The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
FRESH IDEAS, NEIGHBORLY SPIRIT
New pastor brings faith coupled with action to historic Fairport church
The iconic Zion Lutheran Church in Fairport Harbor recently welcomed a new minister to its congregation.
The Rev. Frederick Johnsen took his place Oct. 1 among a long line of church leaders there dating back to before it became a brick-and-mortar presence in the village of roughly 3,000 residents.
Over the last nearly 127 years, Zion Lutheran Church at 508 Eagle Street has seen its community’s participation evolve from the veritable crux of its constituents’ lives into a thing of ever-waning importance as other facets of modern life have persistently asked for more of people’s time and attention over the decades.
That’s something Johnsen said he’d like to help change.
As a member of the Christian clergy, Johnsen said his mission on Earth is two-fold: to follow Jesus’ Great Commission, as described in The Bible in Matthew 28:18-20, which reads, in part: “Go
"As far as the church goes here, my mission is to make the church as much a part of the community as possible – reaching out into the world, locally and otherwise, with the love of Christ." — The Rev. Frederick Johnsen
therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you...”
The second is to live the Greatest Commandment Jesus shared with his disciples: “Love your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself,” Johnsen said.
“I mean, beyond that... everything else we do centers around those two things,” he said during a March 8 interview at the church.
A big part of “everything else,” in Johnsen’s case, is to broaden Zion Lutheran Church’s presence not just throughout the 1.04 square miles of land on which Fairport Harbor Village sits. He said he’d also like to see the church and its congregation become more active throughout Northeast Ohio and beyond.
“As far as the church goes here, my mission is to make the church as much a part of the community as possible – reaching out into the world, locally and otherwise, with the love of Christ,” he said. “I don’t want any church that I’m a part of to be a Sunday morning coffee club, where they just come and they sit. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that this is the case here. I’m just saying that we need to be out in the world.”
He’s already begun helping to manifest that mission through a variety of projects, like the “reverse Advent” food drive in December, in which a group of local children and their parents collected and donated food items to the pantry at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Parish, just around the corner on 5th Street in Fairport.
Another initiative he’s supported has been to help a young member of Zion’s congregation, Lauren Markey, staff the soup kitchen at St. James Episcopal Church in Painesville with volunteers to help nourish some of Lake County’s less fortunate individuals.
He said that mission has been a good example of another of his own: getting more younger people involved in the church.
“I’m trying to empower some of the younger members who maybe aren’t so connected to it. That would be, like, 18-to-35-year-old folk,” he said, adding how impressed he’s been with Markey’s drive. “She’s kind of taken it upon herself to coordinate that...”
He said Markey’s mission illustrates a big part of his own vision for the church.
“That’s something I really believe in - the empowerment of the people,” Johnsen said. “That’s part of being a disciple: having ownership in the evangelical mission. So I think (Markey’s initiative) is important.”
He said there’s also a blood drive in the works, scheduled for March 24, at the church’s Luther Center, 525 Eagle St.
But it’s not just throughout Fairport Harbor and its neighboring communities in which he hopes to help meet people’s needs.
“Another thing we’re working on right now is putting together something called flood buckets,” he said, explaining that they’re five-gallon buckets filled with cleaning supplies and other post-flood cleanup necessities, as part of the North American Lutheran Church Disaster Response Program’s humanitarian mission to help folks in the Ohio River Valley and other parts of Appalachia recover from recent flooding there.
Johnsen said that’s a region which holds a special place in his heart after participating in a mission trip during his time at what is now the United Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he studied for four years before his ordination in October of 2008.
“There’s a great need for assistance there,” he said, adding that it’s far beyond post-flood reconstruction. “It’s one of the poorest populations in the nation and it’s often forgotten.”
He said he also is working on a Zion Lutheran Church mission trip to the same region to help residents rebuild as soon as that stage in the overall flood-recovery effort is appropriate.
Some other plans he and the church have in the works include coordinating with other area churches on a nondenominational level to address the needs of communities around Northeast Ohio.
“We’re trying to emphasize the things we agree upon and de-emphasize the things we don’t agree upon,” he said. “Because, you know, if there’s someone who’s hungry in town, or there’s a problem in town we can collectively address, it doesn’t matter if one believes in the true presence of Christ in the bread and the wine, or if one believes it’s just a remembrance, or if one takes a certain social stance on certain social issues and another one takes another stance on that same social issue. If someone’s hungry, they’re hungry.”
He said he’s also working with other churches in Fairport Harbor to coordinate weekly community meals, like the pasta dinner Pastor Tina Green has helped establish at Fairport Harbor Congregational Church UCC at 308 Third St.
“My eventual goal would be, in Fairport, that there would be, at least once a week, a community meal available to people,” Johnsen said.
