June 27 Today in OPC History

Happy birthday to the Rev. Carl Erickson, born on this day in San Francisco.

Growing up in a non-Christian home, Erickson came to faith as a teenager. Sensing a call to ministry, he studied at Covenant and Westminster Seminaries, graduating from the latter in 1964. After interning at First OPC in Manhattan Beach, California, for two years, he returned to the Bay Area to pastor Brentwood (later New Covenant) OPC in South San Francisco in 1967. Three years later he married the former Kathryn Albright (daughter of OPC minister H. Wilson Albright). Carl retired after 50 years of continuous service in his congregation.

Early in his tenure at Brentwood his parents began to attend services. “I continued to pray, teach and testify before them through the years,” he later reflected in New Horizons. This culminated in his experience of what he described as “God’s covenant blessings in reverse,” as he went on to explain: “On June 24, 1990, I had the privilege of baptizing my own parents and receiving them into the church upon their profession of faith. There wasn’t a dry eye in the congregation as we all rejoiced over the wonderful grace of Jesus to my 83-year-old father and 79-year-old mother.”

Homepage picture: Ken Kitts (left) and Carl and Kathy Erickson with Cohen Aaron ben Levi

Picture: Carl Erickson