Pastors: The Remarkable Shepherds Behind A.R. Bernard, Corey Brooks, Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie and Bianca Juarez Olthoff

Aaron Burke

Founder & Lead Pastor, Radiant Church — Tampa, FL

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram · Facebook

Aaron Burke funded a church the way an entrepreneur funds a startup — with his own business. Before Radiant Church existed, Burke spent six years as a youth pastor in Pensacola, Florida, and on the side he bought a thrift store with money he had made buying and selling used cars.

When he and his wife, Katie, felt called to plant a church in Tampa, he sold that thrift store to help pay for the launch, alongside support from the Association of Related Churches and the Church Multiplication Network. Radiant opened in September 2013 in a rented, rundown Britton 8 movie theater — sticky floors, green carpet, the works.

Three hundred forty-eight people came to the first service. Then attendance slipped below 200, and the young church had to fight for its life in a building its own pastor cheerfully called horrific. Burke's answer was presence: serve days across Tampa Bay, doors knocked on, fliers handed out, and a congregation that showed up for its city.

Burke holds a doctorate in ministry, and he preaches the grit he lived — pray hard, work hard, and do not quit when the room empties out.

"I’m a firm believer that you pray like it depends on God and you work like it depends on you,"

Radiant now gathers across 12 locations in the Tampa Bay area, with roughly 8,000 people attending weekly in recent reporting. Much of that growth came through mergers — Burke has brought five struggling congregations into Radiant, giving aging churches new life instead of letting their buildings be sold.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Radiant raised a $300,000 fund for Tampa families in financial need. The pastor who sold his store to rent a theater now spends his growth reviving other people's churches.

Wikipedia — “Radiant Church”
The Art of Leadership — “Better Together”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  A.R. Bernard  ·  Ashley Wooldridge

A.R. Bernard

Founder, CEO & Senior Pastor, Christian Cultural Center — New York, NY

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Alfonso R. Bernard was born in Panama, the son of an Afro-Panamanian mother and a Castilian Spaniard father who disowned him. In 1957, at four years old, he arrived in Brooklyn with his mother, who raised him on her own in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

To help her, the teenage Bernard pushed garment racks in the garment district for $2 an hour, then landed a clerk's job at Bankers Trust in his senior year of high school and worked his way up in banking. As a young man he spent time in the Black Muslim movement before becoming a born-again Christian in January 1975.

Four years later, he walked away from a ten-year banking career to answer a call he could not shake. With his wife, Karen, he started with a Bible study in the kitchen of their Brooklyn railroad apartment, then took the couple's savings and rented a small storefront in Greenpoint.

The congregation that began around that kitchen table became the Christian Cultural Center — today a church of more than 37,000 members on an 11.5-acre campus in Brooklyn, described as one of the largest churches in New York City.

Bernard still leads the church he founded, as its CEO as well as its senior pastor, and he has spent decades as a bridge between the pulpit and public life — advising civic leaders and teaching that faith should shape the culture around it, not hide from it. His books include Four Things Women Want from a Man.

The banker who once pushed garment racks for $2 an hour now runs an institution built to outlast him — and he built its foundations, deliberately, on timeless values rather than on his own presence.

Wikipedia — “A. R. Bernard”
The Art of Leadership — “A Voice in the City”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Wilfredo "Choco" De Jesús  ·  Aaron Burke

Ashley Wooldridge

Senior Pastor, Christ's Church of the Valley (CCV) — Phoenix, AZ

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram

Ashley Wooldridge did not plan on a pulpit. He grew up in the small Arizona towns of Wilcox and Sierra Vista, the son of a teacher and football coach, and headed to college at Hope International University expecting to teach. Ministry, by his own admission, was never on his radar.

He finished with a business degree, and Intel hired him out of college — his wife, Jaime, worked there too. Over an eight-year career at Intel, he rose in a leadership-intensive culture, and the company paid for his MBA. But five years in, he felt a call he could not file away: full-time ministry.

He studied theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and joined Christ's Church of the Valley in the Phoenix area, first as executive pastor. CCV itself had begun humbly in 1982, when founding pastor Don Wilson started with four families who quickly outgrew his house.

Wooldridge eventually succeeded Wilson as senior pastor — a former corporate manager now leading one of the largest churches in America, preaching Scripture with a CEO's instinct for healthy culture, clear direction and teams that are genuinely cared for.

