Pastors: The Remarkable Shepherds Behind Greg Laurie, Francis Chan, Floyd H. Flake and Erwin McManus

Dino Rizzo

President, Association of Related Churches (ARC); Senior Leadership Team, Church of the Highlands — Birmingham, AL

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

Dino Rizzo's ministry began with almost nothing to show for it. In 1993, he and his wife, DeLynn, started Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with about a dozen people and a clear idea: build the church around serving the poor and the hurting, not around itself.

Over the next two decades as senior pastor, that small start grew to more than 10,000 people across eleven campuses, and the church was noted for its passion to reach out and serve. That serving instinct became a movement.

Rizzo founded Servolution, a wave of churches serving their local communities, and wrote Serve Your City about how to do it and why it matters. He also co-founded the Association of Related Churches, known as ARC, which walks alongside new pastors as they plant churches of their own.

A boy reached through church outreach in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, grew into a man whose whole career has been reaching back the same way. Business Wire and EIN Presswire both describe him as a 35-year ministry veteran — three and a half decades spent, in large part, helping other people start things.

"We don’t serve to be seen—we serve because people matter."

Today Rizzo serves as president of ARC, which has planted more than 1,100 churches worldwide, and sits on the senior leadership team at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama.

Through his UNSCRIPTED interview series he talks with pastors across the country, and each year Serve Day mobilizes thousands of churches — more than 2,800 signed up for 2025 — to spend a day meeting practical needs in their own neighborhoods.

His Serve Day 2025 message was released free to every participating church, a small sign of the philosophy behind it: give the tools away, and let local people do the serving.

EIN Presswire — “Pastor Dino Rizzo Releases Free Serve Day 2025 Message to Inspire Global Outreach”
Business Wire — “Pastor Dino Rizzo Discusses Leadership and Relationship Health With the Floyds on UNSCRIPTED”
Wikitia — “Pastor Dino Rizzo”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Derwin L. Gray  ·  Dr. Cindy Trimm

Derwin L. Gray

Founding and Lead Pastor, Transformation Church — Indian Land, SC

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Derwin Gray was born in San Antonio, Texas, to teenage parents and raised primarily by his grandmother, in poverty, not far from government housing projects. By his own telling, peace was nowhere in that childhood.

At thirteen, football became his way out — he has said football “was his god” — and it carried him to a scholarship at Brigham Young University, a state title behind him and a future ahead. Drafted by the Indianapolis Colts in 1993, he played five seasons there and one with the Carolina Panthers, and was voted a team captain.

Yet even NFL success could not settle him, and he could not forgive the father who had been absent from his life. A Colts teammate, linebacker Steve Grant, kept pointing him to faith, and in August 1997 Gray committed his life to Christ.

In 2001 he searched for his father, found him in prison, wrote him a letter saying he loved and forgave him — and they reconciled. The player who once chased peace on a field now preaches it.

The Christian Post also noted that Transformation Church was listed by Outreach Magazine as the second-fastest growing church in America by percentage in 2010, the year it launched.

"Peace was not a part of my life. As a matter of fact, it was a war zone. It was a living hell,"

In January 2010, Gray and his wife, Vicki, founded Transformation Church in Indian Land, South Carolina, just south of Charlotte — a multiethnic, multigenerational church built around the reconciliation he had lived himself.

He has written several books on race, faith and healing division, including Limitless Life and How to Heal Our Racial Divide, and Crosswalk named him one of its top 12 most influential pastors in 2024. His message stays simple: no past is too broken to be forgiven.

He speaks at conferences nationwide, carrying the same story — a father found, a letter written, a family put back together — to rooms full of people carrying labels of their own.

The Christian Post — “NFL Player Turned Pastor Derwin Gray Shares How He Found 'Authentic Peace'”
Wikipedia — “Derwin Gray (defensive back)”
FamilyLife Today — “The Playbook for Heroes”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  DawnCheré Wilkerson  ·  Dino Rizzo

Dr. Cindy Trimm

Founder and CEO, Trimm International / Cindy Trimm Ministries International — Atlanta, GA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Cindy Trimm grew up in Bermuda in abject poverty, one of seven children raised by a single mother after her father deserted the family.

Accounts of her childhood describe a home with no running water, used clothing, shoes with cardboard soles, and studying by candlelight because electricity cost too much; the family relied at times on help from organizations such as the Salvation Army, and ran out of food and water.

At fifteen, her biggest dream was to become a hotel maid, because maids earned good tips. But the young girl who, by her own account, started her first business at eight years old refused to let poverty set the ceiling. She put herself through college, and at thirty she was appointed to the Bermuda Senate.

