Join us for a HYBRID BOOK EVENT with Rev. Dr. David Ourisman, author of One Life, Four Stories: Invitations to Faith & Wonder. Drawing on decades of experience as a pastor, scholar, and teacher, Dr. Ourisman explores the core stories of faith and their relevance for today’s world. The event will take place in person at Bade Museum and online via zoom, and will feature a presentation by Dr. Ourisman followed by a panel discussion with GTU President Dr. Uriah Kim and PSR Faculty Emerita Dr. Mary Donovan Turner. Facilitated by PSR President Dr. David Vasquez-Levy.
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David Ourisman, PhD, has pursued a variety of diverse careers in his life. An ordained United Methodist minister, he served seventeen years in the pastorate and continues to enjoy preaching. With his graduate degree in Preaching and New Testament from the Graduate Theological Union, he has taught in both theological seminaries and secular settings. As a lifelong lover of travel, he founded and oversees a successful travel business; its team of seven travel advisors who work with clients traveling throughout the world.
He is the author of From Text to Sermon: Preaching Synoptic Texts (2000). A book written for seminary students and church pastors, it showed how literary insights from the Bible can enrich sermons and lead to more intriguing preaching.
The idea for his new book came from the older adult students who took his courses through OLLI at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Their fascination with the course materials encouraged him to make them available to a wider audience. The book is entitled, One Life, Four Stories: Invitations to Faith & Wonder.
David lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife Claire where he enjoys living next to the Blue Ridge Parkway, hiking, exploring waterfalls, world travel, and landscape photography.
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Mary Donovan Turner is Faculty Emerita of Preaching at Pacific School of Religion where she taught for nearly three decades. She retired as PSR’s Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean. She earned an M.S.S.W. from the University of Louisville (1974), an M.Div. from Lexington Theological Seminary (1982), and a PhD in Old Testament Studies from Emory University in 1992. As an ordained DoC minister, Mary served congregations in Georgia and California. Her many publications weave together her interests in the fields of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Women’s Studies and Homiletics. She is the author of Old Testament Words (2003) and The God We Seek: Portraits of God in the Old Testament (2011) published by Chalice Press. In 2019 she was honored with a LifeTime Achievement Award from the Academy of Homiletics for her teaching and scholarship. In 2023 Dr. Turner’s volume Saved From Silence: Finding Women’s Voice in Preaching (1999), co-authored by Rev. Dr. Mary Lin Hudson, was named a Must Read Classic in Homiletic Literature by the Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence.
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