"Ministry was never on my radar,"

Today CCV reaches more than 35,000 people in weekly attendance across 12 locations in Arizona, and Wooldridge's passion is making a church that big feel like a neighborhood. CCV's neighborhood groups put more than 6,000 members into weekly gatherings in their own subdivisions, serving the streets they actually live on.

He also teaches other pastors through platforms like Life.Church Open, arguing that local churches should be among the best-led organizations in the world. The Intel manager who changed careers midstream now leads like it.

Life.Church Open — “Ashley Wooldridge”
Hope International University — “A Winding Path to Church Leadership”
The Ascent Leader — “Ashley Wooldridge”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Aaron Burke  ·  Bianca Juarez Olthoff

Bianca Juarez Olthoff

Lead Pastor, The Father's House — Orange County, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Bianca Juarez Olthoff is an author who, at eleven years old, still could not read.

She tells that story herself, without flinching: the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and a Puerto Rican mother, raised in East Los Angeles, she prayed to learn to read — and the girl who could not get through a page grew up to write books for a living.

Her road ran through watching her mother battle cancer, a season Publishers Weekly described as one in which she struggled to hear God amid perfectionism and pain.

She became Chief Storyteller for the A21 Campaign, the anti-trafficking organization, and Creative Director for Propel Women — titles that tell you exactly what she does: she turns hard stories into hope for other people. Her debut book, Play With Fire, arrived in 2016, part memoir and part spiritual guide, and more books followed, including Grit Don't Quit in 2023.

With her husband, Matt, she went on to plant The Father's House in Orange County, a church she says they started with zero dollars, zero people and zero venue.

"Listen, we started the church with zero dollars, zero people and zero venue."

Olthoff now leads The Father's House alongside Matt and hosts the We're Going There podcast, preaching to a generation of women who feel disqualified by their pasts. Her message has not changed since the pantry years and the reading lessons: the fire that hurt you can refine you instead of destroying you.

The girl who prayed for the ability to read now spends her life putting words — in books, sermons and conversations — into the hands of people who think their story disqualifies them. By her own account, it qualifies them.

Publishers Weekly — “Play with Fire”
Charisma — “Bianca Juarez Olthoff: The Jesus Movement Was Just a ‘Tidbit’ of the Coming Revival”
Live Original — “Bianca Olthoff”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Ashley Wooldridge  ·  Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie

Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie

President & General Secretary, National Council of Churches — Baltimore, MD

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Vashti Murphy McKenzie's road to the bishop's office did not run in a straight line.

Born in Baltimore in 1947 into the family that founded the Afro-American newspaper, she fell in love, dropped out of college in the mid-1960s to marry basketball player Stan McKenzie, and built a career in media — family newspaper columnist, gospel radio host and program director, television segment presenter.

Then, in her late thirties, as a mother of three, she went back to school, earning her Master of Divinity from Howard University in 1985.

In 1990 she became the first woman pastor of Baltimore's historic Payne Memorial AME Church, and she grew it from about 300 members to more than 1,700, adding ministries that reached into the surrounding neighborhood — a Head Start program, senior day care and help for families moving from welfare to work.

In 2000 she was elected and consecrated the 117th bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church — the first woman elected to episcopal office in the denomination's more than 200-year history. Five years later she became the first woman president of its Council of Bishops.

"You have to prove that you have a right to be there."

McKenzie went on to serve as presiding prelate in Southern Africa, in Tennessee and Kentucky, and in Texas, where she chaired the board of Paul Quinn College.

She founded Kerygma, LLC to tell stories she calls too important not to be told — its first documentary, Survivor Stories, aired on TV One — and she is the author of six books. Now retired from active AME service, she leads the National Council of Churches as its President and General Secretary, representing 37 communions and some 100,000 churches.

The woman told her failure would close the door for others opened it instead.

The HistoryMakers — “Bishop Vashti McKenzie”
Howard University — “Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie”
On Being — “African American, Woman, Leader”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Bianca Juarez Olthoff  ·  Chad Veach

Chad Veach

Founder & Lead Pastor, Zoe Church — Los Angeles, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Chad Veach's ministry was permanently marked by a single day in a doctor's office. When his daughter Georgia was four months old, she was diagnosed with lissencephaly, a rare brain malformation known as “smooth brain.” At one point, Veach told The Christian Post, she suffered up to 50 seizures a day.