She later left politics to launch her ministry, Trimm International, based in Atlanta. Her bestselling books, including Commanding Your Morning and The Rules of Engagement, have sold over a million copies combined, and Ebony magazine named her to its Power 100.

Her extended biography for her 40-Day Soul Fast curriculum describes her, in its words, as the youngest senator in the history of her country, once being groomed for still higher office.

"I started my first business at eight years old, and I’ve been a business owner ever since."

From Atlanta, Trimm leads Trimm International and Cindy Trimm Ministries, speaking on major platforms around the world and teaching the principles she says she uses every day of her own life.

Her annual End Your Year Strong gathering brings together speakers and leaders from across faith and business, and her work keeps returning to one theme drawn straight from her own childhood: where you begin — even in a house that runs out of food — does not decide where you end.

Heart & Soul, profiling her greatest test of faith, quoted her looking back on that period of lack with gratitude, because, she said, it summoned the potential inside her — the same potential she now spends her career summoning in others.

Charisma Podcast Network — “The Power of the Seed with Dr. Cindy Trimm”
Greater Diversity News — “Cindy Trimm Publishes The Final Installation of Three-Book Series of Prayer and Spiritual Warfare”
Heart & Soul — “When God Remains Anonymous: Dr. Cindy Trimm reflects on God's silence during the greatest test of her life.”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Dino Rizzo  ·  Dr. Dharius Daniels

Dr. Dharius Daniels

Founder and Lead Pastor, Change Church — Ewing, NJ

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Dharius Daniels comes from Kilmichael, Mississippi — a town of fewer than 700 residents, by his official biography. Small place, big lesson. His father, a pastor, modeled leadership at home and taught him a sentence he has built a life on: your enlightenment, not your environment, determines your outcomes.

Daniels took that seriously. He earned his undergraduate degree from Millsaps College and postgraduate degrees from Princeton and Fuller — a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Doctorate of Ministry from Fuller Theological Seminary. A career in law had been the plan; the calling to preach changed it.

In 2005 he founded Change Church, setting out to build a church that changes more than morals — one that changes lives, including educationally. The church he started in New Jersey has grown into a multisite, multi-regional community reaching into Florida as well, and his book Relational Intelligence became a bestseller on the people skills behind a life of purpose.

He is married to Shameka, his college sweetheart, and they are parents of two sons, Seth and Gabriel.

Daniels now divides his work between the pulpit and the classroom. He has served as an adjunct professor at Princeton, and through the Daniels Den mentoring program and his transformational coaching groups he serves thousands of members learning to lead themselves first.

His later book, Your Purpose Is Calling, presses the same Kilmichael lesson his father taught him: difference is not a disadvantage — handled well, it is a destiny. Alongside the Daniels Den, his official biography lists a Transformational Coaching Group and a 12-month Inner Circle leadership intensive, extending that same mentoring well beyond his own congregation's walls.

Dharius Daniels Ministries — “Dharius Daniels Ministries EPK”
DhariusDaniels.com — “Author, Speaker, Coach, and Certified Emotional Intelligence Specialist”
Ministry Pass — “Dharius Daniels”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Dr. Cindy Trimm  ·  Ed Young

Ed Young

Founding Senior Pastor, Fellowship Church — Grapevine, TX

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram

In 1990, Ed Young and his wife, Lisa, founded Fellowship Church in the Dallas–Fort Worth area with a small core group and a conviction that church could speak plainly and creatively to everyday life.

Three decades later, Fellowship is described by the church as one of the largest churches in America, meeting across campuses in Grapevine, Frisco, Dallas, Fort Worth and Hawkins, plus a global online congregation.

Young became a New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books, and he leads C3 Global and the Creative Church Conference, which equip pastors around the world. Then came the hardest chapter. In January 2021, the Youngs' eldest daughter, LeeBeth — herself a Fellowship Church director who had preached from its stage — died at thirty-four.

The Youngs spoke openly from the pulpit about her struggles with depression and anxiety, and about their own grief, telling their church they had never felt so weak in more than thirty years of ministry — and kept leading anyway.

Young is the son of Dr. Ed Young Sr. of Second Baptist Church in Houston — a separate church from Fellowship — so he grew up watching a pastor father, and then had to learn, in public, how a pastor grieves.

Young still leads Fellowship Church from Grapevine, still preaching the creative, story-driven style the church is known for, and still equipping other pastors through C3 Global and the Creative Church Conference. He and Lisa have been married for more than forty years.

