Pastor Daren Erisman's Bio

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

It is a joy and blessing to serve you as Assistant Pastor! I look forward to learning your stories and working together as we minister

to this wonderful community of Encinitas. The following is some of my story.

PASTOR DAREN’S STORY

I was born in Boulder, Colorado and at age 15, my Mother remarried and we moved to the nearby town of Broomfield. I grew up biking, hiking and playing soccer. I love playing most sports, but soccer and volleyball are my favorites. I was not raised Christian and my family did not attend church at all. However, I did have a Seventh-Day Adventist babysitter who practically raised me form ages 0 to 5 and taught me not only how good fresh vegetables can be, but she taught me the stories from the Bible and sang me her favorite hymns. She would have a profound effect on me.

When I was in my late teens, I had conversations with Christians and to be honest with you, I was trying to figure them out. I asked myself, “How could seemingly ‘normal’ people believe in this Jesus?” To this day, I consider faith a miracle, and my faith would come through the help of a persistent friend who would invite me to church, which happened to be a Missouri Synod Lutheran church. The pastor there was willing to answer my questions and eventually invited me to meet with him for four evenings. Each of those evenings he would spend the first part teaching me the basics of the Christian faith and then he would endure my endless questions like “How can God allow evil?” or “What do I do with Genesis telling of Creation in seven days?”

At that point, I was a junior at the University of Colorado pursuing dual degrees in Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering (I worked my way through college in my stepfather’s machine shop and in other companies building, testing and later designing electrical circuits, devices and computers). In my studies I was working hard to understand the physical nature of the world, and at the same time, I was deeply interested in questions of truth. I loved philosophy, history and the social sciences, and I packed these courses into my studies like “candy.” Therefore, when I was meeting with the pastor at the Lutheran church, I was seeking truth and somewhere within me, I sensed that I should be open to this pastor’s words. Frankly, his answers to my questions were not what convinced me that there was truth in Christianity, it was his relationship, his faith in God that caught my attention.

In the midst of those conversations with that pastor, I realized something that I later would recognize as being there my whole life: God, through Jesus was offering relationship with me. In those weeks I let myself be open to its possibility and at the end of the second evening, I asked the pastor what he was thinking—it seemed like he wanted to say something. He asked me a startling question, “Have you thought about becoming a pastor?” I, of course thought he was crazy. I wasn’t baptized, I wasn’t really sure if I was a Lutheran, let alone Christian, and besides that, I was a scientist and engineer. Was it really possible for me to become a pastor?

That day, he planted a seed. A few months later I was baptized and a few years later, I was applying to seminary. In between those years, I did my best to try and figure out my apparent calling (and my agnostic parents slowly adjusted to my plans). I joined the campus ministry at the University of Colorado and soon became the President of the congregation, helped in the leading of worship and preached on occasion. During the years at the campus ministry, I was surrounded by people doing missionary work in Africa, and so I likewise became interested in doing missionary work overseas. I thought to myself, maybe I would be better able to discern my calling as a pastor in a missionary setting. In the end, I decided after visiting several seminaries, that I would do my mission work after attending seminary. It was also during this time that I took a class on Islam at the University. It seemed to me to be an important tradition to understand and little did I suspect how important Islam would later become to the world.

I mentioned that I was baptized at a Missouri Lutheran Synod church. It was my intention to become a pastor in the Missouri Synod, but as I considered this tradition’s ban on the ordination of women, I realized that my conscious would not allow me to become a pastor in the Missouri Synod. I therefore joined the ELCA and applied to an ELCA seminary, Luther Seminary in St Paul, Minnesota. It was there that I learned not only about the Bible, the Lutheran tradition and what “salad” means to Mid-Westerners, but the rich heritage of the Church. I met my soon to be wife, Laura, the first day of seminary as we took intensive Greek that summer. We were immediately attracted to each other. She was a veterinarian from California with a missionary heart for China and Hong Kong, and I was a scientist and computer programmer (I worked for several years at NOAA in Boulder, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, helping bring computer data from satellites and ocean buoys from around the world for advanced modeling and weather forecasting) with an interest in mission.

Our second year of seminary, I had the opportunity to explore my interest in mission. Laura and I studied at the Lutheran seminary in Hong Kong and it was there that I was able to work in the Vietnamese refugee camps. It was an intense experience and taught me a lot about cross-cultural relationships and about the deep need for the good news of Jesus Christ. At the seminary in Hong Kong, I also studied with several professors of Mission and I interviewed dozens of missionaries. I learned that if I really wanted to help as a missionary, it would be best for me to become a teacher of teachers—to help train indigenous teachers. I felt the calling to not only train pastors in seminaries who would share God’s Word, but I felt the call to teach those who would be teaching in those seminaries.

While I was in Hong Kong, near the huge Muslim populations in Southeast Asia, I recognized the need for the church to understand Islam. Ironically, during my last year of seminary in Minnesota, they offered a Masters program in Islamic Studies. I was ahead in course hours so I added the courses in Islamic studies and finished my thesis during my first years as a pastor in Washington State. I was in Washington State when I heard the news of the horrific events of September 11^th. It was then that I decided that I had better start teaching people about Islam—about what it is and what it is not. This would later become a focus of my doctoral studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. I am currently writing my dissertation for my PhD in Systematic and Philosophical Theology. Upon its completion I will essentially be a Lutheran theologian and teacher who works closely on the relationship between Christianity and Islam. I feel with all my mind and heart that this world will be a better place if there is greater understanding among all peoples. It is in this hope and work that I share my faith in Jesus Christ and the persistent love of God for all people.

God bless you,

Pastor Daren

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