Doctors and friends warned the young pastor and his wife, Julia, how few marriages survive that kind of strain.

Veach answered it in public: he wrote Unreasonable Hope, a book about finding faith in the God who brings purpose to pain, and Georgia's story became a movement — friends, strangers and celebrities tattooed a letter “G” on their wrists in her honor, a symbol Veach says grew past Georgia herself into a sign of hope for anyone hurting.

He had moved his family from Seattle to Los Angeles in 2014 to plant Zoe Church, a young, media-native congregation in the heart of the city, and he built it while living the hardest sermon he would ever preach: joy as a weapon, community as a lifeline, and hope that does not depend on circumstances changing first.

"Hope is not hype, hope is Jesus."

Veach still leads Zoe Church in Los Angeles and hosts the Leadership Lean In podcast, and his books keep coming — five so far, including Faith Forward Future, Help! I Work With People and I Bet You Think This Book Is About You, a call to humility from a self-described recovering narcissist. He and Julia now have four children.

The pastor who was told his family might not survive Georgia's diagnosis now teaches thousands of young Angelenos the lesson her life taught him: the struggle is real, and so is the hope.

The Christian Post — “Pastor Chad Veach Offers ‘Unreasonable Hope’ in the Midst of His Toughest Battle (Interview)”
Ex Libris — “I Bet You Think This Book Is About You by Chad Veach”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie  ·  Ché Ahn

Ché Ahn

Founder and Senior Pastor, Harvest Rock Church — Pasadena, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Ché Ahn was born in post-war South Korea, and his family’s start in America was anything but easy. His father, a Southern Baptist minister, was allowed in first; Ahn, his mother and his brother followed two years later, in 1958.

The family faced financial struggles and language barriers, and the pressure to perform at school pushed the teenage Ahn into rebellion and substance abuse. Then, at seventeen, a spiritual encounter at a rock concert turned him around — the bitterness he carried toward his father lifted, and he recommitted his life to Christ.

He went on to earn a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry from Fuller Theological Seminary. In 1994, Ahn and his wife, Sue, founded Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, starting as a small, multi-ethnic congregation.

Two years later he established Harvest International Ministry, an apostolic network that began with fourteen churches and now connects over 25,000 churches and ministries across more than 60 countries. The immigrant kid who arrived with almost nothing built one of the largest church networks in the world.

"Though my family arrived with little money and limited English, they carried a deep faith that fueled their pursuit of the American dream,"

Ahn still calls himself a revivalist. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Harvest Rock challenged California’s worship restrictions in court, a fight that reached the Supreme Court and ended in a settlement in which the state paid $1.35 million in legal fees and agreed to treat houses of worship equally in future emergencies.

In 2025 he announced a run for governor of California, saying he wants revival and reformation for the state that took his family in. The network he founded keeps equipping pastors and churches around the world.

The Christian Post — “Pastor Ché Ahn looks to bring 'revival' to California”
Wikipedia — “Ché Ahn”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Chad Veach  ·  Corey Brooks

Corey Brooks

Founder and Senior Pastor, New Beginnings Church of Chicago; CEO, Project H.O.O.D. — Chicago, IL

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X

Pastor Corey Brooks planted New Beginnings Church of Chicago in November 2000 with 250 members on the city’s South Side. The church has grown to more than 2,000 members — but Brooks is best known for what he did outside its walls.

Sick of the gun violence taking young lives around him, he climbed onto the roof of a motel across from a funeral parlor in the winter of 2011 and stayed there for 94 days, refusing to come down until the money was raised to buy the motel and tear it down.

Out of that stand, in 2012, came Project H.O.O.D. — Helping Others Obtain Destiny. A decade later he went back up.

His second rooftop vigil lasted 343 days, and his Fox News “Rooftop Revelations” series helped the campaign draw more than 20,000 new donors; Cornerstone University reports the effort raised over $28.5 million toward a Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center for the neighborhood. Most pastors preach about faith that moves mountains.

Brooks slept on a roof, twice, until his block got one.

That center — a 90,000-square-foot hub on South King Drive — broke ground in 2022 and was 84 percent funded by 2025, according to Project H.O.O.D. The organization works across violence prevention, workforce development, health and wellness, youth programming and re-entry services.