The pastor who built a church on communicating hope now does it as a father who has buried a child — and says God's grace is how they are getting through it.

Fellowship's own description says the church is known for creatively and boldly communicating the Bible and equipping people for everyday life — the work he and Lisa started in 1990, carried now through joy and loss alike.

Fellowship Church — “Ed Young — Founding Senior Pastor, Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX)”
EdYoung.com — “About | Ed Young”
The Christian Post — “Ed Young reveals daughter struggled with depression; trusting God”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Dr. Dharius Daniels  ·  Erwin McManus

Erwin McManus

Lead Pastor, Mosaic — Los Angeles, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Erwin McManus was born Irving Rafael Mesa-Cardona in San Salvador, El Salvador, raised in his first years by his grandparents, and immigrated to the United States as a young boy with his brother to join their mother, growing up mostly in Miami, with time in Queens and Raleigh. He never knew his real father.

The name McManus itself was not his birth name — it came from his stepfather, a man he describes as involved in “creative underground economies,” and it began as an alias before he made it legal as an adult. Spanish was his first language.

By age twelve, he was sitting in a psychiatric chair, and he says he was told he was “retarded” and that there was nothing special about him. The experts were wrong.

He went on to study psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earn a divinity degree, and an encounter with Jesus, in his words, helped him believe there was an extraordinary human trapped under the fear and self-doubt.

Wikipedia notes that while working on his master's degree in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, he began two congregations while serving among the urban poor — creativity and compassion, together from the start.

"I’m an immigrant from El Salvador, and Spanish was my first language."

McManus leads Mosaic in Los Angeles, a church described as one of America's most influential, built for the creative city around it.

He works across worlds most pastors never enter — bestselling author of books including The Barbarian Way and The Genius of Jesus, and also a filmmaker and fashion designer — coaching creatives and executives to find the genius in their own lives. The boy written off at twelve now spends his life telling other people they were not.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Kim; they have three children. His books have sold more than a million copies worldwide, according to Crosswalk's excerpt of his work.

LA Style Magazine — “Erwin McManus: Rediscovering Genius Through Faith and Creativity”
Wikipedia — “Erwin McManus”
Crosswalk — “The One Unseen Advantage of Great Leaders”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Ed Young  ·  Eugene Cho

Eugene Cho

President & CEO, Bread for the World; Founder, Quest Church — Seattle, WA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Eugene Cho was born in Seoul, South Korea, immigrated to the United States at age six and grew up in San Francisco. Hunger was not an abstraction in his family.

His father was born in what is now North Korea, in a village outside Pyongyang, and as one of six children he faced hunger and poverty daily; the family fled to South Korea, and in 1977 his parents left their homeland hoping to give their sons more opportunities. Cho never forgot where that story started.

Ordained in the Evangelical Covenant Church, he and his wife, Minhee, founded Quest Church in Seattle in 2001, an urban, multi-cultural, multi-generational congregation he served as senior pastor for eighteen years.

In 2009 he founded One Day's Wages, a grassroots movement built on a simple invitation — give one day's wages — to alleviate extreme global poverty through partnerships, especially with small organizations in developing regions. He has also spoken candidly about his own season of unemployment, when a nutrition program helped his family stay afloat.

His books, Overrated (2014) and Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk (2020), challenge readers to trade talk about justice for the real thing.

"The great commission is not a competitor to the great commandment."

In July 2020 Cho became the third President and CEO of Bread for the World, a collective Christian voice urging decision makers to pursue a world without hunger.

In January 2023, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recognized him as an Outstanding American by Choice at a ceremony hosted by the White House — an honor for naturalized citizens who have made significant contributions to their communities and the country.

The immigrant kid who grew up on stories of hunger now leads one of America's largest Christian advocacy organizations, speaking up for policies that can end hunger in the United States and around the world.

Bread for the World — “Rev. Eugene Cho Recognized as an Outstanding American by Choice”
The Presbyterian Outlook — “Bread for the World taps Eugene Cho as new president”
SDSN USA — “Eugene Cho”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Erwin McManus  ·  Floyd H. Flake

Floyd H. Flake

Former Senior Pastor, Greater Allen Cathedral of New York; Former U.S. Congressman — Jamaica, NY

Official links: Website

Floyd Flake grew up in segregated Houston as one of fifteen children. The family's small two-bedroom house lacked running water. What the house did have was his parents' strong moral beliefs and teachers who challenged him — and Flake became the first member of his family to graduate from college, earning his degree at Wilberforce University.

