“I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23, ESV).

By God’s amazing grace, I am a fourth-generation Christian—and it is a great blessing to be born into a devout Christian family. As I reflect on my spiritual journey from the time I was born, lodged in my mind are many wonderful memories of God’s saving grace and His multiple blessings upon my family and me. My father was a third-generation believer, and my mother—while not having the benefit of a Christian upbringing—blessed our family by her godly example and life, which was marked by gentleness, helpfulness, and cheerfulness.

Growing up, our parents always taught us to seek God and His kingdom first (Matthew 6:33). They often reminded us of Grandpa’s final wish that all of his children and grandchildren “keep good faith with Christ.” As our parents were always grateful for God’s mercy, grace, and love, they had a strong desire to see their children active in the service of God. At our nightly after-dinner family devotions, our parents would give a short devotion based on one or a few verses from Scripture. We often sang one of Mother’s favorite choruses, All for Jesus!

Inspired by my grandfather, who was a Presbyterian pastor-missionary in China and Singapore, and my great grandfather, who was a Presbyterian minister in China, my mother had a strong desire to see one or both of her sons enter the pastoral ministry. Mother was a very generous person, always giving things away, so it was no surprise to me to learn that she had given my brother and me to the Lord at our births. When we were born, Mother said this sincere prayer over each of us: “O God, I offer my son to You. May he serve You all the days of his life!” Mother had a great passion for personal evangelism and missions. She was the principal of a government-aided Christian school (True Light School), and on many occasions, I saw her witnessing to her students’ non-Christian parents. She not only wanted her sons to be “preachers,” she herself did her part to share the gospel with the unsaved.

As a child, I attended two different churches each week. On Sunday mornings our family attended the Cantonese service of the Grace Singapore Chinese Christian Church, a church now well-known for her strong global missionary work. Father was a board member of the church; Mother headed the missions committee. The church started a mission outreach in Pulau Tekong, a nearby island, and, during school holidays, my parents frequently brought my siblings and me along—sometimes traveling together with pastors and missionaries—to do outreach ministries in the gospel center there. As a boy of 10 or so, I did my little part in missions by handing out tracts and flyers to the people living there.

From time to time on Sunday mornings at the crack of dawn, while my siblings preferred to sleep in, I would accompany my parents to the beautiful MacRitchie Reservoir where Grace Church held many of its mission prayer meetings. In the quiet surroundings of the reservoir, this little band of prayer warriors gathered to pray for missionaries and their work. They often prayed for the spiritually lost in Communist China and in other atheistic countries like the Soviet Union. Although I did not join the small group as they prayed, even as I wandered around their meeting place by the still waters, I could hear their earnest cries to the Lord. Their prayers for the work of global missions moved me deeply.

On Sunday afternoons my siblings and I attended the English service of the Life-Bible Presbyterian Church, a mission-minded church pastored by my cousin, Rev. Dr. Timothy Tow.

Sensing the Lord’s call to be a missionary someday, one night at the age of 12, as I was retiring to bed, I knelt down and vowed, “Lord, I will serve You as a pastor/missionary when I grow up.” At age 17, in 1963, I consecrated my life to the Lord at the end of our church’s youth Bible camp. Another teen, named Soon Meng (Sue), was also at the camp and later became my wife. Upon finishing secondary school, I enrolled at the Far Eastern Bible College. There, I learned much about evangelism and missions. During breaks, along with other students, I often accompanied the principal, Dr. Timothy Tow, to Malaysia to do missionary work. He was a pastor, theological educator, and evangelist all at the same time. His deep passion for winning the lost to Christ had a great impact on me. On one occasion, he assigned a classmate and me to spend six weeks doing evangelistic work in a little town in Malaysia called Pokok Assam. We stayed at a gospel center run by an Indian lay missionary, who was the principal of a school. As it was school vacation time, with his help, my friend and I were able to do different outreach activities and ministries with the Indian and Chinese there. During these six weeks serving in the little “mission field,” I felt the Lord was training me to be a future cross-cultural missionary.

After finishing four years of basic theological training and feeling increasingly enthusiastic about world missions, the Lord led me to further my studies in theology and missions at the Reformed Bible College, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Covenant Theological Seminary (1969–1974). My study of missions and mingling with missionaries from around the world, especially at the Trinity School of World Missions, and some years later, at the Fuller School of World Missions (1978–1980), solidified my passion for evangelism and missions.

