to go learn Spanish. Our intention was to go back for a year, and we realised that after a year, we still needed more time, so we stayed there.” Prof Petersen relocated his base to Central America, and travelled to the US and back regularly.
“We weren’t planning on being missionaries,” he says. “Neither of us had any missionary intentions. So when this started, I planned on doing it from the US. And then when we recognised we needed Spanish, Myrna agreed, we would go to Latin America for one year and attend language school. Then after that one year, it was like, ‘We need to stay another year’. So we committed for a year at a time—for five years!
“Neither of us had felt, I mean, I never ever thought about being a missionary. I want to be a scholar. And I was always a preacher. But we hadn’t contemplated on being missionaries, we just sort of fell into it. And then, after probably the first five years, Central America became home—our kids grew up there—those were the most wonderful years of our life. But it was not easy those first those first years, because we had no intention of staying, actually.”
God continued to open doors as the Petersens stepped out in faith. They met Pastor John and Lois Bueno, American missionaries who had spearheaded a Christian school for children in poverty in El Salvador in the 60s. “One of the things I’m pretty good at is finding really good people,” smiles Prof Petersen. “We found these two missionaries who were locals, they stayed with me my whole career—they were terrific. You don’t get too far without really good people. But for those first few years, we hired one at a time. You were limited by what you could pay for.”
He adds, “I had to learn how to raise money. But the Lord would open doors. We never ever went where we had to cut (retrench) somebody. The Lord always provided, but we never had anything extra, because whatever we got, we just kept growing.”
Myrna shares that the Petersen family supported themselves, not taking any pay from ChildHope all the years they were building the organisation. Prof Petersen adds, “In fact, most of our support came from our home church where we were youth pastors, and the laypeople there. They supported us, really, for the next 40 years. They were young couples, and they became older couples, but they stayed with us the whole time.”
The missionary life is not one for the faint-hearted—challenges abounded, but Prof Petersen said it has never occurred to him to quit. “Once we started, I never thought of it. I was pretty persistent. Even if things look pretty grim, I would think we’d pull out of it. I never thought in terms of ‘it’s not going to work’. I just tried to get through the month, month after month.”
FACING VALLEY MOMENTS IN MINISTRY AND MARRIAGE
In his 15 August sermon, Prof Petersen shared about one time the whole ChildHope project nearly ended in its infancy. “Our first school could have been easily lost, and then that would have been the end,” he says. Their first school was built on a hill surrounded by slums, and on the first day, they saw 500 children from these slums attend the school. Things hummed along nicely, until the fateful phone call they received from the ministry of education, informing them they had no licence to operate and had to shut the school down in a month.
But as they say, if God gives the vision, He will bring the provision. Two days before the deadline to cease operations, Prof Petersen received a call from someone whose 14-year-old housemaid was a beneficiary of the school. This employer visited the school and loved all that the team was doing. As it happened, the visitor was the son of the president, and one phone call solved the whole crisis. The first school not only survived, it was the start of hundreds of schools around the region.
The Petersens faced a completely different—and more harrowing—challenge some time later when Myrna suddenly fell ill with a mysterious disease that attacked her nerves. At the onset, they were visited by a strange Catholic man who travelled to Central America, visited their school and left them a message, “His grace is sufficient”. Myrna fell seriously ill and the inexplicable condition continued for two years.
“It was hard for me,” says Myrna frankly. “Because it made me have depression. And then it’s hard to feel God, you know, your soul is in depression. But he (Doug) kept us going, with the kids, in prayer and in faith. And we finally found a doctor that was our answer.”
Prof Petersen elaborates, “It was a cattle disease called brucellosis, and we only found out long after that you can get it from eating unpasteurised goat cheese in Nicaragua, and it would attack your nervous system, and eventually it would be fatal. It never occurred to anybody to look at that, because people don’t usually get this disease, so it took a couple of years or more to diagnose it. We found this tropical disease doctor from University of Southern California, who made a record of every place Myrna had been to, every country, then she ran tests, and tracked it down! And they treated it like tuberculosis, so it was a long, long process, but at least it started her back on the road to recovery.”
Prof Petersen took leave from ministering during that time to care for his wife. “It wasn’t a matter of questioning my faith so much as wanting to understand why this was happening,” he says, “It’s like ‘We have important things to do!’. Later, Myrna got cancer, and she was the strong one. That was harder for me.”
Ten years after her battle with the cattle illness, Myrna discovered she had breast cancer. “So I had to do chemotherapy, I lost all my hair, you know, everything you go through when you have that. But we had faith—we knew it was going to be okay.”
Prof Petersen continues, looking at his wife, “She was strong. I worried a lot during that period, but she didn’t. She was fine, she was the strong one. And sometimes, you need one in the couple to be strong.”
LOVE & FAMILY
Doug and Myrna Petersen met as teenagers. “We both came from little churches in our province in Canada,” he recalls. “There would be activities where all the young people from churches would come to, and we met at youth camp. I think Myrna was 14, so I would have been 15. I didn’t have a driver’s licence yet.”
