"A Firm Place to Stand"

On Monday at City Mission’s weekly chapel service, Chief Operating Officer, Brian Johansson, paid tribute to the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center first by honoring the veterans in our residential program who have faithfully served to protect our nation and then by telling the story of his own personal encounters in New York City on that day.  

On September 11, 2001, Johansson was the Director of the Bowery Mission, the third oldest Christian rescue mission in the US, just 10 blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.  He was commuting to work that day, but the subways stopped running, all the bridges into the city shut down, and the traffic backed up for miles. Determined to help during the crisis, he found a place to park his car, and he walked over the 59th Street Bridge from Queens into the city while most NewYorkers were scrambling to get out.  It took him nearly 4 hours to walk to work through all the chaos in the aftermath of the attack.

When he finally made it to the Bowery that day, there were 50 people, covered in dirt, praying and crying inside the Mission’s historic chapel.  He and the staff at the Bowery Mission ministered to and prayed with the victims, survivors, and the loved ones of those who were lost.  

Johansson, a native New Yorker, grew up the son of a pastor in a blue-collar neighborhood, playing stickball in the street with his friends.  “We played stickball games where the manhole cover was first base,” he said, recalling those times in his life for the Mission’s residents and staff.  “The Twin Towers were part of my childhood,” he added.  “I saw them every day.”

Many of those friends he played stickball with grew up to be New York City policemen and fire fighters who have their own firsthand accounts of that day.  But Johansson’s story is a little different. He dreamed of becoming a New York City police officer, and after college, he even applied for entrance into the academy, but around that same time, he and his wife, Peggy, began to feel a calling to help the homeless.  Every Wednesday, they would pack up some food and drive around New York City ministering to the street homeless.  

“In 1992, I got a letter of acceptance into the police academy – something I had been dreaming about ever since I was a kid,” Johansson remembered. But that very same week, he also received a letter from the Bowery Mission asking him to be the Director of their Transitional Center, which offers transitional housing for men who have graduated the Mission’s residential recovery program.  

After much prayer and soul-searching, he decided to follow God’s calling to serve the homeless at the Bowery Mission.  By September of 2001, he had been promoted to the Director of the Bowery Mission, the position he held at the time of the attacks.  

In addition to his duties as the Director of the Mission, Johansson also volunteered as a New York state chaplain, a role he performed for 15 years. As a chaplain, he helped at both Ground Zero and the Park Avenue Armory.  At the Armory, he prayed with families who desperately waited for news of their missing loved ones as the search for victims continued.

Johansson recalled the despair and confusion of those days just after the attack. “Where there once was a straight and square building, there was now nothing but chaos and rubble.  When you were standing at Ground Zero, you couldn’t tell east from west or north from south or up from down.”  

But he also remembered a message of hope from Psalm 40 that helped bring peace to many grieving families in the midst of all that chaos and suffering. “I cried out to the Lord, and He heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the miry pit and set my feet on a rock.  He gave me a firm place to stand.”  

And he encouraged the staff and residents of City Mission with that same passage.  “We’ve all had little 9/11’s in our own lives,” he said.  “We’ve all had tragedies, challenges, difficulties – whether it’s losing a loved one or struggling with addiction.  We’ve all had something.  Our response in those situations must be to draw nearer to God.  It’s an opportunity for us to come to know Him more deeply. Don’t miss that opportunity.”

“You may be in the midst of it right now,” he added.  “You can’t tell left from right or up from down.  The glass is broken all around.  The beams are melting.  Your world is turned upside-down.  But if you just cry out to God.  He will hear your prayer.”

There are men, women, children, and veterans at City Mission right now who are hurting.  Find out what you can do to help them today at www.citymission.org.    

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