Mark D. Johns is currently serving on the faculty
of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa as an
Associate Professor and Head of the Department
of Communication Studies, where he teaches courses
in media studies and public speaking. His research interests include social
impacts of new communication technologies and intersections of media,
religion, and culture.
Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, Mark Johns graduated from Hoover High School. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Social Science from Midland Lutheran College of Fremont, Nebraska in 1974, and Master of Divinity degree from Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary (now part of Luther Seminary) of Saint Paul, Minnesota. He completed a pastoral internship at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church at East Bethel, Minnesota, clinical training at Bethesda Lutheran Hospital, St. Paul, and was ordained into the Lutheran ministry in 1978. Johns served as Pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Iowa Falls, Iowa, 1978-83; as Associate Pastor at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1983-85; and as Senior Pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Cedar Falls, Iowa, 1985-1997. He continues to preach regularly as a "pulpit supply."
In December of 1995, Johns completed an additional Master's Degree in Communication Studies at the University of Northern Iowa, where his thesis title was The Rhetoric of Secondary Orality: The Effects of the Electronic Media on Preaching. He received his Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa in 2000, after successfully defending his dissertation, For God and the Channel Surfer: Religious Leaders' Decisions Concerning Media Use. Johns has served on the Communication Advisory Committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and has been involved in many church video productions and media projects over the years.
Mark Johns is co-editor, with Shing-Ling Sarina Chen and G. Jon Hall, of Online Social Research: Methods, Issues, and Ethics, published in 2004 by Peter Lang Publishers. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, the publishing house of the ELCA, has also published three books of congregational resources written by Mark D. Johns. In March, 1998, Augsburg Fortress published Go Public! Developing Your Plan for Communication Evangelism: A Guide for Congregations, a 144-page resource book. In March of 2002 Augsburg Fortress published Our Context: Exploring Our Congregation and Community. In September of 2002, Called to Lead: A Handbook for Lay Leaders became available. He was contributing editor of the leader guide for The Lutheran Course and a contributor to the Augsburg Fortress handbooks for pastors, published in 2006, and to The Lutheran Handbook II in 2007. He has also authored a number of papers for academic conferences and journal publications.
In 2002, Johns became Executive Director of the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research, a very small scholarly organization. Mark has served in China for several weeks in the summers of 2005-2007 as a participant and "dean" (group leader) in the Global Language Villages program of Concordia College (Moorhead, Minn., another college of the ELCA, like Luther). He was a teacher at Weifang in Shandong Province in 2005, and dean at Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province in 2006, and in Beijing in 2007.
In his personal life, Johns' hobbies include amateur radio, particularly space communication through amateur satellites. He is also a licensed private pilot (although he has not flown in the past several years). He has been an active volunteer for public radio station KUNI, and has twice been a recipient of the Iowa Governor’s Volunteer Award for service as a volunteer Chaplain for the Iowa State Patrol. He is married and has two daughters. His wife, Mary, teaches elementary music in the Cedar Falls Community Schools. They enjoy bicycle riding together when weather permits.