He worked as a social worker, then as a marketing analyst with Xerox, then ran Boston University's Martin Luther King, Jr. Afro-American Center. In 1976 he was asked to head the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica, Queens. It had 1,400 members.

Under his leadership it grew to more than 23,000, complete with a private school, a senior citizens center and hundreds of housing units, becoming one of the largest nonprofit corporations in the United States and a major African American employer in New York City.

Flake also went to Washington: he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 to 1997, built a reputation for bipartisanship, and left in the middle of his sixth term to devote himself solely to his church. He later served as president of Wilberforce University, his alma mater, from 2002 to 2008.

"I had never run for public office, never thought about it."

Flake retired as senior pastor in 2020, after nearly five decades at Greater Allen; his wife, M. Elaine Flake, succeeded him, and the Rev. Stephen A. Green was appointed in 2024. The cathedral now reports more than 24,500 members and an annual budget exceeding $72 million, operates a 750-student school, and remains one of Queens' largest private employers.

In October 2020, Merrick Boulevard in southeastern Queens was co-named Floyd H. Flake Boulevard in his honor. His 1999 book, The Way of the Bootstrapper, still carries the philosophy he lived: build where you are, with what you have.

The HistoryMakers — “The Honorable Reverend Dr. Floyd Flake's Biography”
Wikipedia — “Greater Allen A. M. E. Cathedral of New York”
The Christian Post — “Former Congressman and New York Megachurch Pastor Floyd Flake Confesses 'I Didn't Like Politicians'”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Eugene Cho  ·  Francis Chan

Francis Chan

Founding Pastor, Cornerstone Community Church; Founder, We Are Church — Simi Valley, CA

Official links: Website

Francis Chan's childhood was marked by loss after loss. Born in San Francisco to Hong Kong immigrants, he was their third child; his mother died during his childbirth. He was sent to Hong Kong and raised for several years by his grandmother, a Buddhist.

His stepmother, Amy, was killed in a car accident when he was eight, and in 1979, when he was twelve, his father died of cancer. As a teenager, introduced to a youth group by a friend, his faith took hold — and it has never been a halfway faith.

After earning degrees from Master's College and The Master's Seminary, and a season waiting tables, Chan and his wife, Lisa, founded Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley in 1994 with just 30 people. Within two months there were 100; by 2000, 1,600; by the time he stepped down in 2010, some 4,000 regular attendees.

His book Crazy Love became a New York Times bestseller and topped a million sales — and generosity became his signature.

Koorong reports that he gives away the majority of his income, including book royalties, and has used restaurant and real-estate investments to finance his own mission outreach; City Lifestyle reports he signed the book's first-year $1 million over to a charitable gift fund helping the poor and victims of human trafficking.

"I fell in love with Jesus,"

In 2010 Chan did the unthinkable: he walked away from the megachurch he had built to pursue a simpler, more shared vision of church. In San Francisco he founded We Are Church, a network of small house churches where every member is expected to use their gifts.

In 2020 he moved to Sham Shui Po, the poorest district of Hong Kong — the neighborhood where his mother had done ministry in the 1950s — before returning to the United States in January 2021 after his visa was denied. The boy who lost everyone early still preaches that people, not buildings, are the church.

Koorong — “Francis Chan | Meet the Author”
Wikipedia — “Francis Chan”
City Lifestyle — “Walking the Walk with Francis Chan”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Floyd H. Flake  ·  Gabriel Salguero

Gabriel Salguero

Pastor, The Gathering Place; President & Founder, National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NaLEC) — Orlando, FL

Official links: LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X

Gabriel Salguero is a New Jersey native, the son of Puerto Rican parents, and a pastor's kid in the truest sense: his mother was one of the first ordained Latina Pentecostal pastors, and his parents co-led a congregation for several decades — as he now does with his wife, the Rev. Jeanette Salguero.

He earned a B.A. at Rutgers and a Master of Divinity, magna cum laude, from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and went on to direct the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary.

In Orlando, he has pastored a large Assemblies of God congregation — Calvario City Church when Religion News Service profiled him in 2017, and today The Gathering Place, a Latino-led, multi-ethnic Assemblies of God church.

Nationally, he is the president and founder of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, a coalition of several thousand evangelical congregations giving voice to the close to 9 million Latino evangelicals in the United States.

He has served on the White House Faith-Based Advisory Council, and the New York Times, CNN Español and NBC Universal have named him among the nation's most prominent Latino evangelical leaders.

