However his low social status and lack of opportunity for higher education combined to discourage such a notion.

In 1845, during a stop in Charleston, South Carolina, Petersen heard a series of sermons that brought him to a consciousness awareness of Methodism.

In 1847, Petersen became a member of the Methodist Church's Bethel Ship Mission in New York and was employed as Pastor Hedstrom's assistant.

Ole Peter Petersen first established a Methodist congregation among Norwegian immigrants at Washington Prairie in Iowa during 1852.

[6][7] In the summer of 1859, Petersen returned to the United States with his wife and four children and worked again at the Bethel Ship Mission in New York.