Elisa Johnston is a writer, coach and speaker. She author of Justice-Minded Kids and The Life Mapping Workbook.
Elisa began blogging back when it was the cool new thing. She established one of her blogs to help everyday people to engage with social issues, and then later made Average Advocate into a business in 2017. Through her experience founding nonprofits and in activism, she guides changemakers to do good better with confidence and without burning out in their message, purpose, and practice. She loves the diversity of the people she works with, whether she is consulting a ministry on their justice initiative, encouraging a leader prioritize filling their cup through life coaching, or guiding a nonprofit with their branding.
After surviving extensive medical and relationship trauma over the last five years, she also began Authentically Elisa, where she writes about paradigms, changing faith, and experiences with mental health, trauma, and chronic illness to connect with those hungry for real talk about hard things. In addition, she writes a column for Patheos, an online religion magazine, and has placed in publications like U.S. Catholic, Scary Mommy, and the HuffPost.
As a teenager, Elisa believed she was called to do something big–she wanted to change the world! She told God she would do anything for him except move to the suburbs of the United States and be a homemaker. Expecting great things, she worked as a missionary and humanitarian internationally as a young adult, but only a few years later found herself cloistered by white picket fences in Washington D.C’s metro area of Northern Virginia. She had two children while finishing her Bachelors degree with a focus on cultural anthropology and global studies. Struggling with depression and a righteous anger towards the privileged Americans around her, she had a breakthrough when she realized she could make a greater impact by equipping others. Elisa changed gears, convicted of not loving the people nearby, and made engaging in her community her new focus.
Through the next season she worked on staff at a church as well as helped establish multiple community organizations and coalitions. She was the volunteer coordinator for a needs network, often working with new immigrants, then founding weekend backpack programs for hungry kids that eventually extended country-wide. Elisa was part of establishing an international missions directive for a large church, as well as developing a plan for Northern Virginia churches to effectively engage in the anti-trafficking movement. Eventually she took on the role of executive director to prepare this organization to become a nonprofit. She also founded two communications teams, a woman’s ministry, and underwent training to start missional community discipleship movements.
Around this time–now with three kids and a not particularly healthy marriage–Elisa realized she had burnt out doing too much good, and not always doing it well. A whirlwind move across the states was the sign she needed to take a year-long sabbatical. Re-calibrating to do life with God instead of for God, she began seeing areas how she needed to change, including co-dependent characteristics and a lack of emotional regulation. Encountering life-coaching, she delved in deep to restart differently.
She also began homeschooling her kids, learning to walk with them in their struggles while discovering her passion for experimental learning. She worked as a teacher in a local co-op, before eventually deciding to send her kids back into the school system. Later, Elisa was also certified as a substitute teacher for one of the local school districts. One of her greatest joys is going on “Kindness Quest” road trips with her kids, challenging their vacations to be less-self-absorbed by doing random acts of kindness as they travel through the states. Elisa has yet to visit North Dakota and Alaska, but she is confident they’ll make it happen!
For over a decade, Elisa worked to take an anti-trafficking challenge she created–the Little Black Dress Project–and worked with a team to establish it as a nonprofit, Blackout Trafficking. Blackout Trafficking had a two-fold mission of partner with global anti-trafficking initiatives, helping them fundraise and grow, while also leading a 31-day awareness campaign that would help create awareness and be an entry-point for everyday people who cared but needed a starting point. This nonprofit officially began closing its doors in 2022, although the campaign is still available for use.
For five years, Elisa also worked intimately within her church as a part-time volunteer leader, first to improve admin/communication functioning, then to begin a justice incentive, and most notably working with another team to revamp the women’s ministry to empower women to engage as disciple-makers.
Passionate about helping Christian women leaders find their way, she also leads annual Mentorship Circles for small groups of woman, giving them tools, coaching, and guidance in their own areas of influence. For years, her family has had people live with them off-and-on, especially for discipleship and recovery purposes. After learning the hard way more than once, she wrote a resource, The Household Agreement ,to help other families who also want to share their space, but with boundaries. This also includes guidance on how to create support teams and integrate expectations for those walking alongside someone in need of support.
In 2019, Elisa decided to refocus on writing. In 2021-2022 she was certified as a writers coach and loves connecting with other creatives to encourage them and guide them. She is especially interested in coming along other writers as they establish their messaging as well as in helping them do an effective yet sustainable book launch that doesn’t burn them out. Besides recently self-publishing two books she wrote over the last decade, she has other non-fiction book proposals, and writes poetry and fiction for fun.
Elisa enjoys having people in her ever-widening community over for dinner in her messy home. She collects mugs and has a goal to visit every local coffee-shop @SDcoffeetour. When she is well enough, she enjoys hiking and paddle-boarding, and when she can’t, she flies through murder mysteries, fantasy novels, and historical fiction on audiobook. Her favorite thing to do is to explore between the mountains in the sea in her home of San Diego with her four kids, husband, and introverted friends.
