Help For Hurting Pastors
How did we end up starting a ministry to help hurting pastors and their spouses? Take a couple of minutes and read our story to learn how God has prepared us for this ministry.
Here's Our Story
Dan was not raised in a Bible believing home, but became a Christ follower as a teenager through his older brother’s influence. Deniece was actually raised in a pastor’s home and became a Christ follower at a young age. They met at college, married after Dan’s sophomore year, and a year later were beginning to serve in a local church in Daytona Beach, Florida. They had no idea of the adventures that lie ahead!
Dan served as an assistant pastor for about five years and then as lead pastor for 30 years. They saw the church go from a small church that had dwindled to about 200 people to a church that averaged 1200 with highs of over 1800 people on Sundays.
It began when Dan and Deniece came to Daytona as staff members during their college days in a church of about 400 people. Then they came on full time when they were fresh out of college at about 21 years old. Deniece was pregnant with their first son and Dan served on a staff with multiple other staff members and did a variety of different ministries for about 5 years. While they enjoyed serving immensely, the challenges were so tough that they wanted to leave and tried to leave several different times. No doors opened, so they remained in Daytona.
In 1994 they were about to embark on the ride of their lives. The lead pastor resigned 2 weeks after the church had built a new 700 seat auditorium and had just gone 3.5 million dollars in debt (over 7 million in today’s dollars).
On March 6, 1994 the church elected Dan to become the next lead pastor. He was 27 years old with no lead pastor experience whatsoever. The payments on the mortgage alone were over $21,000 a month. The church immediately split with over 100 walking out and going down the street to start a new church. Dan and Deniece were left with about 200 hurting people, no money in the bank, and a mountain of debt.
Dan and Deniece didn’t know if they would even last a year. They ended up staying another 30 years! The church retired all the debt in a little over 8 years. When Dan resigned as lead pastor in 2022 the church had a total of five buildings on a 12 acre property in the heart of Daytona Beach. The church was debt free with 2 million dollars in the bank to be used towards their next 3 year vision that had been laid out in early 2022.
Thousands of people came to know Jesus as their Savior, multitudes were discipled in their faith, and many were sent out all over the world to spread the good news of Jesus.
But guess what? Here is reality – There were a lot of tears, pain, hurts, disappointments, fears, failures, mistakes, people problems, bad decisions, family conflict, health issues, miscarriages, betrayals, mental and physical exhaustion, depression, church members leaving, staff members getting angry, personal struggles, and a constant feeling of a total inadequacy to do what we were doing!
That is exactly why we are here! We resigned the lead pastor position at our church in late 2022 in order to embark on a ministry of helping hurting pastors. There isn’t much we haven’t seen in 35 years of ministry in the local church. We desire to use that experience to help pastors and their spouses.
We still reside in Daytona Beach, Florida. We live in the same house we raised all three of our sons in – Clint, Clayton, and Caleb. Two of our sons are married, and so we have two amazing daughter-in-laws and four beautiful grandchildren. We all live within five minutes of each other. Nothing (except Jesus) is more precious to us than our family.
If you want to know more about what our ministry offers, click here. We offer this ministry free of charge.