Reverend Dr. Lisa Joanne (Pinney) Johnson

Reverend Dr. Lisa Joanne (Pinney) Johnson was born on January 1, 1984, in Le Sueur, MN. She was the treasured daughter of a farmer and a librarian and grew up loving the outdoors and books and learning.

After earning salutatorian honors at Le Sueur-Henderson High School in 2002, she attended (and loved) the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire from 2002-2006. While there she recognized she was being called to the ministry and earned her BA in Religious Studies. This is also where she met her beloved husband, Peter Johnson.

Lisa and Peter were married on June 25, 2005 and, two weeks later, Peter, a member of the Army National Guard, was deployed to Kuwait for a year. Upon his return, they lived in Cuba City, Wisconsin where Lisa began work on her Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree at the University of Dubuque (Iowa) Theological Seminary (UDTS). While a student there, Lisa worked a job she loved, in the UDTS campus library, once again connecting with her love of books. Lisa was awarded her MDiv in June, 2011 and was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church at her home church, The Presbyterian Church of Le Sueur in December, 2012, during a raging Minnesota blizzard. There may have been a blizzard outside, but the joy and warmth and love inside the church was palpable.

In 2012, Lisa was called to the Presbyterian Church of Oronoco (Minnesota), the little white church on the hill, the small church with a big mission. It is a place where love lives and Jesus is shared with wide open hearts. The people there embraced her with their whole hearts and she loved being their pastor until her cancer no longer allowed her to preach.

Lisa believed with all she was that God and the church were for all people. That inclusion was a mandate from Jesus. That being truly Christian meant having no walls, no borders, no interest in leaving anyone out. She was a passionate supporter of the LGBTQ community and women in the pulpit and was unafraid to tell you that loving the stranger, the broken, the neighbor who isn’t exactly like you was the reason she followed Jesus.

After working on it for 3.5 years, Lisa earned her Doctorate of Ministry (DMin) from UDTS in April 2024. She was so very excited to add Dr. to her name and was looking forward to using it to further the church in as many creative ways as possible. Creative worship really was her superpower.

Throughout her life, Lisa played with all things creative. It fed her soul and brought her so much joy. Crazy awesome baking for her children’s birthdays and every teacher her children ever had, knitting hats for treasured friends, insanely beautiful Christmas wrapping, teaching classes at Synod School, building beautiful shutters and painting amazing walls in her children’s bedrooms. If it required paint, she was happy. If it was colorful, she was even happier. If she could do it with her children, all the better. In the last year of her life, done with schooling, she took that love of art and turned it into being a Girl Scout leader, a job she was very sad to have to give up. It was this overflowing creativity that defined so much of what she did.

After taking a 3 month sabbatical (thank you, Oronoco Presbyterian Church) that included a month long, 6000 mile trip across the county with her beloved family, Lisa, on the day she was to return to church, was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and aggressive cancer. She felt blessed to live a half hour from the Mayo Clinic and did everything they asked her to do to battle it. But, a very short eight months later, Lisa left this life on Sunday, June 1, 2025. We are sure Grandma Viv, Grandma Joanne and her grandfathers were there to hug her tight.

Lisa is survived by her husband, Peter Johnson, who she knew she was blessed to call her own, twin sons, Ian Michael and Luke David (age 12), and daughter Julia Dianne (age 7), three children who grew up hearing their mother read to them every single day and who brought her endless joy. She is also survived by her brother, David, who she loved with her whole heart, and her parents, Dianne and Mark Pinney, who will miss her forever.