Jerry Johnston

Jerome Richard Johnston, known as Jerry Johnston (born 1959), is a former evangelist and pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention once seen as a potential heir to the nationally-known Reverend Jerry Falwell. Johnston is now the vice president for innovation and strategic marketing at Houston Baptist University in Houston, Texas.

Background

Johnston was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and moved with his family when he was in the third grade to Overland Park in suburban Johnson County, Kansas, which he considers his hometown. A rebellious boy, he contemplated suicide by taking valium but was converted to Jesus Christ in the summer of 1973 at the age of fourteen at a Baptist camp in Roach in Camden County in central Missouri. Within two months, he accepted the call to Christian ministry and was thereafter speaking some twenty-five times weekly to organizations while he was still in high school. He ultimately received a General Equivalency Diploma and was accepted on a scholarship to Jerry Falwell's then named Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg, Virginia. While at Liberty, apparently quite briefly, Johnston as a particularly aggressive student was referred to as Falwell’s "associate evangelist."^[1]

Career

Through his Jerry Johnston Ministries, a nonprofit organization, Johnston traveled from 1978 to 1996 across the United States and Canada. His evangelistic crusades pushed particularly for the Christian conversion of young people, many of whom were experiencing problems with narcotics, suicide, and Satanism, the latter having been the subject of his 1989 book, The Edge of Evil.^[1] Among those converted in the Johnston crusade was the later Texas evangelist Jay L. Lowder, Jr. (born 1966), of Wichita Falls.^[2]

In 1984, JJM had assets totaling $206,000; by 1990, $383,000; by 1996, $454,000. During these eighteen years, Johnston wrote eight books and prepared various videos on timely topics, such as his disagreement with the theory of evolution. He claimed to have spoken worldwide to five million people at more than three thousand colleges and universities. He preached revivals in many churches. By 1993, according to his biography, more than 500,000 copies of Johnston's books, 62,000 videos, and a million cassettes of his sermons were in circulation.^[1] His sermons have been broadcast worldwide via satellite and web video streaming.^[3]

Over the years, Johnston has been a guest on many public affairs television programs, including Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, ABC's World News Tonight, and CNN's former Crossfire series, once co-hosted by Pat Buchanan.^[4]

Johnston received his Bachelor of Arts from Midwestern Baptist College in Kansas City, Missouri. That institution is housed within Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, from which he obtained his Master of Divinity in 2009.^[3] Midwestern Seminary had an off-campus facility at Johnston's megachurch, First Family Church in Overland Park.^[5]

Launched in 1996, First Family Church was housed in temporary structures until 2001, when a sanctuary was completed at a cost of $10.1 million. Another $8.5 million was spent in 2006 on expanded facilities. The congregation peaked at four thousand members. In September 2011, after several months of unease but reassurance that finances were brought in line, the church creditor, Regions Financial Corporation, foreclosed on the property. As early as 2007, the Kansas City Star reported dissent within the church over issues relating to financial accountability. The Attorney General of Kansas investigated complaints but no violation of the Kansas Consumer Protection Act was found. Tax liens filed by the Internal Revenue Service were resolved in 2008. The bank pressed for payment of more than $14 million in outstanding mortgage payments. The Blue Valley School District, with plans to use the structure as an early childhood facility, paid $9 million for the 51-acre church complex located at U.S. Highway 69 and 143rd Street in Overland Park.^[6] Troubles within the congregation centered on Johnston's refusal to release the financial records to the church. He ordered one church member asking for such records to repent.^[7]

Among the nearly one hundred employees of First Family ministry were Johnston's closest relatives. Wife Cristie Jo Huf Johnston, a native of Zeeland in southwestern Michigan, whom he met on an evangelistic tour in the fall of 1978 and wed five months later, held the unusual title of "Director of Open Arms & Chesalon Comfort Circles.” Their only son, Jeremy Johnston, was the executive pastor and the chief operating officer of the media. The older son-in-law, Christian Newsome, husband of the Johnstons' daughter, Danielle, was the associate pastor of family and youth. Danielle herself was contemporary worship leader. The younger son-in-law, Luke Cunningham, was pastor for preteen boys; his wife, Jenilee, the Johnstons' younger daughter, held similar duties for girls. Joyce Johnston, Jerry's mother, was an executive secretary of the church.^[8] Christian and Danielle Newsome left First Family Church in 2011 before its demise to begin a new congregation in Lee's Summit in western Missouri.^[6]

For a year afterward, Johnston was the founding pastor of a second congregation, New Day Church KC, which was located, respectively, in two school buildings in Olathe near Kansas City, Kansas. It moved into a new building at 8633 West 167th in Overland Park but soon closed in September 2012.^[6] The Johnstons were living in Branson, Missouri, rather than Olathe, and New Day Church paid their commuting expenses each weekend even as the congregation continued to lose money.^[7]

In May 2012, Johnston and his wife each obtained Doctor of Ministry degrees from Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, an entity affiliated with the Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches. Johnston's doctoral thesis is entitled An Exploration of Rates and Causes of Attrition among Protestant Evangelical Clergy in the United States.^[9] In 1997, Johnston received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Jerry Falwell's Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, since Liberty University.^[9] In September 2004, Falwell came to First Family Church to rally Christian support in the general election in which then U.S. President George W. Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry. At the gathering, Falwell criticized pastors too afraid to become involved politically.^[4]

Jerry and Cristie (formerly spelled "Christie" and "Chris" on their marriage license)^[7] Johnston have together executive produced seventeen documentary spiritual films, which have been distributed globally to television networks and churches. Johnston claims to have led more than 125,000 individuals to acceptance of salvation in Christ. Johnston is now a member of the executive council through his appointment as a vice president of Houston Baptist University under the president, Dr. Robert Sloan, Jr.^[3]

References