This weekend, Westside Church in Bend will celebrate the life, career and future of its lead pastor of the past 27 years, Ken Johnson, and his wife Linda, as Ken retires.

Although, he prefers to say he is “refiring,” not retiring.

Next weekend, current Assistant Pastor Steve Mickel — who has known the Johnsons since he was 10 years old — will take over one of Central Oregon’s largest churches.

The two began talking about a transition a few years ago, Ken Johnson, 63, said in an interview last week. And earlier this summer, with his boss’ departure on the horizon, Mickel figured it was time to have an “awkward conversation,” he said.

“I said to Ken, ‘We have to think about moving offices.’ It was June, and I was thinking maybe August,” Mickel said. “And Ken said, ‘I’ll be out next week!’ And he was.”

But that’s Johnson’s nature, Mickel said: One of his strengths is the ability to place others in roles in which they can excel, and then pave the way for their success.

“He has done so much to set me up well. There’s nothing broken that I need to fix,” he said. “And so that’s really a credit to his leadership, and also his love for this body and this church.

“He feels he can give his baby, in a sense, away to me,” Mickel said, “because he sees a future that’s bigger than just him. And that’s pretty impressive to me.”

Getting started

Ken Johnson grew up in Newberg, one of five kids in the family. His dad was a longtime logger who became a teacher after an injury, and his mom worked for a tech company.

He met Linda at a church camp in Turner and shortly thereafter began hitchhiking over the mountains to Central Oregon to see her at her home in Redmond.

“(At that first camp), she was 13 and I was 12, but I told her I was 14,” Johnson said, with a chuckle and a glance at his wife. “Our whole relationship was based on a lie.”

The two were on again and off again until college, when they stayed together for good and married after Linda graduated from the University of Oregon’s school of nursing. She went to work while Johnson finished earning his degree in business administration from George Fox University. The couple moved to John Day for a year, then on to Bend to run a nursing home owned by Linda’s father and uncle.

Over the next six years, the business would expand to own or lease seven nursing homes in Oregon. The work was a natural for Linda — she retired last week after a 42-year nursing career — as well as for Ken, who had a knack for business. Both were also heavily involved as volunteers in their church, the Chapel of the Cascades at what is now The Old Stone on Franklin Avenue.

But things were about to change.

“As a little kid, I sold wild berries door to door. I did Christmas trees. I’d always been an entrepreneur. I was loving business,” Ken said. “And then … I’m sitting in church and I just got an image of God saying, ‘You made a promise to me when you were 7 years old. And I’m here to collect.’

“I went to my pastor and I said, ‘I think I’m supposed to be a pastor.’ And he said, ‘I think you are, too.’”

Growing churches

In 1979, Johnson got an opportunity to take over the nondenominational Juniper Chapel in Redmond, which had 30 regular attendees and met at a daycare. After a year, there were 100 people showing up, and the church merged with the Redmond Foursquare Church.

Seven years later, attendance hovered around 400 and the church — now City Center Church — was healthy. But the Johnsons felt as though God was moving them, though they weren’t sure where. A seminary in California, perhaps, they thought.

The night before they were to announce their departure, Ken received a call from Bend Foursquare Church pastor Cliff Hanes, who was leaving to become the district supervisor of Foursquare churches and was looking for someone to take his place.

At the time, 600 people attended the church, which met at what is now the Rosie Bareis Community Campus on 14th Street. Today, the church is called Westside and it has a sprawling facility on Shevlin Park Road, a satellite campus in south Bend, and soon, a Sisters campus as well. Average weekend attendance is a little over 2,000, and 3,500 people “call Westside home,” its outgoing pastor said.

Being real

If you ask a few of those 3,500 people what they like about “Pastor Ken,” you’ll get more than a few different answers.

Sonja Decker, 75, moved to Bend with her husband, John, 15 years ago, in large part to attend Westside, which they’d visited once on a trip to Bend from their previous home in the Seattle suburbs.

The couple hosts a weekly “Life Group” — one of Westside’s efforts to create personal connections in a large church — at its Bend home.

“(Pastor Ken) is a man of absolute integrity and I think that has borne out with the way Westside has interfaced with the community,” Sonja Decker said. “Because he exudes excellence, it permeates every part of the church.”

