Keeper of the Heart

Johanna Christianson, Pelican Rapids, BCLP 1994
Community Volunteer, Multicultural Committee Chair

Creating a World Without Strangers
What’s it like, do you suppose, to come to this country for the first time? How does it feel to leave behind family, friends, language, culture and a history uniquely your own? Where do you fit in a small community with its own notions of who belongs and who does not? An immigrant herself, Johanna Christianson understands these questions. She knows what it means to be a “stranger” in a strange land.

Johanna was born and raised in Amsterdam and came to Pelican Rapids in 1976 as a 19-year-old bride of Jim Christianson, one of this community’s native sons. They’d returned to help with the family businesses. Prior to their arrival, Johanna’s mother-in-law put the newlyweds’ picture in the local paper, which meant that people soon were greeting her by name on street corners and asking about the Netherlands. “I never forgot how it felt to be welcomed, to feel that I belonged.”

Mentored by her father-in-law about community life, Johanna quickly gained recognition for her volunteer work, which came naturally to her having grown up in a large clan where one was simply expected to “be a good neighbor.” In the early 1990s, the sense of neighborliness in Pelican Rapids faced a challenge as immigrants from Bosnia and the Sudan moved in, recruited for jobs at the local turkey plant. Emotions ran high among local citizens about these new people and how they fit into community life. Adjustment was not easy…for anyone. The director of the local food shelf called Johanna one day, asking if she could deliver food to newcomers living in trailers on the edge of town. “What I saw made me realize I couldn’t just drive away after making that delivery. I knew in my heart it was my turn to welcome people to their new lives in Pelican.”

The Power of Befriending Newcomers
The heart is a powerful source of motivation for Johanna. Colleagues who nominated her as a notable BCLP leader frequently mentioned her deep convictions and her passion for Pelican’s newest settlers. One, in particular, talked about Johanna as “the keeper of the heart” in their community. “I’ve learned that when I hear myself say, ‘This is important. Why isn’t someone doing something about it?’ I am talking to myself.”

Johanna’s experience at the trailer park, as well as participating in BCLP, reenergized her. About the same time she applied to be part of BCLP, she volunteered for the Multicultural Committee, which served a key role as the community learned to welcome strangers into its midst. The committee worked diligently to keep communication accurate so that gossip or rumors did not take on a life of their own. It also provided a forum where people on all sides of issues could voice their concerns and fears. With Johanna’s leadership, a befriending program was created to link established members of the community in one-to-one relationships with newcomers to help them navigate many of the challenges they faced settling into community life.

There were also community-wide efforts to foster and sustain mutual understanding. Her BCLP cohort sponsored “The Longest Coffee Break,” a day when people could gather anywhere along main street for coffee and conversation with neighbors, old and new. That event was renamed “The International Coffee Break” and eventually became the “International Friendship Festival” in 1998. It remains an annual celebration.

Giving Youth a Stronger Voice
But, when one leads from the heart, there is never a time to rest on laurels. Most recently, the Multicultural Committee turned its attention to developing youth leadership, and Johanna is co-advisor to that community youth board. “I am aware of my own experience of finding my voice in volunteer roles. Now I have a chance to help young people find theirs…and to encourage the community to come alongside.”
The importance of that support in forming young people for leadership became apparent as the new board looked for a place to hold a multicultural dance. Organizations with appropriate facilities turned down requests because of liability concerns. “This made me think of the bigger question: Who is liable for the youth of Pelican Rapids, for helping them become the future they represent?” With that concern clearly in focus (and in her heart), Johanna’s been using her networks to raise awareness of the need for community members to support, mentor and encourage youth in their development as citizens.

Listening to Your Heart
Johanna’s story of leadership reflects the influence of many factors. Her own upbringing taught her values that oriented her to service for the common good. She speaks gently and with deep conviction about the significance of her religious faith in cultivating ideals that guide her decision-making. Johanna speaks fondly of her deceased father-in-law, Art Christianson, and his mentoring role in her life. She is also eloquent about her involvement in the Blandin Community Leadership Program.
“Participating in BCLP came as I was starting to take on significant leadership in my congregation in addition to working on other community projects. It was a challenge to find balance. One of the things BCLP taught me was to be selective — not just to say yes to invitations but to choose to do those things that had meaning for me.”

Compassion & Companions
“BCLP helped me discover a sense of my own leadership — nurturing and inspiring me beyond self-doubt. BCLP held me accountable to act. There is always a tendency to assume there are others more qualified to take action. My participation in BCLP taught me that a person is here for the right time and place. My fellow BCLP friends and Jim Krile have been companions along the way, giving me courage to stay at the work. I have learned that my contribution to community matters.”

To encourage others like her who may be “willing to make a difference” for their communities, Johanna would advise: listen to your heart. Be attentive to what is the right thing to do. Allow your deepest values to form and empower your sense of service. On her list of suggestions for community leadership, she would also include this important question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Johanna would be the first to say that community leadership is challenging. She’s known fear in the face of opposition, having taken unpopular stands from time to time. She’s experienced discouragement, fatigue and stress from trying to balance family life and community commitments. What is clear to Johanna, however, is that community leadership is not something a person possesses or does solo. Her leadership story could not be told without the love, support and understanding of her husband Jim and their three children. That story takes on depth with her networks of friends and colleagues who work together on issues affecting the common good in Pelican Rapids. Conviction, compassion, and companions with a shared sense of vision comprise the soil for effective community leadership. It is there that Johanna Christianson is firmly planted.

Core Competencies For Leadership
Johanna Christianson’s leadership story accents the core competencies at the heart of BCLP. Consider the way Johanna re-framed the issue of liability for a youth activity from an exclusive focus on property and personal injury liability to include an understanding of how a community takes responsibility for forming its youth as citizens. The work of building social capital began as Johanna’s father-in-law mentored her about community life, and it grew as she volunteered in the community and in church, forming networks of relationships with people interested in a wide range of varying issues. Those networks — that included other people who are now BCLP alums — became invaluable in creating the critical mass needed to make something like the International Friendship Festival an integral part of how the community learns to incorporate its newest citizens.