Gordon G. Johnson 1964-1984

Dean During Accreditation and the New Campus Move

Gordon G. Johnson grew up across the street from the old Bethel campus on Snelling Avenue. He was a close friend of the son of Dean Karl J. Karlson and, as a youngster, was often in the family’s home. Later Johnson would study at Bethel Junior College and at Moody Bible Institute. During World War II, he studied at Harvard University, thanks to the U.S. Navy, and finished his undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota in 1945. He received his B.D. degree from Bethel Seminary in 1946 and his Th.M. from Princeton Seminary. He pastored First Baptist Church of Milltown, Wis., from 1946 to 1948; Bethel Baptist Church of Montclair, N.J., from 1948 to 1951; and Central Baptist Church of Chicago, Ill., from 1951 to 1959. While he was at Central, he published My Church, which has continued to this day as the definitive writing on the theological distinctives of the Baptist General Conference.

In 1959, Gordon Johnson was called to join the Bethel Seminary faculty as director of field education and professor of preaching. He had been working on his doctorate during his ministry in Chicago, and in 1960 he received his Th.D. degree from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. In 1964, when Omark retired, he took the position of vice president and dean of the seminary. He was immediately involved in the building of the new seminary campus, with the first four buildings scheduled for completion by the fall term in 1965. Classes had to be held at Central Baptist Church in St. Paul for several weeks when the construction deadline was not met. When the campus could be used, students and faculty struggled through mud to use the new buildings until the road was paved the following summer. Construction continued on the seminary campus through most of the early years of Johnson’s tenure. The seminary apartment buildings were constructed during the 1966-67 school year, and the chapel and the seminary student center were occupied in the fall of 1969.

Building of the student body coincided with the building of the new campus. Seminary enrollment was in the low hundreds through the late ’50s and early ’60s. The second year on the new campus, enrollment jumped 50 percent. By the time students had been on the new campus four years, enrollment was double what it had been on the old campus. It tripled in 10 years. By the end of Dean Johnson’s work for Bethel, the seminary had grown from just over 100 students to more than 500.

A growing student body demanded a larger faculty. Marvin Anderson and Dan Baumann joined the faculty in the first year of Johnson’s leadership, and were soon joined by Berkeley Mickelson (1965). The nine teachers of the 1963-64 year had become 17 teachers by 1971 and 23 full-time faculty by 1981.

The seminary continued upgrades to its academic program, achieving full accreditation by the Association of Theological Schools in 1966. In 1967, the seminary launched the Lay School of the Bible to provide seminary-level training for non-degree students interested in improving their abilities to serve their churches; programs were initiated for both student wives and faculty wives; and the bachelor of divinity degree was upgraded to a master of divinity degree. In 1971, the first Th.M. degree was granted, and in 1974 the M.A.T.S. program had its first graduates and the first doctor of ministry students began their work.

In 1977, the idea of a second seminary campus took hold, and Bethel Seminary–West Campus opened at College Avenue Baptist Church in San Diego, Calif. In addition, Bethel worked with a consortium of evangelical seminaries to launch the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education in Chicago. Increasingly, the campus was the host to professional associations, and the seminary took a leading role in working with the other Minnesota seminaries on library planning and the cooperative use of resources.

Johnson was always active beyond campus boundaries. He was a sought-after preacher across the United States and Canada. He served on the Board of Publications, the Board of World Missions, and the Board of Trustees of the Baptist General Conference, and was moderator of the Baptist General Conference Annual Meeting in 1958 and in 1986. For 20 years he served as a Baptist General Conference member of the General Council of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). His work with the BWA and with the World Missions Board of the BGC took him to more than 50 different countries for ministry and assistance.

In the spring of 1984, Johnson astonished the seminary faculty by announcing that he would retire early to take the role of minister of pastoral care and associate pastor at College Avenue Baptist Church in San Diego. College Avenue was the largest church in the conference at that time. He ministered there for the next five years, also serving as interim senior pastor during that time. He taught preaching at Bethel Seminary San Diego during those years and was the interim dean of Bethel Seminary San Diego from 1990-1991. He was interim pastor at First Baptist Church of Lakewood, Long Beach, Calif., from 1991-1992. Gordon returned to Minnesota in 1993 where he continued to serve in interim pastor roles and as a teacher in a variety of settings. He published a book on biographical preaching in 2006.

Johnson took Bethel Seminary to its new campus and solidly built a strong and reputable seminary in those new facilities. When he stepped down in 1984, the seminary was serving not only its own denomination, but also evangelical denominations throughout the upper Midwest. Johnson laid the foundations for the seminary of the 21st century.