President Paul V. Johnson

From his career as a seminary teacher to the nine years he spent as Church commissioner of education, incoming Sunday School General President Paul V. Johnson has had plenty of gospel-teaching experience. But the most important quality he brings to his new calling, he says, is “my love for my Heavenly Father and the Savior and my love for young people and other people too.”

President Johnson was born on June 24, 1954, in Gainesville, Florida, USA, to Vere Johnson and Winifred Amacher. Before he was a year old, his parents moved to Logan, Utah, USA, where they raised him and his seven siblings.

He got to know his future wife, Jill Washburn, when he was recruited to play high school football in Monticello, Utah, by a former coach who had moved there from Logan. Paul and Jill had met earlier, but now they became friends while attending the same ward and seminary class. Sister Johnson wrote to him while he served a full-time mission in Norway.

They were married on August 18, 1976, in the Logan Utah Temple. They have 9 children and 43 grandchildren.

The Johnsons have faced their share of trials together, from losing a daughter to cancer to struggling through their own health challenges. But President Johnson said those experiences have shaped his perspective of God’s plan. “I think it makes me, as a teacher, yearn to help young people grasp on to the Savior and on to their Heavenly Father,” he said.

President Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1977 and a master’s degree in counseling and guidance in 1978, both from Brigham Young University. He earned a doctor of education degree from Utah State University in 1989.

President Johnson was sustained as a General Authority Seventy in April 2005 and has been serving as a member of the Presidency of the Seventy since August 1, 2021. He has served as a counselor in the Europe Area Presidency, counselor in the Chile Area Presidency, counselor in a stake presidency, and bishop.

He will be given emeritus status, effective August 1, 2024, when he begins his new calling.