In the News
There's nothing 'ordinary' about Curtis Johnson's ministry
By Mike Foley- STAFF WRITER
(Source: G’ville News)
IfOverseer Curtis Johnson never preaches the Gospel again on Sunday morning, never takes food to a hungry man or helps a woman break the bonds of drug use, he's still done enough in his life to base a movie on.
Not that the 34-year-old Johnson, who leads the time for Hollywood. He's got other plans. Big plans.
A week before the formal dedication of Valley Brook's new $1.9 million ministry center on U.S. 25, just south of Woodmont High School, Johnson is already talking about building an adjoining 2,500-seat Valley Brook Kingdom Cathedral and an elementary school, even though they exist, for now, only in a drawing in the foyer of the sparkling new ministry center.
The big plans come from a church that started in 1987 when his grandfather, the Rev. A.B. Sherman, his grandmother, his parents and a few others gathered in his grandfather's den in the Valley Brook neighborhood.
Johnson, who graduated from J.L. Mann High School and has spent his whole life in Greenville County except for four years in the U.S. Air Force, wasn't in the plans then. But soon after he returned home in 1990, he began working in a Bi-Lo distribution warehouse, and his grandfather began grooming him for the ministry.
In 1993, he took over the church and its 80-member flock. While he had no expectations of phenomenal growth, others did. Now, less than 10 years later, he's proven them right. The church now has 700 members, and it seems to get bigger every week.
"A lot of people perceived that it would, but I'm hard on myself," Johnson says. "I have low expectations; that's not the right word, but people see more in me than I see in myself."
And in the church, Johnson sees something he believes other churches overlook. He used to spread God's message the way he'd been taught, knocking on doors and handing people religious tracts.
"But my message changed one day when I met a guy who said, 'I hear your message, but I'm hungry and I don't have a place to stay.' I didn't have any money on me and I knew if I gave him $5, that would just give him one meal," Johnson says. "That conflicted me so much I stopped knocking on doors. I felt I needed to come back and restructure the church so that we could minister to them for what their needs are. My personal motto is: Eliminate excuses. So now, if you don't have work, we try and find you work. If you have an addiction, we've got an addiction ministry. We've got marriage counseling. And when we meet your needs, then we've got a message that can change your life."
While the church membership as a whole has become Johnson's extended family, he has his blood-family wrapped in the bosom of the church, too.
His father, William Johnson Jr., is chairman of the deacons. His mother, Sadie Johnson, is minister of music. His wife, Charla, and cousins and a few others all work or volunteer for the church. His older son, Isaiah, 5, has grown up on the church grounds and there's no doubt his younger brother, month-old Joshua, will soon tag along. Johnson's grandfather is pastor emeritus and soon to be namesake for the ministry center.
Even though Johnson was slow in realizing his destiny, his mother says she knew it all along.
"He was an 'A' student and a good child," she says. "The only time we ever had to go to school was on awards nights. And we only whipped him once in all those years, and that was for picking on his sister."
While the pastor never needed whipping, plenty of people in the community have found that when the world whips them, the church can help heal the wounds. Thomas Allen, a minister in the church, went to high school with Sadie Johnson and has knownOverseer Johnson since he was born.
In the early 1990s, Allen confesses, he was leading a sinful life. His live-in girlfriend at the time, who is now his wife, was stumbling along the same track. One day in 1995, Allen had the idea to go to church, thinking it might save them.
"When she (his girlfriend) sat down, she said, 'I'm at home,'" Allen says. "She heard him preach and afterward, she walked up and joined the church that day. She didn't know anyone in that church. But he knows how to reach out and touch a hurting community."
Sandra Allen said she'd been abusing alcohol and drugs for 24 years -- and she admits, she looked like it.
"You know when you're doing drugs and alcohol you don't look good. I know what I looked like," she said. "But they treated me like a queen. When I first sat down there, you know how it is when you feel like you just need to go home and lay down and everything will be all right? That's how I felt.
"You hear him, and you're transformed."
That afternoon when she went home, she felt she was a different person.
"I didn't want to get high. I didn't want to drink. I didn't even want to smoke cigarettes," she said. "I don't know why. But something happened to me there."
When that something happened to Sandra Allen, she wanted to spread the word. She was a school dropout who had great difficulty reading. But church members taught her to read by using the Bible. Now, she's taking classes for her GED. When she gets that in hand, her plans are to go to Greenville Tech to take counseling classes to better help others.
The word "outreach" is taken seriously by Johnson and the Valley Brook congregation. On the 25 acres the church owns, workers are converting one vacant house into an addiction recovery house and the other into a youth facility. Empty rooms in the church soon will house a day-care center, a computer lab and a classroom for tutoring students after school.
Johnson wants to build low-income housing on the church grounds. There are plans for entrepreneurial training and to buy buildings and spark new businesses. For now, the church runs on an annual budget of about $600,000, largely from tithes and offerings. But Johnson expects to start for-profit businesses such as a restaurant -- under the auspices of Curtis Johnson Ministries -- in the future to raise money to fund his ambitious programs.
"There's not a lot of ministries that focus on outreach," Johnson says. "Most ministries are doing the ordinary things, the things that have always been done. But I'll tell you, the ordinary doesn't make an impact with people."
One Saturday recently, Valley Brook sent 250 of its members to the Jesse Jackson Townhomes. They served lunch, gave haircuts and taught people how to create resumes and fill out job applications. Church choirs sang.
Later, when a young man from the neighborhood was shot and killed, the church sent its buses to take residents to the funeral.
"We don't just hit and run," Johnson said. "We're serious with them. They know we're there when they need us."
Johnson definitely makes an impact. Though he is tall and slender, his commanding voice delivers a conviction that rings true in his words. Allen said when he first heard that voice in the pulpit -- the one he'd known since childhood -- it changed him forever.
"He's got it. He's just got it," Allen says. "And if you go to church and listen to him, you'll feel it."