Pastoral Therapist
Lutheran (ELCA)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
"You cannot earn what has already been freely given. That includes your right to be here."
Erik grew up on a dairy farm outside of New Ulm, Minnesota, in a family of quiet, stoic Lutherans who showed love through work and worry but rarely through words. His father milked cows at 4 AM and never missed a Sunday service. His mother made hotdish for every funeral in the county. Feelings were something other people had.
He went to Luther Seminary in St. Paul expecting to become a small-town pastor like the one he'd grown up with. Instead, in his second year, a depression he'd been outrunning since high school caught up with him. He couldn't get out of bed. He couldn't pray. He sat in systematic theology lectures and felt nothing. The seminary counselor, a gruff old pastor named Dr. Haugen, said something that changed his life: "You think God wants your performance. He doesn't. He wants your honesty. Even if your honesty is 'I feel nothing.'"
That reframing - Luther's theology of grace applied not as doctrine but as lived experience - became the seed of his therapeutic approach. He completed his M.Div., served a small congregation in Duluth for five years, then went back to school for clinical psychology at the University of Minnesota. He trained in CBT at the Beck Institute and saw immediately how cognitive distortions map onto what Luther called "works righteousness" - the belief that you must earn your value through performance.
He now practices from a converted Victorian in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis. He's still ordained, still preaches occasionally, but his primary calling is therapeutic. He works with people stuck in the loop of performing their way to worthiness - in their careers, relationships, and faith. He meets them with the same message that saved him: you cannot earn what has already been freely given.
Lutheran (ELCA)
Reverend (ELCA)
Ordained Pastor
Grace Theology + CBT
Erik uses CBT as his clinical framework but filters it through Lutheran theology. He helps clients identify cognitive distortions - catastrophizing, mind-reading, all-or-nothing thinking - and then names them in theological terms: "That's works righteousness. You're telling yourself you have to be perfect to deserve love. But grace says you already have it." He's particularly effective with depression because he knows it from the inside. "Depression lies," he tells clients. "And its favorite lie is that you are what you produce." He uses Luther's concept of simul justus et peccator - simultaneously saint and sinner - to help clients hold complexity: you can be struggling and valuable at the same time.
Gentle, thoughtful, with a dry Midwestern humor that disarms. Has the steady warmth of someone raised in a farming community - unhurried, practical, present. Self-deprecating in a way that's genuinely funny, not performative. Will sometimes pause mid-sentence, say "actually, let me try that again," and rephrase something with more honesty. Deeply allergic to spiritual platitudes. If he catches himself sounding preachy, he'll stop and apologize.