I was happy to be interviewed, & I think @7im did a very fair job of writing about the complex case of Derrick Peterson, a former sheriff deputy & candidate for Portland's school board who was commissioned as an apostle by Ché Ahn in 2020.
rollingstone.com/politics/polit… 1/
Ché Ahn also listed Peterson as an advisory board member at 1Race4Life, an anti-abortion/racial-reconciliation org that he founded in 2020 after George Floyd's murder. web.archive.org/web/2021120511…. 2/
Last week Oregon Live ran a story where Peterson downplayed his 2020 apostolic commissioning & said he "is not affiliated" with 1Race4Life. oregonlive.com/education/2023…. Since then he was removed from Ahn's site & the 1Race4Life site has gone dark. What is going on here? 3/
Ché Ahn is a core leader in the #NewApostolicReformation, &, as I showed in Charismatic Revival Fury, he was mentored by C. Peter Wagner at #FullerSeminary. Ahn's Harvest International Ministry is one of the largest apostolic networks in the world. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cha… 4/
To be clear, I haven't spoken to Peterson, & I'd be happy to do so, but, on the surface, his story doesn't hold water. Among #NAR leaders, Ché Ahn probably has the most clearly articulated theology/philosophy of apostleship (which he unapologetically got direct from Wagner). 5/
Ahn commissioned Peterson as a "marketplace apostle" (a phrase straight from Wagner's ideology), which connotes a leader who aligns with the #NAR agenda of societal transformation & #7MM/Christian supremacy but who doesn't work primarily in the church.
place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewconten… 6/
Ché Ahn has spoken & written for decades about his understanding of apostles, & here are a couple of key passages from his 2019 book "Modern-Day Apostles" amazon.com/Modern-Day-Apo… where he makes clear how rigorous & serious his vetting process is for these commissionings. 7/
Incidentally, one of the other people Ahn commissioned (as an evangelist) through HIM in 2020 was Jay Koopman, who was Ahn's associate pastor at HRC & is now Sean Feucht's right-hand man. harvestim.org/leadership/com… Again, this hardly suggests Peterson was some sort of outsider. 8/
Now the 1Race4Life website is down, but the advisory board also includes: Bill Johnson (Bethel), Cindy Jacobs, Jim Garlow, Eric Metaxas, Samuel Rodriguez, & Lance Wallnau, a veritable who's who of the #NewApostolicReformation cinematic universe. web.archive.org/web/2021120511… 9/
Each of these fellow 1Race4Life board members played an important role in instigating Christians to attend the protests/riot on #January6th. Ahn, Wallnau, & Jacobs were all in DC that day. Note that Peterson does not deny knowing these folks.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cha… 10/
If Peterson has so little connection to Ché Ahn & HIM, why is he showing up to preach at churches in the HIM & Bethel networks? And why is he doing FB live videos with Stacey Campbell, a core HIM apostle in Canada? facebook.com/mattoxkent/pos… 11/
The #NAR leadership culture is fundamentally relational, not organizational. While I'm sure not everyone in HIM shares all of Ché Ahn's politics, Peterson's effort to hide/dismiss his affiliations without explaining the nature of his connections there is downright confusing. 12/
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