"We must remind the nation that no group is homogenous—be it Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, or secular, none are a monolith,"

When Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in 2017, Salguero flew in with water and generators, met with church leaders and mayors, and built a partnership between NaLEC, the Puerto Rico Pentecostal Association and World Vision to deliver aid.

Back in Orlando, his church took in relocating families — housing mothers and children and helping them reintegrate with social services, translators and food. He continues to write and speak on Latino evangelicalism, immigration, racism and multicultural congregations, insisting that reconciliation is love made public: a demand that every neighbor be treated correctly and justly.

Religion News Service — “Back from Puerto Rico, the Rev. Gabriel Salguero shares ways to help”
Aspen Institute — “A Profile in Pluralism: Rev. Dr. Gabriel Salguero”
Karsh Institute of Democracy, University of Virginia — “Reverend Gabriel A. Salguero”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Francis Chan  ·  Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie

Senior Pastor & Founder, Harvest Christian Fellowship — Riverside, CA

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Greg Laurie was raised by a single mother who was married seven times in total, and he has described his early years plainly: his mother was an alcoholic, and his childhood was, in his words, crazy and chaotic. He fell into drugs as a teenager.

Then, at seventeen, at Newport Harbor High School, he found himself eavesdropping on a group of Christians — the “Jesus freaks” his friends had warned him to avoid — and heard the gospel for the first time. He gave his life to Christ that day, in the middle of the Jesus Movement sweeping Southern California.

At nineteen he began leading a Bible study of 30 people. That small group became Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, today one of the largest churches in the United States, with campuses in California and Hawaii. In 1990 he founded the Harvest Crusades, large-scale evangelistic events held from Angel Stadium to Madison Square Garden.

He has written more than 70 books, and his conversion story became the 2023 Lionsgate film Jesus Revolution. The road has included deep grief, too: in 2008, Laurie and his wife, Cathe, lost their son Christopher.

"That's the first time I heard the gospel,"

Laurie still leads Harvest and the Crusades. All American Speakers reports that the Harvest Crusades have drawn more than 11.5 million participants, in person and online, with over 700,000 documented professions of faith, and that his cinematic crusade A Rush of Hope was viewed by more than 2 million people on its opening weekend.

His daily radio program, A New Beginning, is broadcast on more than 1,200 outlets worldwide, and he serves on the board of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The teenager who was warned away from the Jesus freaks has spent more than five decades inviting everyone else to listen in.

Wikipedia — “Greg Laurie”
All American Speakers — “Greg Laurie Biography”
PureFlix Insider — “Greg Laurie's ‘Crazy, Chaotic’ Childhood and His Path to Faith”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Gabriel Salguero  ·  Guillermo Maldonado

Guillermo Maldonado

Co-founder & Senior Pastor, El Rey Jesús (King Jesus International Ministry) — Miami, FL

Official links: Website · Facebook · Instagram · X

Guillermo Maldonado was born in Honduras and emigrated to the United States in the 1990s. After coming to faith in college in the United States, he spent several years traveling across Central and South America, preaching, before settling in Miami.

He went on to earn a master's degree in practical theology from Oral Roberts University and a doctorate in divinity from Vision International University. In 1996, he and his wife, Ana, co-founded a church in their living room. It started with twelve people.

That living-room congregation, El Rey Jesús — King Jesus International Ministry — now hosts 15,000 to 20,000 people per week and is described as the largest Hispanic church in the United States; Christianity Today calls it the biggest Spanish-speaking congregation in the country, with a 7,000-seat sanctuary.

The church has affiliate locations across Florida and satellite locations in Georgia and New York. Maldonado hosts The Supernatural Now, aired on TBN, Daystar and The Church Channel, and he has written more than 50 books and manuals, translated into Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian and French.

His teaching centers on the supernatural power of God, demonstrated — as he puts it — just as in the time of the early church.

Beyond Miami, Christianity Today reports that Maldonado's network extends from the King Jesus churches in the United States to hundreds of apostolic churches in 50 countries, with thousands more watching on Daystar and TBN. In 2010 the church opened an orphanage, Casa Hogar, back in his native Honduras.

And on October 3, 2025, during the church's CAP conference, Miami-Dade County honored him by proclaiming Apostle Guillermo Maldonado Day, to be marked every October 3 — civic recognition for a ministry that began with twelve people in a living room.

Wikipedia — “Guillermo Maldonado (pastor)”
Christianity Today — “Influential Hispanic Pastor Welcomes ‘Evangelicals for Trump’”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Greg Laurie  ·  Jamal Bryant