Background & Experience
Joshua Johnson
Apprentice to Jesus. Certified Plumline Guide. Proud ADHDer. Wanna-be coffee snob. Adventure Guide. Recovering Self-Will Addict. Interior-growth Experience Facilitator. Heart & Soul Guide.
When I was 15, my pastor led a rite of passage trip—three days in the mountains with just the clothes on our backs and a few essentials.He invited us to explore what God says is true about who we are and how to live from that truth.
That experience planted something in me about challenge, reflection, and becoming. I didn’t have language for it then, but it showed me the power of being invited into something deeper.
Fifteen years later, I’ve come full circle—now helping others do the same, in even deeper ways.
Not long after, I started working at Rock-N-Water (RNW), an outdoor ministry that runs whitewater rafting, canyoneering, climbing, and backpacking trips.
After completing 7 full seasons with RNW, I’ve been connected to that community & ministry since 2013.
It’s where I really started to grow—discovering not just how to guide people through challenge in the outdoors, but helping become aware of the healing, change, life, and truth God was inviting them into and working within them.
Over time, I realized I was less drawn to giving people big “mountaintop” moments and more to walking with them in the slow, steady work of becoming. Helping people slow down, name what’s happening beneath the surface, and invite God into it—that’s what I kept coming back to.
And it turned out, that’s what people needed most.
The mountaintop feeling wore off in a week or a month, but the deep inward relief they stepped into—that remained. And it wasn’t just for them; it became something they could offer others, too.
I spent a season at Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. It was both beautiful and disorienting.
I had real experiences with God that shaped my life, and I also faced deep disillusionment that eventually became part of my formation.
That tension grew something more grounded in me.
After that, I found my way into the world of spiritual formation—the kind of lived discipleship that connects belief to behavior, emotion to embodiment.
It gave me language for what I already sensed was true: that real formation is about integration and becoming whole.
As Jesus said, it’s what comes out from within a person that defiles them. So let’s heal what’s inside.
I had started therapy in my mid-twenties (still with the same counselor, btw), and that—along with 2 years of deep cohort experiences and one-on-one coaching with Dr. Jake Smith Jr. through his organization Plumline—opened up space for real healing.
I’ve been getting unstuck, more deeply connected, and internally rested, with tools that actually help me stay that way.
And it’s exactly what I want to help others step into for themselves.
Eventually, I did a year-long apprenticeship with Dr. Jake Smith Jr. and became a Certified Plumline Guide.
I saw how much it aligned with what I was already doing—and wanted to deepen that with research-backed tools and processes that could help me guide others even more effectively into the depths I’d experienced myself.
In summary…
over the last 12 years I’ve facilitated spiritual and relational growth around campfires, in river canyons, living rooms, Zoom rooms—
mentoring individuals and teaching spiritual, emotional, and relational tools to Christian communities.
I’m still finding the right title for what I do. But whether I’m leading a cohort, sitting one-on-one with someone, or guiding an outdoor adventure, it all centers around this: helping people enter their stories in a way that brings healing and clarity—cultivating a rich interior life and deeper communion with God, themselves, and others.