Pastors Ron & Marion Johnson Senior Team Leaders

Dr. Ron Johnson Jr. serves as the Senior Apostolic Team Leader of Living Stones Churches. Previously serving as Sr. Asocciate and Youth Pastor at the Crown Point campus, Dr. Johnson now oversees the pastoral teams at both the Living Stones Crown Point and Gary campuses, as well as the initial church planting activities in nearby Valparaiso and the Devon area of North Chicago, where 156 nationalities reside in a five-square-mile radius.

Pastor Dr., as he is affectionately called, is also the president of Living Stones College, where he serves on the faculty. The two-year college trains pastors, missionaries, and marketplace leaders.

A 1984 graduate of Taylor University, he served as student body president and was the recipient of the Taylor Student Leader of the Year Award.  Upon graduation, he attended Regent University, where he completed his Master of Arts in Counseling and was honored with Regent’s “Award of Excellence” as the outstanding graduate in the School of Education. In May of 2005, he earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from Regent University.

He is happily married to his college sweetheart, Marion, and they have eight children: Lauren, Ronnie, Joel, Katie, Jayson, Caroline, Alicia, and Jonathan.

To view Dr. Ron Johnson, Jr.'s blog, Transformnation, please visit http://reformingculture.com

Pastors Dick & Susie Bashta Crown Point Executive Pastors Directors, GlobalROAR

Pastor Dick joined the Living Stones staff as Associate Pastor and Team Leader of Missions & Evangelism in the spring of 2006. In January of 2009, he and his wife, Susie, accepted the position of Executive Pastors of Living Stones Church. Pastor Dick also oversees the larger mission ministry of GlobalROAR, which includes our sending organization, Living Stones Global Network (LSGN) and Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse (AAPC), which mobilizes churches worldwide to adopt the remaining 6600 Unreached People Groups for church planting.  He is the Academic Dean and part of the faculty of Living Stones College.

Pastor Susie helps with the planning and administration of short-term trips, as well as being part of the faculty and registrar for Living Stones College. Pastor Dick and Susie have been happily and strategically married for 32 years and have five children who are all involved in mission, music, and ministry.

In the late seventies, the Bashta’s initial mission experience was serving with Operation Mobilization’s ship, the Doulos, and leading an international outreach team to Muslims in southern Spain. They later moved to New Orleans, LA to direct the 700 Club Counseling Center for the Gulf Coast region of the US.

For 21 years, Pastors Dick and Susie served in pastoral ministry at Reserve Christian Fellowship, a radical church in Reserve, LA pastored by Bro. Rod Aguillard. Their church was also the base for the Gulf States Pastor’s Fellowship, a network of over 100 pastors in the Gulf States area.  While there, they helped birth and direct Global Strategy Mission Association (GSMA) – the mission arm of the Gulf States Pastor’s Fellowship. In the early 1990’s,their family lived in Russia, directing a church planting initiative of 25 churches in the largest cities east of the Volga River. These churches have now multiplied to an association of 75 churches, and the harvest field has become a harvest force, as the churches are sending their own missionaries to the nations! In the mid-90’s, the Bashta’s focus turned to China, where they placed families and led many short-term teams.

Sensing a life-time call to unreached peoples, in 1999,  Pastors Dick and Susie and their family moved to Colorado Springs, CO, where they began directing the ministry of Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse and worked closely with the AD2000 and Beyond mission movement. Later AAPC was re-located to the campus of the Bible League in Crete, IL.

The Bashta's have traveled extensively and ministered in almost 50 countries of the world. They have a passion to win the lost, make disciples, and see heaven planted in the dark and unreached areas of earth!

Pastor Jon & Charlene Plotner Senior Worship Pastor

Pastor Jon is a 1991 graduate of Ball State University where he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Education. He taught Business Education at a Northwest Indiana High School from 1991 to 1996 when he felt the Lord calling him to full-time ministry. In 1996 he joined the pastoral staff of Living Stones Church. He currently serves as Associate Pastor and Team Leader of Worship Arts & Media.

Pastor Jon’s involvement in the Living Stones worship team started when he began playing piano for Sunday services in 1994. In 1995, he began to lead worship on Sunday mornings as well as leading worship and training young worshipers in The Cause youth band.

His desire is to train and equip others to understand and experience worship as it exists around the throne in heaven. This is summarized by a personal quote that he often uses, “My continual prayer from John 4:23-24 is that when God scours the earth looking for worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, He will look down from heaven, see us as Living Stones, and say a joyous and energetic, ‘There they are!’”

Pastor Jon also directs our School of Worship Arts, where people of all ages are learning to worship God through vocal, dance, and instrumental instruction. “The favorite thing about what I do is watching many of our young people as they have matured and are now leading in various areas themselves. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing your anointing deposited in the lives of others.” 

Pastor Jon and Charlene, his wife of fourteen years, are happily married and have two daughters, Selah (10) and Samara (7), who they adopted in China.

To view Pastor Jon Plotner's blog, please visit http://pastorjon.com