Dr. Johnson received his M.Div degree (1974) and D.Min (1988) degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also received the Doctor of Theology degree (1999) from the University of South Africa.

Before joining the inaugural faculty at McAfee, Dr. Johnson was associate professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. He spent three years working for the Georgia Baptist Convention, thirteen years at the Home Mission Board and five years at the Sunday School Board of the SBC.

Dr. Johnson is professor of mission and evangelism at McAfee. He teaches courses related to the mission of the church in the world and its witness to the world. He also teaches courses that explore postmodernism, emergent churches, and world religions. Dr. Johnson has served as president of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education and has been lecturer in colleges and seminaries in the United States and abroad.

Dr. Johnson has published four books and written chapters in two others. His books include:  Oikos: A Practical Approach to Family Evangelism, Evangelism for All God’s People, How Will They Hear if We Don’t Listen, and From the Outside In: Connecting to the Community Around You.

Teaching students to engage churches with a new vision for the future is particularly exciting for Dr. Johnson. He loves to challenge students to think about the nature of the corporate church and to envision a shift toward the kingdom oriented model of church. Reaching the secular world with the gospel is a special concern. Dr. Johnson is sensitive to the need for evangelism to be ministry based and for mission to engage with what God is doing in every aspect of daily life. The concept of participation with God in the redemptive purposes of God holistically is a matter that is a central focus in his classes.

Dr. Johnson’s current research focuses on Jesus’ understanding of his mission and how that mission was communicated to the apostles. How did the apostles understand what Jesus envisioned? How did they hear what He was saying to them? Where were they reluctant to follow him and where did they resonate with his vision? Exploring some of these questions may serve to re-format the church into a more serious engagement with the community around the church and take seriously the task of extending the work of Jesus into our world.

McAfee for me has great strength. The faculty is very close and we work together very well and share our strengths with each other. Our love for the students is transparent. We work very hard to not only teach students but to mentor them to care deeply for the local church and the disciplines we teach. McAfee also is a school on mission. It has a strong local missional involvement and the mission immersion program has reached out to the world over the last decade with students actively involved in churches from Thailand to Bulgaria to Brazil to Cuba to name a few. It is a school with strong academic credentials and a bright future for creative ministry in a complex world.

Dr. Johnson and his wife Janice live on their farm in Concord, Georgia and they have three grown children and four grandchildren. They raise horses and a big garden each year.