Ken Johnston
Ken Johnston never thought he would be running a Catholic parish in South Philadelphia. God had other ideas.
“The last Friday in August, I woke up in the morning. I’m praying, and I heard it on my heart, ‘Apply for the job,’” said Johnston, who replied, “‘No, I don’t want to apply for the job.’ And then I heard, ‘Apply for the job.’”
Finally Johnston listened, and now he is the new parish life director at St. Gabriel Parish, the 117-year-old church in South Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood.
Johnston, a Glenside resident, knows all three priests that serve at the parish, including Father Douglas McKay. They have partnered to help others face the addiction battle Johnston himself understands from experience, through Our House Ministries and the Calix Society, which he has helped lead over the last two decades.
“I’ve been in recovery for almost 35 years,” Johnston said. “That’s kind of how I met Father McKay. We find out that the only way we’re going to cope with addiction is through a relationship with a higher power. And for a lot of people that are in the rooms, that’s Jesus Christ.”
Johnston said he has also known many of the parishioners, the history and the neighborhood of the parish. They are all elements for why he believes he was made for this role.
The position of parish life director is relatively new in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, one that Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez launched as part of the current Trust and Hope initiative. The role empowers a lay person, instead of a full-time pastor, to lead a parish’s overall management and foster new growth in ministries. This allows priests, who normally travel from a nearby parish, to provide sacramental ministry.
(Learn more about parish life directors here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIyNHwxSLqg)
Johnston said that in many ways, this role has given him a strong education on the inner workings of a parish that few parishioners experience.
“To me, it’s like being a pastor minus the collar,” Johnston said in jest. “It’s the facilities, the staff; it’s sacramental and religious education, and everything a pastor would do except actually perform the sacraments and offer Mass.”
Johnston, who has been working in the Grays Ferry area for several years, said that the parish’s previous parochial administrator was reassigned and there was no word of a priest coming. Parishioners who were unfamiliar with the role of a parish life director were concerned the parish would close.
“When I applied for the job, a number of people were pretty happy that it was somebody that knew the parish and the neighborhood. I wasn’t coming in to fire everybody,” he said.
Johnston calls St. Gabriel’s the “Cathedral of South Philadelphia,” but says that only about 325 parishioners belong to the parish.
He believes that numerous opportunities for expanding that number could be on the horizon.
“The University of Pennsylvania has grown by leaps and bounds. A lot of the people that work there are moving into the Gray’s Ferry neighborhood,” he said. “I think there’s a great opportunity for outreach to the people that are coming in that don’t even know that we exist.”
Five years ago the parish built a shrine to Venerable Matt Talbot, an Irish Catholic layman who although addicted to alcohol, relied on God and his strong Catholic faith to work toward sobriety. In recovery he gave selflessly to those enduring abject poverty.
Johnston hopes that blessed space devoted to Talbot will eventually become a national shrine, but he has intermediate steps in mind for it right now.
“We’re looking to expand that physically,” he said. “Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we (will) get that designated as a diocesan shrine.”
While the parish won’t only be focused on addiction and recovery ministry, Johnston sees his story and that of others like Father Douglas McKay as a way that St. Gabriel’s may become a center of healing.
The parish currently hosts a eucharistic holy hour and Mass dedicated to people struggling with addiction and their families.
“My hope one day is to fill that church on that third Tuesday with people from all over Philadelphia and South Jersey, praying for those that are affected by addiction,” Johnston said.
He says he has witnessed how Catholics who are in recovery dive deeply into their faith, becoming daily communicants and more active in their parish than most.
“They need God, (and) people that are in recovery, when they learn that God has saved their lives, they’re willing to get involved and witness to their faith (in ways) you may not see in other parishes,” he said.
Johnston’s own journey, from recovery to leadership in the Church, testifies to his passion for missionary discipleship. It’s why he believes God called him to this role.
“I look back today, and I can see that everything that’s happened over the last 30-plus years has pointed to this moment,” Johnston said.
“I think that’s one of the benefits of being Catholic and being sober. I have the ability to look back over time and see how God used all the things in my life, good and bad, to get me where He needed me.”
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