Members of Riverside Chapel Seventh-day Adventist Church do not want the state of Tennessee to execute Donnie Johnson.

Several who sit in the pews and preach in the pulpit are urging Gov. Bill Lee to grant Johnson clemency before his May 16 execution date and allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

The church has hosted a news conference, the pastor has met with Lee's legal team, members have joined a letter-writing campaign and on Saturday they are organizing a prayer march all in the hopes of swaying the governor to spare Johnson's life.

Johnson, who has spent the last 33 years on Tennessee's death row for the 1984 murder of his wife, is one of their own.

Not only is he a Seventh-day Adventist, but about a decade ago the congregation decided to ordain Johnson as an elder of their church because of the ministry work he was doing behind bars.

"He has been leading and serving in such a way that what he's doing in there is the exact kind of ministry that we would definitely ordain someone for out here," said Pastor Furman F. Fordham II, who leads Riverside Chapel in Nashville.

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Johnson, 68, guides Bible studies inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, started a radio program called "What the Bible Says" and supports his fellow inmates living on Unit 2, which is where men on Tennessee's death row are housed.

"I was accustomed to being at different churches where you’d have a prison ministry, but I had never seen one of the prisoners leading it," said Fordham, who met Johnson about a dozen years ago after he became senior pastor of the church.

"We were his assistants."

In 2008, Johnson became an ordained elder of Riverside Chapel — a church he has never stepped foot inside of — because the congregation believed he was using the special abilities that God had gifted him with to further the gospel.

The history of Riverside Chapel

Riverbend Maximum Security Institution is an 18-minute drive from Riverside Chapel, which is located just north of a bend in the Cumberland River that runs through the city.

The church started in 1945 to give the doctors, nurses and other hospital staff who worked at Riverside Sanitarium next door a nearby place to worship. The now defunct hospital was the first black Seventh-day Adventist medical facility.

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Today, the multi-generational church with a mostly black congregation draws about 400 people to its Saturday worship service. It has two church plants, including New Hope Seventh-day Adventist Church in Chapmansboro.

Like Adventist-run hospitals and schools, prison ministry is often associated with the denomination, and for decades it has been a part of Riverside Chapel's outreach, Fordham said.

"It's just coming from Jesus' words in Mathew chapter 25; he tells a parable where he says, 'I was in prison and you visited me,'" Fordham said. "We take it very seriously to minister to the incarcerated."

About a dozen people make up the church’s prison ministry team, Fordham said. They organize worship services at Riverbend, correspond regularly with inmates and mail Bible studies to those willing to receive them.

Prison ministry forges relationship between church and death row inmate

Members of Riverside Chapel met Johnson through their work. The late Jimmy Pitt, who led the ministry for years, helped forge the relationship.

"Don is one of those people that is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he will share that with any and everybody that gives him an opportunity," said Rosalyn Pitt, who was married to Jimmy Pitt for 43 years before he died in 2017.

"It was very easy for my husband and Don to make that connection."

Rosalyn Pitt, who helped start New Hope with her husband, is a mentor to Johnson. She visits him in prison and he calls her about every week. Pitt said Johnson does not want to die, but he is ready if his execution is carried out because of his deep faith in God and the afterlife.

But Pitt, who has changed her position on the death penalty after getting to know Johnson, does not think his work at Riverbend is finished.

"I used to be fairly set on if you did the crime, you pay the price," Pitt said. "I really would love for him to get clemency of some sort because there's always forgiveness."

Johnson's religious transformation behind bars

Johnson found religion in February 1985 in the Shelby County Jail, he said in written answers responding to questions from the USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee. He was raised Christian, but Johnson said he had no interest in it until he heard an inmate preach.

Five years later, two incarcerated Seventh-day Adventists introduced him to their Christian tradition.

"They introduced me to the scriptures in a way I could understand," Johnson said. "They opened up the Bible to me in ways I had never thought possible."

Johnson's transformation behind bars is central to his clemency petition as is his stepdaughter's forgiveness for killing her mother.

He killed his wife, Connie Johnson, in the office of the camping equipment center where he worked. He stuffed a large plastic bag in her mouth and suffocated her, according to court documents. With help from an inmate on work release, Donnie Johnson moved his wife's body and belongings into her van and left it at the Mall of Memphis.

Johnson no longer contests his guilt.

Fordham said he does not want to minimize what Johnson did. He thinks it was barbaric, but Fordham also thinks the methods of execution in Tennessee, lethal injection and the electric chair, are barbaric, too.

The Seventh-day Adventist denomination does not have an official position on the death penalty, but Fordham thinks Jesus' teachings are moving believers away from support for the death penalty.

Fordham believes there still needs to be consequences, which is why the church is not advocating that the governor release Johnson. But Fordham questions what would be gained by executing him.

"Transformation is real," Fordham said. "This is a new gentlemen. He just is. And I think that there should be room for that caveat to be considered and I think that is why in our state constitution the governor can press pause."

Thomas Lawrence, who met Johnson 15 years ago while volunteering at Riverbend, said the Johnson he knows today is not the same man that killed his wife more than 30 years ago, and his heart broke when he found out that Johnson's execution date had been set for May 16.

"It is like putting a candle out in a cave where there's no light," Johnson said. "Without that light, you go back to this dark, horrible place with no hope."

Jimmy Pitt introduced Lawrence to Johnson. Lawrence was attending Riverside at the time and did so for years, but now is a part of small, Seventh-day Adventist group called The Way that meets in a house.

During their first meeting, Johnson did something that amazed Lawrence. Johnson prayed for him.

"That just blew my mind," Lawrence said. "He was someone who was incarcerated, recognized that I needed God in my life to be able to be whatever God needed me to be for the men who were incarcerated."

Reach Holly Meyer at hmeyer@tennessean.com or 615-259-8241 and on Twitter @HollyAMeyer.