In 2025 Brooks set out from Times Square to walk across America for the mission; a foot injury and surgery forced a pause, and the effort became Walk With Us, a nationwide movement Project H.O.O.D. says has raised $4.3 million or more to date.

Cornerstone University — “Rev. Corey Brooks Named Commencement Speaker”
Project H.O.O.D. — “About”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Ché Ahn  ·  Corletta Vaughn

Corletta Vaughn

Senior Pastor, Holy Ghost Cathedral; Presiding Bishop, Go Tell It Evangelistic Ministry Worldwide — Detroit, MI

Official links: Website · Facebook · X

Corletta Vaughn was born to Christian parents in Detroit — her father, the Rev. Henry Lewis, pastored the church where she was ordained in 1981. But the Baptist world she grew up in had strict rules about women in the pulpit, and she became a preacher against them anyway.

Oxygen, which featured her on Preachers of Detroit, says she “shattered the stained glass ceiling of the church world.” On November 5, 1995, she was consecrated to the office of bishop in Nigeria by Archbishop Benson Idahosa, and she has been described as Detroit’s first African-American female bishop.

In 1999 she was elevated to Presiding Bishop of the Go Tell It Evangelistic Ministry Worldwide network. The Ecumenical Theological Seminary records that she has served as senior pastor of Detroit’s Holy Ghost Cathedral for 36 years, and Oxygen reports her network provides oversight to 70 churches nationally and more than 1,300 ministries globally.

She answered the call in 1974, and she has been opening doors for women in ministry ever since.

Vaughn’s pulpit extends well past her church. In 2018 she was elected a trustee of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, where she launched the “Expect Respect” anti-bullying campaign, helped secure 12,000 coats for people experiencing homelessness, and pushed faith communities to volunteer in schools — her slogan: “A cold child cannot learn.”

She is also the author of Teach Your Daughters to Fly, a book of guidance for fathers and single mothers raising girls. After more than four decades, she is still mentoring the next generation of women leaders.

Oxygen — “Bishop Corletta Vaughn”
Ecumenical Theological Seminary — “Corletta Vaughn”
Go Tell It Evangelistic Ministry Worldwide — “Bishop Corletta J. Vaughn”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Corey Brooks  ·  Craig Oliver

Craig Oliver

Senior Pastor (Bishop), Elizabeth Baptist Church — Atlanta, GA

Official links: Website · Instagram

Elizabeth Baptist Church was born in 1928, when six members of Atlanta’s Mount Vernon Baptist Church stepped out in faith. By the time its fifth pastor, James E. Hightower Sr., resigned in 1994 after thirty-five years, Elizabeth was already one of Atlanta’s leading churches, with more than 2,500 members.

A year later, the church turned to its own youth minister — Craig L. Oliver, from St. Petersburg, Florida — to become its sixth pastor. It was a remarkable vote of confidence in a young man, and he has spent three decades repaying it.

Under Oliver, the church moved in November 1996 to its current main campus at 4245 Cascade Road, acquiring an additional 80 acres along the way. The church’s official history records almost 13,000 men, women and children taught across fourteen weekly services, more than fifty ministries serving the whole person, and a learning center that has touched almost 2,000 families.

A congregation that started with six people in a storefront now sends missionaries around the world.

Today Elizabeth Baptist is one church across four campuses — Atlanta, Smyrna, Douglasville and Marietta/Austell — plus online, and Oliver’s preaching reaches viewers through weekly television and internet broadcasts. Through EBC Cares, the church’s outreach arm, members run scholarships, urban farming and free tax preparation, while the Taste of Grace food truck has served more than 4,000 people.

Globally, the church has sent out more than 40 active missionaries and served communities in Ghana, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Romania and South Africa.

Elizabeth Baptist Church — “History”
Elizabeth Baptist Church — “Home”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Corletta Vaughn  ·  Cynthia Hale

Cynthia Hale

Founder and Senior Pastor, Ray of Hope Christian Church — Decatur, GA

Official links: Website

Cynthia Hale felt the call to preach as a teenager, in an era when women were openly discouraged from becoming pastors. At Hollins College she had never seen a woman do what she believed God was asking of her, and she dreamed instead of becoming an opera singer.

