[1]PINEVILLE, La. (BP) – Heather Williams was accustomed to making all As. Her performance less than excellent in Russian class at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., she turned to her professor John Mark Scott for advice.
“What do you think of that Johnson guy?” she recalls Scott asking. That Johnson guy was Mark Johnson, a sophomore acing the class. Heather, a freshman business major eying work in Russia since the fall of the Berlin Wall, deemed Mark “too silly.”
Mark considered Heather “too strict” when Scott asked him what he thought of that Williams girl, as he recalled.
But that was some 33 years, mutual professions of love, 30 years of marriage and four children ago.
Scott had seen a match in the making. The professor’s interest in the couple began a mentorship and friendship that has lasted decades, with the Johnsons attending his retirement from Washington & Jefferson in 2011, their budding family in tow.
[2]“God had a plan,” the Johnsons say to this day.
The couple point to many relationships God has used to shape their lives as Mark begins his tenure as the 10th president of Louisiana Christian University in Pineville, the first African American to hold the post at the school supported by the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
Long before the two connected with Fred Luter, senior pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, and his wife Elizabeth; Jamie Dew, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and his wife Tara; and Leroy Fountain, a church health consultant with the New Orleans Baptist Association and his wife Carolyn, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, God placed couples in the Johnsons’ lives they describe as friends and mentors, and with whom they’ve maintained relationships.
“The main thing about being a great leader is, ‘Have you been a great follower?’” Mark told Baptist Press. “People will be led by someone who has been led before, right?”
Mark said he learned from his parents the importance of relationships.
“They taught me to be nice to people. That’s pretty much what it was,” he said. “My mom would kill me if I didn’t.”
As Mark grew up in Madison County, Ind., his parents Pastor Henry L. Johnson and Kathy Diane Johnson instilled in him a godly love and respect for people. Those lessons came to life, Mark told Baptist Press, when he was bused from an all-Black school to an all-white school in his childhood.
He would leave home many mornings in the dark with neighborhood friends and walk to the bus stop for a 45-minute ride to school. There, a different setting allowed him to learn new things, like playing the tuba, and to build new relationships.
“I realized we’re all just friends, different colors and different shades. So my father goes, ‘Red and yellow, black and white. They are precious in His sight,’” Johnson said. “And that started my journey, through meeting people, connecting with people. Once people see who you are and you’re true over time, then it builds the kind of love and support that you get along the way.”
‘Black Church, White Convention’
Both Mark and Heather have shattered manmade racial barriers. He was the first African American senior class commencement speaker in Washington & Jefferson’s then 213-year history when he graduated in 1994.
He describes Heather as the better speaker when she gave the 1995 commencement address.
“Her speech was so much better than mine. I don’t even know what I’d do without it,” a quip he jokes is good for his marriage. “It was the best speech in the history of the school. I’m sticking to that one.”
Their pivotal work, perhaps, occurred during his pastorate of Liberty Hill Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, when he led the church to become a member of the Cleveland Hope Association and the Southern Baptist Convention.
Mark chronicles the work in his newly published book, “Black Church, White Convention: A Pastor’s Story of Hope,” documenting an eight-year journey at the church he began leading in 2009. There, he connected with Kevin Litchfield, then director of missions at the Cleveland Hope Association, unlocking new missions opportunities for Liberty Hill.
Litchfield connected Mark with the annual Black Church Leadership and Family Conference (BCLFC) at Ridgecrest Conference Center. Mark had been looking for a seminary to continue his studies, and at Ridgecrest, he learned more of NOBTS.
But about that time, the SBC’s questionable history of race relations crept in. Liberty Hill members began to question whether the SBC was racist.
“Are there even any Black people in leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention?” many asked.
The questions coincided with the presidency of Fred Luter, who served 2012-2014 as the SBC’s first and only African American president.
“So literally Fred Luter, having Fred Luter on the docket at that time, when he was there, made our whole church kind of think again about the Southern Baptist Convention,” Mark said. “And so that’s when we made the transition over.”
But not without a struggle. Mark studied the SBC’s past and made detailed presentations to his membership, including early resolutions that addressed race relations, and later resolutions that skirted the issue. He led them to consider their own deeply held beliefs and to begin healing from pain long suffered.
He considers the book, which includes research from a doctorate degree project at NOBTS, a love letter to his former church in Cleveland.
Moving to New Orleans
He and Heather made the decision to move to New Orleans after attending BCLFC in 2018. He had just graduated from NOBTS in May, having commuted from Ohio to New Orleans as needed, and the two had just returned from a week at NOBTS where Heather attended women’s ministry seminars. But while attending a reception in New Orleans, someone had asked Heather if she’d ever consider moving there.
“If the Lord called,” Heather replied. She recalls New Orleans felt like home, was very comfortable and enjoyable.
At Ridgecrest, Mark walked to the top of a hill and prayed. He called NOBTS and Will Spivey, a doctoral recruiter, answered.