She praised Johnson’s “theologically correct, culturally relevant and relatable” teaching, and also cited his business background as crucial to his success.

Guy Cantor, 58, has also been a member of Westside for about 15 years, and he leads a Life Group for men. He called Johnson “incredible” and “inclusive,” and cited his desire for a multigenerational church as the driving force behind Westside’s robust Sunday School program for children. Like Decker, Cantor also noted Johnson’s relatability as a major draw.

“He drives home that he himself has problems just like everyone who’s sitting there has problems,” Cantor said. “But you’re welcome at Westside. That’s a pretty powerful message.”

Johnson said he receives more emails thanking him for his willingness to “be real” than any other topic. “I’m not going to pretend like I’m perfect because I’m not,” he says. “I’m going to stand up there and share my own struggles in my own life as well.”

Bruce Bolen, 73, runs two Life Groups and has been at Westside for more than seven years. He called Johnson “charismatic” and a “visionary leader” who has, the past few years, learned to tap the brakes on his Type A personality and let others shoulder the load.

“He’s an enlightened individual who understands the importance of people and how they’re programmed,” Bolen said. “I think he can really see the importance of that.”

And then there are the people closest to him: Mickel, who has called Johnson his pastor since the fourth grade.

“He’s one of the most focused guys I know,” Mickel said. “He’s not easily distracted from the vision that he has for this church and for this community, and so he doesn’t let much deter him from that. He just goes full force at it.”

As for Linda Johnson, she believes her husband’s business background has been invaluable to his ministry, and she calls him “very gifted” as a teacher. “I never get tired of hearing him,” she said, before adding: “He’s my best friend, and that’s been pretty awesome.”

In retirement

Johnson is speaking at Westside’s services this weekend, where he’ll outline his future plans, which include spending more time with friends and family, writing more and continuing to occasionally teach — per Mickel’s request — at Westside.

Both he and Linda, 64, will also put more focus on coaching and mentoring pastors and their spouses.

Otherwise, Johnson will continue to pursue his top hobby: bow hunting and bird hunting. The woods have always been his refuge, a place to refocus and return to the church refreshed. Linda likes the city and loves anything that allows her to be creative.

A while back, they talked about things they could do together in retirement and both enjoy. The answer: road biking and fly fishing. So they’ve purchased bikes and Linda’s getting fishing lessons soon.

It’ll be a significant shift in day-to-day life, but perhaps not as big a lifestyle change as one might think.

“This next chapter, we get to be more in our passion, our sweet spot, to give out of that,” Linda said. “For both of us — the coaching, the mentoring — that’s huge. We get to do that more one-on-one now.”

Johnson agreed: “God and people. That’s not going to change. It’s not about property and it’s not about programs and it’s not about denominations and it’s not about buildings. It’s about people. God’s bottom line is people.

“So some things in my life won’t change,” he said. “But I will get more time with my grandkids and my kids and my wife.” The Johnsons have three children and seven grandchildren.

Changing with the times

When asked to identify one attribute of Westside that has contributed to the church’s growth, Johnson lands on one word: flexibility.

“It’s easy for … religious communities to ossify and petrify, and I think the thing that we’ve always tried to do is stay flexible and let God keep changing us,” he said. “It has been 27 years of constant change. The message is timeless. The method changes. So we’re still in change.

“A lot of younger generational leaders are stepping up now as I step back,” he continued. “Where churches get messed up is they think that the method is a sacred cow. We’ve always resisted that.”

And now, in the midst of arguably the biggest and certainly the final change of his 27 years in charge of Westside Church, Johnson is finding it easier than ever to not resist change.

“I’m telling you, this transition has been sweet. (Steve) never grabbed hold and I never kept hold. I released and he didn’t get grabby. And we have an awesome relationship,” he said.

“If the church were struggling or the … leadership wasn’t behind (Steve) — if it wasn’t so sweet — we’d probably have more challenges. But what’s happening is sweet,” he continued. “There’s no success without successors. I do believe with the bottom of my heart the best days of this church are ahead. The best chapters are yet to be written.”

If you go

Westside Church, 2051 N.W. Shevlin Park Road, Bend, will hold celebrations of Pastor Ken and Linda Johnson after its regular services this weekend. Service times are:

Today: 6:30 p.m.

Sunday: 8 a.m., 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.