A Baptist minister with local ties is carrying the gospel with him well outside of Texas and furthering his education in the process.
Jordan Johnson is a native of Collinsville. He is a 2004 graduate of Collinsville High School and, for the past three years, has shepherded the flock at Pleasant Valley Church in Parma, Ohio.
“God has been incredibly gracious to us,” Johnson said. “It has been a wonderful transition, and the spiritual climate here is exactly where God wants us to be.”
Johnson has been licensed to preach since 2006 and this is his fourth congregation to lead in his career.
His formative training began while still a teenager at First Baptist Church, Collinsville.
“They really invested in me,” Johnson said. “They looked around and said, ‘We have a lot of wisdom, but not as much energy. You have a lot of energy and not as much wisdom.’ I was a fit. They believed in my calling.”
Johnson was licensed in Collinsville, received a bachelor’s degree from Criswell Bible College and initially pastored at Harvey Street Baptist Church in Gainesville for 12 years.
He was called to service there in August of 2006.
It was at Harvey Street that he reconnected with an old high school girlfriend.
“Ember and I have known each other since the fifth grade. We dated in high school,” Johnson said. “Well, you could say we were an item back then. And then we weren’t. She started attending services at Harvey Street years later. We began seeing each other socially and playing golf together. I realized very soon just how Godly of a woman she is. A lot of women profess to lead a Godly walk and fall short. She truly does.”
Jordan married Ember Zielke in 2010. They have two children. Eden is seven. Theo is five.
They attend school at Providence Academy— a classical Christian school operated by the church.
“Having them in school here has been a rich, rich blessing,” Jordan said.
After 12 years in Gainesville, Jordan served short stints of pastoring in Celina and Lovelady, Texas, after which he found himself on a break from congregational ministry.
He began working on his Master of Divinity degree at Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
A friend knew of the opening in Ohio and felt Jordan would be a fit.
The church invited the couple to visit, met them and saw him preach.
“After those initial meetings, they called and said, ‘We think you might be God’s man for our job,’” Jordan said.
The elder led congregation voted in April of 2022 to call Jordan to their service.
The Johnsons came home in December and watched Jordan cross the stage to be conferred with his Master’s degree in Fort Worth.
Parma is a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio on the banks of Lake Erie. It’s the 7th largest city in Ohio with a population of about 85,000.
“It has been a big change,” Jordan said. “We now own a snowblower. I would have never imagined that… It is a big place, but there are some nice conveniences. It doesn’t seem like a big city. We have a wonderful park system. It’s very walkable, there are hiking opportunities and we spend a lot of time outdoors.”
Pleasant Valley is a Southern Baptist church, and as such, according to Jordan, is a bit of an outlier.
“Southern Baptist churches are just not as common in this part of the country,” Jordan said.
Pleasant Valley spends much of its ministry efforts in partnership with the Cleveland Food Bank. They donate thousands of pounds of food a year for needy families.
The church has been in existence since the early 1900s and was previously known as Parma Baptist Church.
Jordan’s weekly sermons can be streamed on the church’s YouTube channel.
Jordan is the son of Kerry and Janet Johnson of Collinsville.