AUTHOR-FOUNDED
AUTHOR-FOCUSED
AUTHOR-ENDORSED
David Ourisman
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, he has taught in both theological seminaries and secular settings. As a lifelong lover of travel, he founded and oversees a successful travel business and its team of six 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 One Life, Four Stories: Invitations to Faith & Wonder 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.
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.
Works by David Ourisman
One Life, Four Stories:
Invitations to Faith and Wonder
The Bible doesn’t give us a single story of Jesus — it gives us four. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each tell the story from a unique perspective, shaped by the struggles of their communities and the questions of their time. When we slow down and listen to each voice on its own terms, something remarkable happens: the Gospels come alive in new and surprising ways. OneLife, Four Stories: Invitations to Faith & Wonder invites readers to move beyond a harmonized “cookie-cutter” Jesus and encounter the richness, tension, and beauty found within the four distinct Gospel stories. Written for readers who hunger for deeper faith — and who are unafraid of thoughtful questions — this guide offers historical insight, spiritual reflection, and a renewed way of engaging Scripture. You don’t need to abandon faith to ask better questions. Sometimes, asking them is how faith grows.