Even her own father doubted the call would last — he later admitted, “She proved me very wrong.” She earned a Master of Divinity from Duke University, spent seven years as a chaplain with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and in 1986 started Ray of Hope Christian Church with a small Bible study in her living room.

Duke’s Faith & Leadership profile reported what that Bible study became: a 5,100-member megachurch in Decatur with a $4.5 million budget — an achievement it called virtually unheard of among African-American women pastors. When members of The Ray are asked whether a woman can preach the word, Hale says their answer is short and sweet: “She does it every Sunday.”

"Some people are just negative. They’ll try to shut your dreams down. I’ve always believed that I, along with other people, could change the world for Christ."

Hale has spent her success clearing the path for others. In 2004 she founded ELAH Pastoral Ministries to mentor pastors and church leaders, and in 2005 she convened her first Women in Ministry Conference to develop, coach and mentor Christian women in ministry.

President Barack Obama appointed her to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships in 2009, and Ebony named her to its Power 100. In 2023 she received Duke University’s Distinguished Alumni Award — and she is leaving a gift to Duke Divinity School in her will so future clergy have an easier road than she did.

Duke Faith & Leadership — “Ray of Hope for Black Women in Ministry from a Georgia Church”
Hollins University — “Hollins Alumna and One of America’s Most Dynamic Pastors to Speak at 173rd Commencement”
Duke Divinity School — “Paying It Forward by Clearing a Path”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Craig Oliver  ·  Danilo Montero

Danilo Montero

Pastor, Iglesia Lakewood (Lakewood Church) — Houston, TX

Official links: Website · Facebook · X

Danilo Montero arrived at Casa Oasis in San José, Costa Rica, as a teenager, in the middle of a family crisis. The church became, in his words, a true home — a place where his family learned to be a family again — and its pastor, Raúl Vargas, became a father figure to him.

Drawn to music and worship from a young age, Montero formed a band and began leading others into worship; he began his ministry in Costa Rica in 1983.

The songs carried him around the world: more than 20 albums, Billboard Latin, Arpa and Latin GRAMMY awards — including the Latin GRAMMY for Best Christian Album for La Carta Perfecta, recorded live at Lakewood Church. Today he pastors Iglesia Lakewood, Lakewood’s Spanish-speaking congregation in Houston, where his messages are broadcast to millions weekly.

He has also spoken openly, on the Resolution Podcast, about the pain he carried growing up, the secret sin he hid in ministry, and his road to transparency, freedom and wholeness.

"No matter where you are in life, there is always a miracle of God in you,"

Montero is still making music with Lakewood Music Español, including the album Habita, and still carrying Costa Rica with him: in February 2025 he returned home to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Casa Oasis, the church that raised him. He is the author of El Abrazo del Padre (The Father’s Embrace) and Generación de Adoradores (Generation of Worshippers).

The teenager who found a family in a small San José church now pastors a congregation whose messages reach millions every week.

Resolution Podcast via GetPodcast — “S02E09: Danilo Montero - From Secret Brokenness To Wholeness”
The Gospel Music Association — “Artist, Pastor Danilo Montero Celebrates 3 Decades of Ministry with ‘Mi Viaje’ (My Journey)”
The Christian Post — “Lakewood's Hispanic church pastor returns to Costa Rica”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Cynthia Hale  ·  Darrell Hines

Darrell Hines

Bishop, Founder & Senior Pastor, Christian Faith Fellowship Church — Milwaukee, WI

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Darrell Hines does not just preach about miracles — by his own account, he is one. In 1981 he was struck by lightning, and, as he told TMJ4, his heart stopped beating for 45 minutes. He survived, and he has said he knew from that moment that he was destined for ministry.

In 1989, Hines and his wife Pamela founded Christian Faith Fellowship Church in Milwaukee. What began in a rented 250-seat sanctuary on the city's south side grew into the church's own 2,000-seat sanctuary in northwest Milwaukee, and TMJ4 reported a congregation of more than 4,000.

Here is the part he laughs about himself: Hines says he did poorly in school, yet the church he leads oversees two schools — Darrell Lynn Hines Academy and Destiny High School — and a medical clinic on its grounds.

The boy who struggled in the classroom built classrooms for other people's children, and the man who came back from the edge of death has spent his life telling a city there is hope on the other side of its hardest moments. It is ministry aimed at the total person, and it began with one man's second chance.

