Robert Johnson had heard the words spoken so vividly that he looked up because he thought somebody was in the room.

He has heard smaller voices before. They have told him to do something, or go to someone’s house because they were in trouble – but nothing as distinct as the time he was called to be bishop for the Newport Ward of more than 350 people.

At the time, he prayed that it wouldn’t happen. He knew the task would be hard.

But looking back five years later, Johnson understands that his calling from God to be bishop has prepared him for his next calling.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints recently announced Johnson’s appointment to serve as president of the Bellevue Washington South Stake.

The stake is comprised of 10 congregations and includes five cities, stretching east from Mercer Island to North Bend, and north from Renton to Snohomish. He will serve about a 10-year term and is responsible for the 3,200 stake members.

“It’s not something that I chose to do,” said the 56-year-old Bellevue resident.

Two months before his appointment, Johnson had suddenly became depressed and knew he would be released as bishop. Employees at his Seattle-based company, Media Partners Corporation, in which he is CEO, also noticed that something was wrong with him.

“This notion of inspiration really happens,” he explained. “It’s a revelation where you’re spoken to by the spirit and it gives you direction … we call it a still, small voice. But it can also be a feeling.”

When former stake president Alan Dance was called to be a mission president in Alaska, a church official from Salt Lake City came to Bellevue to find a replacement. He interviewed 40 men, including Johnson, and through fasting and prayer, sought to know who should be president.

The week before he was chosen, Johnson knew he was the one and was saddened to leave the Newport Ward. He gets choked up when he talks about the opportunities he has had to guide people through the hard times in their lives and the good times.

“Those were really special times and I knew in this calling that it was more administrative,” he said of the presidency, but “while it wasn’t what I wanted to do, I wasn’t going to be presumptuous enough to pray against it.”

Though he wouldn’t have put himself first on the list to be president, he knows the Lord chose him because he’ll be able to take care of whatever the stake will go through in the next 10 years. It isn’t “Bob’s will,” he says, “it’s God’s will” and that’s all he wants to do.

So far, he is enjoying the job a ton and considers it God’s gift. As president, he can’t physically be there for 3,200 people, but he seeks to teach and inspire the bishops and other higher authorities within his stake who do have direct contact with members.

He also was asked to create a vision for the stake. He has found that God wants him to get stake members back to the basics and grow their faith. The way to do this is through daily worship practices, he said.

“It’s not what we do on Sunday, that’s important, but that’s like the icing on the cake,” Johnson said. “It’s about taking a look at your life to see if you’re really searching and pondering the scriptures.”

He also urges stake members to figure out what they will need to give up to find the time to make their spirituality a priority.

As far as balancing his own life, Johnson said his company has given him a lot of latitude to be able to focus on his presidency. However, he does struggle with finding time to spend with wife, Vicki, his four grown children and four grandchildren. Part of that struggle is just being new and trying to figure out the many facets of running the stake, and he hopes things will settle down within the next couple months, he said.

Johnson converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when he was 17. He had just gotten a new car and, having grown up in a Protestant home, he feared if he was killed in a car crash that he wouldn’t go to heaven because he wasn’t baptized.

His best friend invited him to go to church with him and he recalls an older gentleman at the door who greeted him. Six months later he was baptized.

Over the last decade or so, his spirituality has “really sunk in in a major way,” Johnson said. “We read the scriptures about these marvelous things that happen to people, when the spirits spoke to them to do things and have found those things are available to us today and they happened to me of all people.”