Mirko
Petricevic
Kitchener/Waterloo Record
July 14, 2007
As
recently as last week, Rev. Susan Johnson's office was sprinkled
with well-placed mementoes. An icon of the Virgin Mary and
baby Jesus was perched near her computer. A bookshelf displayed
photos from her ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in Canada. Near the door hung a print, cleverly depicting
what women are wearing in the church these days -- a cleric's
white collar. Soon, the orderly office will descend into disarray.
Johnson,
currently one of three assistants to the bishop of the Kitchener-based
Eastern Synod, will be packing up and heading west. In an
election held at the church's national convention in Winnipeg
last month, the 49-year-old minister leapfrogged into the
position of national bishop. Her consecration as bishop, in
Winnipeg on Sept. 29, will mark a number of firsts. She will
be the first woman to serve as the church's national bishop.
She will also be the first person from the Eastern Synod in
the top post and the first cleric elected who wasn't already
a bishop heading one of the church's five synods.
"I'm just trying to come out of the shock," Johnson said in
an interview last week.
CHURCH
ROOTS
When
she was still a toddler, Johnson's family moved from Saskatoon
to London, Ont., where her father served as a Lutheran chaplain
at the University of Western Ontario. In addition to her father
and late grandfather, a number of her male relatives were
Lutheran pastors. "It's the family business," said Johnson,
who was quick with humorous quips during the interview. As
children, she and her three younger siblings occasionally
played church. Women were not being ordained at the time,
so her younger brother played the part of priest. "I just
stage directed everything from the side," Johnson said. She
says she believed in God at an early age and sometimes defended
God in her debates with classmates. "I was a nerdy kid," she
chuckled. By the time the church began ordaining women in
the mid-1970s, Johnson was in high school and on a path to
studying music.
FAITH
AFFIRMED
"I
never had a crisis of belief," she said. Instead, she says,
she has found affirmations of God along the way. They have
come during large gatherings, such as a 2001 worship service
at a Waterloo hockey rink when a full-communion covenant was
forged between her church and the Anglican Church of Canada,
allowing pastors of each denomination to serve congregations
in the other. Johnson taught music in a British Columbia high
school for seven years. From time to time, she recalled, people
tapped her on the shoulder and suggested she should become
a pastor. Over and over again, she resisted. Then one evening
in 1987, while saying her prayers in her bedroom, she surrendered.
"OK God, if that's what you want -- I'll do it." She studied
theology in Vancouver for a year, then transferred to Waterloo
Lutheran Seminary, graduating in 1992 with a master's degree
in divinity. She then became assistant pastor at Trinity Lutheran
Church, in London, Ont. At that point she thought she would
serve her entire career in the church as pastor of a congregation.
But just two years later, Rev. William Huras, bishop of the
Eastern Synod at the time, invited her to become one of his
assistants. "I had a hard, hard, hard time leaving parish
ministry," she said. During a synod convention in 1998, Johnson
and Rev. Michael Pryse were front-runners to become the Eastern
Synod's new bishop. Pryse won and Johnson remained an assistant.
In that position she has recruited candidates for the ministry,
matched pastors with congregations, reviewed seminary applicants,
investigated complaints against pastors, helped co-ordinate
clergy ethics workshops and served as a synod contact on ecumenical
talks with other denominations.
In
a 2001 election for national bishop, she finished second to
Rev. Raymond Schultz. She served as church vice-president
from 2001 to 2005. Despite her fairly high profile in the
church, Johnson said, she was shocked at being elected national
bishop last month. She thought she had too many strikes against
her. She had not been the bishop of a synod and she thought
the fact that the Eastern Synod last year voted to allow individual
congregations to decide whether or not to approve same-sex
blessings -- only a year after a national convention rejected
that option -- would be a huge barrier. "I thought it would
make me unelectable." Johnson said she has heard that questions
about her own sexual-orientation floated among delegates during
last month's election. "I'm single," she said in last week's
interview, declining to elaborate. "I choose not to talk about
it because no matter what I say it adds fuel to the fire."
Johnson
said she does favour the blessing of unions of same-sex couples
in committed relationships. For parishioners on both sides
of the blessings debate, the outcome of the voting at the
national convention was mixed. Delegates elected Johnson to
a four-year term, but rejected a motion to let individual
synods decide whether to implement the blessings. "I'm hoping
that God can use me as a bridge-builder," Johnson said. "That
would be a hope." It's not essential for all members of the
church to come to the same opinion on same-sex blessings,
she said. "It's in Christ that we have unity," she said. "Not
in . . . unity of opinion."
MANY
CHALLENGES
Although
issues of sexuality spark the most heated debates among Evangelical
Lutherans, there are also pressing issues involving the church's
membership levels and finances. "We're currently on a downward
trajectory -- in both of those." The issues are intertwined.
There are fewer church members. Those who remain are donating
slightly more to their congregations, but less money is getting
to the synods and national church for initiatives such as
campus ministry and church camps. Johnson said she hopes to
enable church members to talk about being more generous with
their donations. She said she practises tithing by giving
10 per cent of her gross income to the church.It's not easy
to do in a culture where the message is often to accumulate
as much as possible, she conceded. On the other hand, she
said, she finds it freeing. Johnson said she can't ask parishioners
to start tithing tomorrow. When finances are tight, she said,
"the temptation is to take care of yourself. Self preservation
. . . I don't think its always a very faithful response."
Financial challenges have contributed to the drop in membership,
Johnson said. Members focus so much energy on trying to maintain
operations that the church has neglected to be evangelical.
And few people want to join a church that's busy just taking
care of its own needs, she added. Johnson said she hopes congregations
can also become more generous toward their broader communities.
If
the church is to serve others, not just its members, it has
to increase mission work outside its walls, she said. Also,
in an effort to make the best use of church finances, Johnson
said, the church needs to look at doing joint projects with
groups such as the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America. At the congregation level, she
noted, two small Evangelical Lutheran churches and an Anglican
congregation have agreed to hire one pastor.
OFF
TO WINNIPEG
Before
she leaves for Winnipeg, Johnson will pack up her Kitchener
office and say goodbye to good friends. She will cancel her
registration for a recreational women's hockey league where,
even with God on her side, she scored just one goal in six
seasons. But despite the upheaval ahead, and despite thinking
she was a long shot for the position of national bishop, Johnson
said she never thought of withdrawing from last month's vote.
"It has always been my theology to go where you're called,"
she said.
mpetricevic@therecord.com
EVANGELICAL
LUTHERAN CHURCH IN CANADA History: Has its roots in the 16th-century
Reformation in Germany. Created in 1986 after a succession
of mergers. In 2001, in Waterloo, it entered into full-communion
with the Anglican Church of Canada, allowing pastors from
one denomination to serve in the other. Members: Has 180,000
baptized members in five synods, about 16,500 of them in Waterloo
Region and the Guelph and Fergus areas. Not to be confused
with: The more theologically traditional Lutheran Church-Canada,
which has about 76,000 members.