"I got struck by lightening in 1981 my heart stopped beating for 45 minutes. When I experienced that miracle I just felt I was destined for ministry, destined to preach the gospel!"

The ministry is still a family affair: Pamela co-pastors the church, and their sons Brandon and DJ minister there too. Through the church's CORE plan — Community, Outreach, Resource and Education — the Hineses work to uplift families and minister to the whole person, mind, body and soul.

Hines also serves on the General Board of the Church of God in Christ. His stated goal is simple: touch as many people as he can, and make sure the work outlives him.

TMJ4 — “Bishop finds calling after near death experience”
Christian Faith Fellowship Church — “Who Are We”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Danilo Montero  ·  Dave Gibbons

Dave Gibbons

Founder & Lead Pastor, Newsong Church — Santa Ana, CA

Official links: Website · Instagram

Dave Gibbons grew up between cultures — the son of a Korean immigrant mother, raised in a strict fundamentalist world where everything was black and white. Then his family broke.

His father, a top leader in the church, had an affair, and his parents divorced; OC Weekly reported that the church did not know how to adjust to his mother as a divorced Asian woman, so she simply did not fit. Then came the worst blow: his mother was killed by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run.

At her funeral, sitting in the front row looking at her casket, Gibbons told Outreach Magazine he felt God redirect his whole life — away from making a lot of money, and toward making a difference in the lives of marginalized people, people like his mom. He gave his life to ministry that day.

In 1994 he started Newsong in Irvine with seven people in his living room, building a church deliberately for misfits and outsiders. Publishers Weekly describes it as a haven for those who felt like outsiders from Christianity.

Newsong was named one of the nation's 100 fastest-growing churches by Outreach Magazine, and it planted locations in Mexico City, Bangkok, London and India.

"What if we had a church for people like my mom?"

Gibbons is still lead pastor of Newsong, now in Santa Ana, and founder of X, a global network of leaders, after earlier building the Xealots movement for next-generation leaders.

He works as an advisor and speaker well beyond the church, and in 2024 he told his own story in the memoir The Shape of My Eyes: A Memoir of Race, Faith, and Finding Myself. His conviction has not changed since that funeral: focus on the fringes, not the masses, and love the outsider first.

Outreach Magazine — “Dave Gibbons: Newsong Church, Irvine, Calif.”
OC Weekly — “Dave Gibbons Is a Church Misfit”
Publishers Weekly — “The Shape of My Eyes: A Memoir of Race, Faith, and Finding Myself”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Darrell Hines  ·  DawnCheré Wilkerson

DawnCheré Wilkerson

Lead Pastor, VOUS Church — Miami, FL

Official links: Website · Instagram

DawnCheré Wilkerson is a Louisiana girl from Shreveport, the second of seven children and the daughter of a pastor and football coach. She married Rich Wilkerson Jr., moved to Miami as a newlywed, and together they founded VOUS Church, which has grown into a thriving, multi-location congregation.

But while she led a growing church and preached breakthrough to other people, she and Rich walked through eight years of infertility — privately wrestling, as she told RELEVANT, with the idea that she might never have a child, while watching other people receive the very miracle they were still praying for.

She did not hide from that pain, and she did not let it make her bitter. A lifelong journaler, she copied Scripture into her notebooks through those years, sometimes through tears, sometimes with no resolution in sight. She says God met her in the wait and healed her before the miracle ever came.

The miracle did come, in its own time: Wyatt in 2018, Wilde in 2019, Waylon in 2021 and Wolfgang in December 2024. The woman who wondered if she would ever hold one child now raises four — and she still preaches first to the people who are waiting.

"He met me in the wait. He healed me before the miracle ever came."

In 2025 Wilkerson published Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait, a message she says she carried in her heart for over a decade: waiting is not a season, it is life, and God does deep work in the in-between.

At VOUS, she and Rich have built a community where grief and miscarriage can be talked about openly and honestly. A speaker, singer and songwriter as well as a pastor, she now spends her voice on one promise for people in a long wait: do not isolate, and do not give up.

RELEVANT — “DawnCheré Wilkerson on Finding Purpose in the Waiting”
The Christian Post — “DawnCheré Wilkerson on faith, infertility and surrender”
RAPT Interviews — “DawnCheré Wilkerson”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Dave Gibbons  ·  Derwin L. Gray