Doug P. came to the Lord at the early age of eleven, even though he was not raised in a Christian home.  As C.S. Lewis says, he was “surprised by joy!” when he simply asked God to make him a Christian. 

After high school he was determined to go to a Christian school, Temple College in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and earned a B.A. in Bible with a minor in music (voice).  While attending a meeting there, Doug was challenged to enter Jewish ministry by what he heard from a Jewish believer named Nate Scharff.   He let Nate know he was willing to go to the Jewish people or to Israel if God wanted him to. He has done both!

After graduating with a Master of Divinity degree from the Los Angeles Baptist Seminary, Doug spent six years in Israel – one year working on a kibbutz and five years in Jerusalem, where he attended Hebrew University and led summer youth witnessing teams all over Israel.  These teams handed out hundreds of testimony books in Hebrew to Israelis and had numerous conversations sharing Jesus from the Old and New Testaments. The teams sang in many army camps, gave testimony books to Israeli soldiers, and showed films like “The Hiding Place.”  He also showed the film “The Cross and the Switchblade” in Hebrew to Israeli young people on beaches, on the streets, and at camp sites as they loved this film and it served to bring the Gospel to them.

Doug returned to America in 1981, and continued leading witnessing teams each summer to Israel until 1993.  At the same time, he began college campus outreaches where he organized activities ranging from literature tables, to student Bible studies, special all-campus meetings featuring various Jewish Christian speakers, and jam sessions where college and high school Jewish students came to know the Lord.  Some of these same Jewish young people are serving the Lord this very day, witnessing in their businesses or in full time ministry. 

Fourteen years ago, Doug began a beach ministry at Venice Beach, CA where he gave out 25 or more testimony books in Hebrew to Israelis each weekend.  (He found out years later that Venice Beach was on many of the Israelis’ tour itineraries!)  This work is still being carried on by Eric Larsen, who worked with the Doug in the beach ministry.

Doug joined Chosen People Ministries in July 2006, and is currently doing campus ministry outreach in New York City.  This has proved to be exciting and fruitful with non-believing Jewish students frequently coming to weekly meetings. He is also involved in a weekly street ministry with a literature table in a highly predominant Russian Jewish area of Brooklyn. 

Doug serves on the music team of Chosen People Ministries’s new Brooklyn Messianic congregation and is teaching Hebrew at the Chosen People Ministries Manhattan Center.