So far, at least two members of Zion Lutheran Church, and very likely many more, seem pleased with Johnsen’s work there.
“I am very impressed with him in that he has a fresh approach,” said Anne Pohto, who has been a church member since her family immigrated to Fairport Harbor in 1955 from Finland. “He’s young and he’s had lots of interesting experiences he can bring to this congregation. He has a nice way about him and he just sees things in a different way. He’s like a breath of fresh air.”
Pohto, whose family at one time were church caretakers, added that she’s all for the outreach Johnsen hopes to help manifest within its congregation.
“We’re very happy with the way he approaches things,” she said in a March 10 phone interview. “He’s very inclusive of the community in this whole area, wanting us to be helping all over, not just our little church, but everywhere.”
She called him a “good fit for what we need right now to help encourage new people to come and participate.”
Another longtime Zion Lutheran Church constituent, Niles Oinonen, concurred with Pohto’s impressions of Johnsen.
“I think quite a bit of him. He’s doing a good job,” Oinonen, who is the church’s property chairman and wears numerous hats within the organization, said in a March 10 phone interview. “He brings a lot of newness and new ideas to the church. He’s learning the way we operate here and he’s doing a good job. I appreciate that.”
Oinonen said having been in the Air Force, and Johnsen having served in the U.S. Army has helped strengthen their bond, as well.
Johnsen’s military service was just one stop along his path toward serving God through Zion Lutheran Church. In fact, the 52-year-old’s entrée into the ecumenical arena, itself, followed a rather roundabout route, he explained.
He said that, for a good portion of his life – until about age 29 – he didn’t even consider himself a Christian.
Johnsen grew up in a “small town in the Catskill Mountains no one’s ever heard of” called Olive Branch, NY, where he said his stepfather was a “lapsed Catholic who probably never went to church a day in his life since he left Catholic school” and that his mother “couldn’t even tell you what she was other than she was a Protestant. She just knew she wasn’t Catholic.”
He said it was a Lutheran pastor named LeRoy Nass, whose church Johnsen decided to attend as a “social Christian” first sparked his interest in studying theology.
“I wouldn’t really have called myself a Christian at the time,” Johnsen said. “And he sort of introduced the idea that I might be a good candidate for the ministry. Like most people, I shunned it – the idea. I didn’t think it was something I would do or wanted to do. But, eventually, God gets what he wants.”
Johnson first studied journalism at the State University of New York and worked after that as a newspaper reporter. Some years later, he was living next to what turned out to be Nass’ church.
“I thought, I don’t know, maybe we should go to church,” he said. “I don’t know why. I do now. But I just said ‘maybe we should go to church.’” And so he did. “I met (Nass). A friendship developed and so, like I said, then it was mostly social. I liked the men’s group and I liked (Nass). We used to get together and play handball and, you know, we’d just have conversations. Eventually, he said to me one day that he thought I had a pretty good theological mind and he thought I should consider the ministry.”
After being ordained, Johnsen spent five years as a chaplain in the Army, an experience he called “probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
“I’m not going to speak for anyone else. I can only speak from my experience,” he said. “But if you think the world is secular at large, go into the military and see what you’re dealing with there.”
He said he worked under a commanding officer who seemed to have no use for a chaplain before transferring to a different unit. The whole time, though, he said he developed much doubt about his calling.
“The whole thing was, like, five years of feeling like: ‘What am I doing here? What good am I doing here?’ to the point where I started questioning my call, my faith.”
He said God works in mysterious ways, however.
“But, you see, that’s how God works,” he said. “He strengthens you through these things and I think sometimes God uses some harsh stuff of this world to get you where he wants you to go. I mean, I prayed about it and I said: ‘You know, what is this? What did you do, bring me here just like the Israelites, bring me out here to die?’ metaphorically speaking. And that’s when I got the call that said ‘No. You’re done here,’ you know? It’s not about a pension... It’s about serving God.”
He said he then filed his paperwork to resign his commission and entered the civilian ministry.
“Why was I there? I don’t know,” he said of his military ministry. “Maybe I was there for just one person. And if that was the case, then the five years and all the baloney and nonsense was worth it, if there was that one person that I needed to be there for.”
Following his military service, Johnsen served as pastor at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Lead, South Dakota, for three years before being called to serve at Zion Lutheran Church.
As far as a crux of his mission today is concerned, Johnsen quoted his old friend Nass, whom he referred to as “like a father to me. He truly was my spiritual guide, my spiritual father. The thing he used to say was: ‘Have a neighbor. Be a neighbor.’ And I think that’s what I want this church to be. I want this church to be a neighbor in the community. I want people to know that it’s open to them,” he said. “It’s a church that’s here for the people.”