When William Johnson was just another 17-year-old at church camp, a fellow camper unexpectedly drowned. The whole camp, awash in tears and uncertainty, mourned the young man’s shocking and tragic death.
“During that sorrowful time, I watched the camp director Rev. William C. Royster demonstrate pastoral concern and care for everyone present, and I knew I wanted to be able to serve in that same way,” Johnson said. “I count my call to the ordained ministry to the way my spirit and heart were moved that weekend.”
After graduating high school, Johnson enrolled at Elmhurst College — a United Church of Christ campus in Illinois — as a pre-theology student. Fast forward a few years, and on Pride Day in 1972, Johnson would make history as the first openly gay person to be ordained in the United Church of Christ.
It would be almost two more decades before Johnson would find a congregation of his own to lead.
His life’s work — opening the doors of the church to the LGBT community — is but one of the reasons the Rev. Dr. William R. Johnson will receive the Cathedral of Hope’s “Hero of Hope” on Sunday, July 22. The Uptown UCC church’s annual award recognizes an organization or individual that has fought tirelessly to bring equal rights and social justice to the gay and lesbian community
According to Cathedral of Hope, the award has no formal criteria, and is selected at senior pastor the Rev. Dr. Jo Hudson's discretion.
Although Johnson is set to retire next year, that won’t be the last you’ll hear of him. Johnson said he will continue to speak on college and seminary campuses. With the help of a colleague, he has plans to write his memoirs, too, Johnson said.
What will his life’s story say? It will probably be less of a list of his awards and achievements and more about the stories of the lives he’s touched and the people who have given him such tremendous perspective.
“I do believe the pastoral counseling I have done with tens of thousands of LGBT high school and college students, seminarians and clergy, as well as countless parents and friends of lesbians and gays, has contributed significantly to reconciliation, to self-acceptance and affirmation, and to the struggle for LGBT equality and justice,” Johnson said.
And if you ask Johnson, through all of that ministry — a lifelong journey of helping one person after another — God has been with him the entire way.
“My faith that God’s love and grace would sustain me has been tested through many difficulties, but God has been faithful and never let me go,” Johnson said. “I have learned that I can trust God’s capacity to touch my life and the lives of others in positive ways that may not always be immediately evident. The spirit that is holy is alive and well and living among humanity.”