CCO Campus Ministry

Home / Transformed Lives / Niki Johnson

Niki Johnson

johnson_niki.jpg“The CCO gave me models of how to live out my faith in all areas of my life,” says Niki Johnson. “People challenged me to live a certain way based on what I told them I believed, and they showed me it could be done.”

Niki Johnson currently serves as Assistant Professor of Religion at Mount Union College in northeastern Ohio. She graduated from Westminster College in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in Religion and Political Science, and she encountered the CCO almost the very moment she stepped foot on campus. CCO staff worker and residence hall director Willemina Zwart was the first person Niki met when she handed Niki the key to her dorm room. From that first introduction today, Niki counts Willemina as one of the most influential people in her life.

After countless visits to Willemina for advice dealing with her freshman roommates, Niki became involved in an all-female Bible study and discipleship group and attended the CCO-sponsored RSVP and Jubilee conferences. During her sophomore year, Niki served as one of Willemina’s resident assistants (RAs). During her junior and senior years, Niki was a student resident director (RD), still reporting to Willemina, who by then had been promoted to Director of Housing.

In 1996, Niki participated in the CCO-sponsored Ocean City Beach Project, and she calls it “one of the pinnacle experiences of my college career.” She almost didn’t go, because a religion class she took during her sophomore year had “deconstructed everything I believed.”

“I didn’t believe in Jesus anymore, and I thought, ‘why am I going to this Christian leadership thing when Christianity is just a man-made construct?” Niki says. “Had I not ended up going because of encouragement from Willemina and people like her, I don’t know that today I would be a person of any real solid faith. OCBP filled in the gaps and helped me to figure things out.”

After graduating from Westminster College in 1998, Niki joined CCO staff and served as a resident director at Wheeling Jesuit University, where she met the man she would marry, fellow grad assistant Glenn Griffin. Niki both staffed and taught at OCBP, solidifying her vocational goals to teach at the college level. In 2003, Niki and Glenn got married, and they moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where Niki earned her doctorate in Theology at Boston University. In July 2007, Glenn and Niki moved to northeastern Ohio, where Niki now serves as Assistant Professor of Religion at Mount Union College.

“Willemina and the other CCO staff I knew as a student were real people,” Niki remembers. “They let me know, in appropriate ways, when they were struggling. They made me think about who I was at different stages of my own life. They were real people dealing with real-life issues in an honest, open way.

“The kind of intentionality that was modeled for me as a student and that I practiced as a staff person has completely informed my approach to being a college professor. I am an academic, but the skills I learned about hospitality, creating space for people and being invitational, have hugely influenced my understanding of how to be a faithful professor. I don’t get it when other people don’t do it that way. It’s not just a paycheck to me; it’s a calling.”