Rev. Dr. Darren M. Pollock has been the pastor of Panorama Presbyterian Church since April 1, 2017, after providing pulpit supply for the church on a nearly weekly basis for about a year prior to that. He is also a part-time Affiliate Assistant Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary. He currently lives in Temple City, CA with his beloved wife of ten years (Ashley) and their two incredible children—eight year-old daughter Charlotte (“Charlie” for short) and five year-old son Carter. Dr. Pollock received his PhD in historical theology from Calvin Theological Seminary in May 2016, writing his dissertation under the supervision of Richard A. Muller. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest honors in classical civilization in 2001 from the University of California, Davis, where he won awards for classics and vocal performance. In 2004 he received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, with commendations for preaching and music. During the six years between his MDiv and PhD programs, Pollock served as the Director of Student Ministries at La Crescenta Presbyterian Church, where he met his wife. He was the 2013-14 winner of the annual Word & World Essay Prize for Doctoral Candidates for his essay, “The Church’s Mission to Youth.” He has also been published in Anglican & Episcopal History and  Jonathan Edwards Studies, and he contributed multiple entries to The Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia (Eerdmans, 2017). Dr. Pollock’s primary research interests are in Reformed theology, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scripture interpretation, and the history of homiletics. He is the author of Early Stuart Polemical Hermeneutics: Andrew Willet’s 1611 Hexapla on Romans (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017).

 

Dr. Pollock has been an active choral tenor since college, recently performing with such groups as the Bach Chorale of Grand Rapids and the Pasadena Master Chorale. Through various road trips and family vacations he has travelled the United States extensively, and is particularly enamored by Zion National Park. During his residency at Calvin Seminary he did a fair amount of his course reading on a kayak in the middle of Reeds Lake. Writing his dissertation remotely from the CTS campus, he did most of his research at the Huntington Library and at some of the finest coffeehouses in the Pasadena area. Dr. Pollock’s extracurricular interests range from sacred choral music to crossword puzzles, basketball to video production, classical Greek to twentieth-century Middle East politics. He shares passions with several of his ancestors—his great-great-grandfather on his father’s side was a Baptist pastor-theologian in England who worked closely with Charles Spurgeon, and his maternal grandfather was a long-time church organist and music educator in the Minneapolis area. Dr. Pollock has been fortunate to get to meet his all-time hero, Jimmy Carter, on a few different occasions.