“We were just friends,” Myrna adds. “Really good friends first.”
“From then on, though, we were pretty much together until we got married—as soon as our parents would let us!” Prof Petersen says. “Myrna’s mother said she couldn’t be 19.”
“I had to be 20 before I could get married,” Myrna smiles. “My mother just felt I would have more maturity then, you know.”
“As if two months would matter,” her husband pipes in.
They were fresh out of school at the time. Myrna was doing medical studies in laboratory technology, and marriage had to wait till she completed that. Prof Petersen had graduated from Bible school earlier that year, and he was a travelling evangelist, preaching at different churches from week to week when they got married. “I was 21 but I looked 12,” he quips. The couple moved from Vancouver to Southern California soon after, and Prof Petersen went back to school to attain a degree. The couple had their three children by the time they were in their mid-20s.
Listening to them banter is like watching a young couple in love talking and laughing. They have been married for more than 50 years now.
“Generally, Myrna is very strong by nature,” Prof Petersen says. “She has her own opinions, she is her own person. She says what she thinks, she’s not like a doll on a shelf.”
“We debate,” she adds with a smile. “We throw ideas back and forth.”
Theirs is a marriage many would admire: meet and marry someone wonderful in church, have three sons, serve in ministry together and experience God’s miracles together… What advice would they give to young people or parents of young adults? How do they pray for their own children?
Prof Petersen replies candidly, “You know, we were kids. So I’m not sure how spiritual we were! But we both were brought up in really solid families.”
Myrna adds, “And you couldn’t date anybody who wasn’t a Christian, that was a rule. ‘Our family, our rules’, was what my parents said. So I was the only Christian girl he knew.”
“Who was pretty!” her husband qualified.
Myrna continued, “So we set the same rule with our children: you don’t date anyone that’s not a Christian. You don’t let yourself go down that path.”
Prof Petersen also credits the fact their children grew up in Central America. “For some families, raising kids overseas is a huge challenge, but for us, it was much easier than in the US. We never had to deal with all those issues, or struggle with our kids being rebellious. We were a healthy family: everybody had their own idea, we would argue around the table. We also had a jar on the table: if you speak Spanish, you have to put money in the jar! This is an English speaking table!”
PENTECOSTAL SOCIAL DOCTRINE
Everything the Petersens have given their lives to has been the doing of the Holy Spirit. Prof Petersen is the author of several books on the topic, including the seminal volume on Pentecostal social justice, titled Not By Might, Nor By Power: A Pentecostal Theology of Social Justice.
“If we take a look at social justice—and justice is fairness—social justice has to do with community where it’s corporate, not just individual,” he says, explaining what “Pentecostal theology of social justice” means. “Our school programme would be social justice. It would be focusing on making a difference by looking at why there was a problem. For example, one could do feeding programmes, but the children are going to be hungry tomorrow. That’s an important part of social ministry, but doesn’t bring about justice. So we would be very committed to things that would change the situation.”
He continues, “’Pentecostal’ is: what role does the Spirit play in that? When we think of starting a church, we think Pentecostal. When we think of any kind of ministry, we think we need the help of the Spirit. [But] when we think of social, sometimes we think like the Red Cross, and that isn’t going to work. When you work in these really tough communities, two and two make four isn’t going to make it—you need a miracle. And you need it all the time or it’s too hard. So Pentecostal theology is where the Holy Spirit plays an integral part in everything we say and do.”
The book turned out to be the first of its kind. “When I wrote the book, I, I had a great opportunity to write a theology as I was actually doing it. So I could say, ‘here’s the action, and here’s the theology that matches’, and I didn’t think at the time it was that unusual. What was unusual was that it was first book about Pentecostal theology of social concern, and which was great for my career—it was chosen as the book of the decade.”
Being first to write such a book set Prof Petersen at the forefront of Pentecostal theology. But what exactly makes an effort like ChildHope Pentecostal social justice? “It’s not Pentecostal because you’re Pentecostal, or because you say it is,” he emphasises. “You have to ask the people who are participating: in what way would they say they have been touched by the Spirit? We can always say, ‘Oh, this is great, that’s great’, but what are the people saying who are involved in that test of the Spirit?”
For him, it’s a work of the Holy Spirit when there is Spirit baptism. “I’ll even put a lot of emphasis on the social significance of speaking in tongues: it gives a voice to people who have no voice. The marginalised women, those left by the side of the road, whose voices don’t matter; they’re afraid of their own voice; nobody listens. So besides just the edification that speaking in tongues brings, it gives voice to the marginalised and they recognise that they have as much influence spiritually to do anything anybody else does. So that is the moral significance of glossolalia.”
“I’m very committed to the ‘Pentecostal’ part of social justice,” he states. “I’ve been a Pentecostal my whole life, but I’m also a Pentecostal scholar, not a scholar who happens to be Pentecostal.”