In the 1970s, when I served in youth and pastoral ministries, I also taught missions at the Singapore Bible College where I formed the Student Missions Fellowship. During school breaks, missions came alive as I took my students on mission trips to Indonesia and Thailand. Later, from 1980–1994, when I pastored Baptist churches in Spokane, Washington, and Fresno and San Jose, California, I participated in global mission-related activities and went on mission trips from time to time.

Although I loved doing pastoral ministry, I often felt the Lord calling me to a global cross-cultural ministry, of which God had prepared me well from the early days of my Christian life. While I did not know where God eventually would lead me to serve, I was open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. William Carey—an early English missionary to India—said it well: “To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map.”

In 1992, Dr. Thomas Wang, president of Great Commission International, spoke at the mission conference of my church, Chinese Baptist Church of San Jose. At that time, he was doing pioneer missionary work in the former USSR. He challenged us to go with him to help harvest souls for the Lord. A year later, in response to his invitation and God’s call, I went with him and his team on a short-term ministry trip to Far Eastern Russia. During our two weeks of ministry there, the Korean missionaries with whom we worked kept reminding us, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Matthew 9:37, ESV). When we saw almost 1,000 Ukrainians and 401 Chinese come to Christ during our short time there, I felt the Lord saying to me: “Return to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the former Soviet Union, to preach and teach My Word to believers, many of whom are not receiving proper spiritual nourishment. Go also to preach the gospel to the unsaved, who have been deprived of the gospel for seven decades.“

At the end of our missionary trip, our three Russian interpreters from St. James Bible College in Kyiv, Ukraine, pleaded with me, “Please come to Kyiv and teach at our newly opened St. James Bible College. We urgently need lecturers and teachers like you who have taught in a Bible college. We think you will fit well working with our Ukrainian people and culture.”

On the last day of our mission trip in Vladivostok, Russia, I consulted with Rev. Wang, my mentor, and shared with him that I believed God was leading me to do cross-cultural missionary work in the Soviet Union, perhaps in Ukraine—and that our interpreters from St. James Bible College had invited me to teach at their school. Dr. Wang assured me that he too felt God was taking me out of pastoral ministry and placing me in cross-cultural mission work. He offered to introduce me, when we got back to California, to Rev. Don Sheley, the founder of St. James Bible College in Kyiv. When I met with Rev. Sheley (whose church is located in San Bruno, near San Francisco), he welcomed me heartily to teach at St. James Bible College when I was able to do so.

In October 1994, in response to God’s clear calling to do missionary work in Ukraine, my church accepted my resignation and reassigned and commissioned me as her missionary. At the same time, I started my own mission organization, Global Missions Partnership. A year later, I was also commissioned as a ministry associate and evangelist-at-large with Rev. Wang’s Great Commission International mission organization. In that capacity I did some preaching and teaching ministries at a few of the mission centers which he had established in Russia and in other countries of Europe.

From 1994–2008, as an itinerant evangelist and missionary, the Lord led me to preach, teach, and do charitable works cross-culturally—not only in Ukraine but also in other countries of the former Soviet Union. With the lifting of visa requirements to Ukraine, missionaries—both short and long term—began to enter Ukraine in larger numbers. Consequently, the Lord redirected me to Asia, where I was more needed. Since 2008, I have been ministering in several Asian countries, mainly in Myanmar and Nepal.

As I reflect on my Christian journey, the following five verses sum up God’s mandate for me: John 10:27–28 (conversion), Romans 12:1–2 (consecration), and Psalm 96:3 (mission calling). In the grand scheme of God’s plan for His Church, we can clearly see He calls some to be apostles (missionaries), some prophets (preachers), some evangelists, some pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11–12). At the same time, He also calls others to serve Him in different ways and in different secular occupations, such as my elder brother who serves in the field of architecture. We need many different types of occupations to meet the manifold needs of humankind and thereby help fulfill God’s plan on earth. Unworthy as I am, the Lord has graciously called me to be a pastor-missionary—just like he called my grandfather to be a pastor-missionary. After serving the Lord as a pastor for 17 years and a missionary for 30 years, my sincere prayer is that I will complete the task which He set in motion for me, even before I was born.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5, ESV).

“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24, ESV).

Born and raised in Singapore, Rev. Dr. Peter Tow and his wife, Sue, are long-time residents of San Jose, California.