Roxboro Community School (RCS) alumni Khari Johnson believes in connections. As a youth pastor, he said, he enjoys building relationships with young people so that he can teach and guide them.
Khari said his days as a student at RCS gave him the opportunity to “connect with [his] teachers and build relationships.” While those teachers challenged him academically, he said, "they invested in me and took extra time out of their schedules to help me grow and learn.” Khari added, “Now that I am a teacher myself, it has encouraged me to extend that same care to other students and to my peers as well.”
He said he fondly recalls his senior English class reading The Hunger Games books and being treated to a private showing of the movie at Palace Pointe. “That was awesome,” he said. Another good memory is of him praying “over the entire senior class before we all did our senior speech assignment. Both [are] memories I cherish dearly,” he said.
After graduating RCS in 2012, Khari attended Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma. While there, he participated in two mission trips to Japan. “I still hold Japan very close to my heart,” he said recently. In 2016, he went on a mission trip to the Philippines. “It was truly life changing to share Jesus in those countries,” he said.
Now living in Gonzales, Texas with his wife, Christy and serving as youth pastor at a church there, Khari said he loves “having the opportunity to invest in young people and show them the love of God.”
The former Bulldogs basketball player and RCS student council member offered advice for those currently in high school. It “can be a time of hardship, challenges and tough times,” he said, “but I want to encourage you to give it your best. Participate in different extracurricular activities, learn what you enjoy doing and, most of all, love everyone around you well. Don’t allow other people to discourage you or dissuade you from being the person God has created you to be. You’re invaluable and you’re loved. And you are doing so much better than you think you are. Grace and peace.”