Continuing a Great-Grandfather’s Mission

Seeking God’s direction during the fall of 2007 after stepping down as lead pastors at Minot Assembly of God in Minot, North Dakota, Nathan Johnson and his wife Mary prayerfully considered new ministry options. 

Taking time out strolling in the town’s Oak Park, they continued mulling over their next pastoral chapter. Johnson sensed God calling them to harvest the evangelistic seeds that his great-grandfather Simon J. Johnson had sowed more than a century ago.

Simon Johnson, a devout Christian, had immigrated from Trondheim, Norway, around 1886 to homestead in northwestern Minnesota’s fertile Red River Valley. Everyone showing up at his wheat and potato farm heard a clear gospel message. He never stopped sharing the Lord and praying for lost souls.

Nathan unveiled his vision with Leon Freitag, former superintendent of the North Dakota Ministry Network, several months later in January 2008.

“Brother Leon told me to go buy a house in Grand Forks and get started planting a church,” Johnson, 62, remembers.  

The Johnsons met the challenge. By faith, they purchased a home to reach the community with the gospel. They led home Bible studies, prayer meetings and outreaches for almost one year before launching a grand opening on Palm Sunday 2009 in a former music store in downtown Grand Forks.

Freedom Church (FC), where they have served as lead pastors for 17 years, has expanded to about 800 congregants from two campuses in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Crookston, Minnesota. Blessings abound. 

Grand Forks is a strategic city of 60,000 residents. It is home to the state’s oldest and largest college, the University of North Dakota with 15,000 students, and the Grand Forks Air Force base with more than 2,000 active-duty personnel.

About 13% of residents live below the poverty line. Affordable housing and homelessness are persistent problems.

“Others also struggle on the fringe of poverty and despair,” Johnson says. “It is hard spiritual ground that needs plowing.”

FC moved to a larger four-story building in 2012 to accommodate a growing congregation, which now needs three services.

The downtown location, near a homeless mission and drug rehab program, opened opportunities for benevolence outreaches such as feeding more than 100 families on Thursdays and FC’s Christ-centered 12-step Celebrate Recovery (CR) program.

Jan Gunderson, 61, leads the CR ministry helping people overcome hurts, habits and hang-ups like codependency, anger, drug and alcohol addictions, pornography and past abuses. She needed help herself 10 years ago coping with her son Dana’s addiction and her own (PTSD) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms.

Jan and her husband Randy had attended several churches before Freedom Church, where they found the mercy and grace of a deep relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Dana has been drug-free for nine years.

At a recent (June 2) CR meeting, men and women received medallions celebrating one more day, one more month and one more year of healing in Jesus Christ.

“I counted them on my fingers and toes and had to use my neighbors’ fingers, too, before we were all done with the miracles,” she says.

Seth Mlodozyniec, 23, a coffee aficionado, accepted a friend’s invitation to The Ember Coffeehouse in 2023, an outreach owned by the church.

He enjoyed the coffee and fellowship and attended FC in 2024 when he witnessed several friends worshiping. The Holy Spirit touched his heart.

Experiencing the Lord’s love, mercy and forgiveness, he broke down crying uncontrollably.

“I realized my sinfulness and the life I was living would end in death,” he says.

Keeping his great-grandfather’s zeal, Nathan Johnson looked across the Red River of the North separating North Dakota from Minnesota. He saw a small city of 7,900, ripe for the saving gospel of Jesus. Freedom Church Crookston was planted in April 2019.

Then serious problems surfaced. COVID-19 shut down the University of Minnesota complex where the church lost its leased meeting space, followed by the campus pastor resigning.

Searching for new space took a long time inspecting 26 buildings before choosing the last one. “After so much work, the church advisory committee felt we were on the edge of a miracle to find a shepherd with a heart for souls,” Johnson says.

Joel Schwartz, former kids pastor of River of Life Church, Dickinson, North Dakota, filled that need and moved to Crookston with his wife Elly and four children. 

Freedom Church Crookston was relaunched on Easter Sunday 2023 in a building across from city hall and has grown to about 150 congregants.

Prison ministry is another fruitful church outreach, held in the Tri-County Community Corrections facility housing up to 200 inmates.

Jim Sheridan, a veteran volunteer, leads church teams conducting four one-hour services on Sunday afternoons.

More than 50 people have been water-bottle baptized so far this year; a regular tank is prohibited. Inmates stand on a towel as Sheridan pours water over their heads. “I remember Acts 26:18 seeing men and women being baptized and transformed by the Lord,” Sheridan, 69, says.

“This prison ministry is a huge blessing serving the families of inmates,” Schwartz says.

The results of Simon Johnson’s spiritual legacy and the Holy Spirit’s meticulous timing live on.

“Our heart is to continue to be an extension of God’s transforming grace to the people of our region and beyond,” Johnson says. “Our future plans are – just keep saturating the community with the gospel.” [PhotoGallery path = "/sitecore/Media Library/PENews/Photo Galleries/2026/Continuing Grandfathers Mission"]

Peter K. Johnson

Peter K. Johnson is a freelance writer living in Saranac Lake, New York. More than 500 of his articles and short stories have appeared in Christian and mainstream magazines and newspapers, including the Pentecostal Evangel,Charisma, the Saturday Evening Post, Guideposts, and Decision. He also serves as a consultant and contributing editor to a scientific journal.