“I’ll never forget his name. We’re still friends today,” Mark told Baptist Press. “He says, ‘Mark, we can have you all here next week. You can start this semester.’
“And then I felt like the Lord, He exploded my life. He just exploded it. And I walked down a hill and said, ‘Heather, I think we’re moving to New Orleans.’”
Mark enrolled in an NOBTS Ph.D. program specializing in evangelism, pastoral ministries and Christian leadership. Heather began studies in the Master of Arts in Christian Education and added a Biblical Studies certificate. Having completed those studies, she’s now earning a Ph.D. in Christian Education.
The two joined Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, where they enjoyed the leadership and friendship of the Luters.
Fred Luter describes the Johnsons as incredible both individually and collectively.
“They just have a love for God and a love for people and that’s what really impresses me about both of them,” Luter told Baptist Press. “They are so people oriented. They are the type of people that you can easily get to like and then love once you get to really know them, because of their excitement and love for God. It just oozes out of them in everything that they do.”
Mark pastored Edgewater Baptist Church during the COVID-19 pandemic, began serving on the NOBTS faculty and completed an interim pastorate at First Baptist Church of Kenner. Heather helped Tara Dew develop the Thrive ministry wives’ Certificate Program.
Tara describes knowing and collaborating with Heather for the past six years as a privilege.
“What started as merely a friendship developed into true partnership as we launched Thrive: a ministry wives certificate program at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary,” Tara told Baptist Press. “She and I have prayed, planned, dreamed and taught alongside each other to serve over 150 ministry wives in the past five years.”
Heather, who has served on Louisiana Christian University’s board of trustees, is made for her role as the wife of the president, Tara said.
“Though I will miss her dearly at NOBTS, I could not be more thrilled that God has chosen Heather to be LCU’s first lady,” she said. “Her genuine love for people, academic excellence and servant heart make her a wonderful president’s wife.”
Both Mark and Heather admit to being able to handle many duties concurrently.
“I think on one level, we’re already high-capacity people individually,” Heather said. “Then you put us together. But we also lived on the East Coast and the East Coast just has a pace to it. And I just think that we never really left that, and it worked.”
They celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary July 16th and are parents to four children whom they homeschooled for a time: Mark Jr., 20; Jonathan 18; 16-year-old Victoria and 13-year-old Benjamin.
Before pastoring at Liberty Hill, Mark earned two master’s degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J., in 2004 and 2005, all while working as executive director of youth and young adult ministries at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark, which had 7,000 members, according to marklouisjohnson.com [3].
While leading Liberty Hill, and as Mark served as chaplain to the Cleveland Indians, the Johnsons planted Encourage Church, an outgrowth of Mark’s playing basketball with neighborhood youth. He leveraged his skills gained as a Washington & Jefferson hall-of-fame basketball player, coupled with an early career as a professional player in Europe and South America.
For the youth who admired Mark but not church, a traditional congregation wouldn’t work. For them, church was a game of basketball with a sermon at halftime, Mark said.
“And so we went to the North American Mission Board and said, ‘We want to start up basically a basketball church,’” Mark said. Attendance neared 200, with the greater Southern Baptist family sending funding for uniforms, basketballs and referees.
The Johnsons have served in ministry and in the non-profit sector in four states and in Washington, D.C. The fast-paced life has challenged them to let go of routines and embrace long-distance friendships, said Heather, who served in women’s ministries at churches Mark has pastored.
“The one thing you have to learn how to do is to be able to let go,” she said. “Some transitions are easier than others,” but all are necessary, she said “to receive what God has. Which made this most recent appointment so easy.”
Louisiana Christian University
Mark’s call in February to Louisiana Christian University followed the recommendation of a search team the school employed. But the Johnsons said the call clicked with the preparation God had already wrought in their lives, having shown Himself “over and over again.”
While serving as director of the Doctor of Ministry program at NOBTS, Mark served as a trustee at Washington & Jefferson, a post he said helped prepare him to lead Louisiana Christian. As trustee, he flew to Washington & Jefferson eight times a year, meeting with fellow board members who led Fortune 500 companies, chairing the college board and gaining valuable experience.
“(God) treated me like the Karate Kid – wax on, wax off. I’m wondering why God has me flying all these places, doing all this stuff with all these Fortune 500 companies and with the school and everything else, not realizing that there’s going to come a moment like this, where I’m going to need all that information in order to share it with a search firm that’s looking for someone like me,” Mark said. “The curve is not as steep because I’ve been in that world of retention and development and campaigns and all these different things in an institution, that when it came time for this part, I had been a part of it for the last six, seven years.”
Luter said he was not surprised by the appointment.
“I’ve seen God’s hand on them through the years and when he told me about this opportunity, I was not surprised because you just, you were faithful,” he said of the Johnsons. “I’ve always believed that when you’re faithful to God, God will be faithful to you, and I think this being the president of this school is just one of God’s awards for their faithfulness.”
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