How This Pastor Got Stuck in a Growing Church — Dave’s Story
Braden East
I recently got on the phone to catch up with an old friend who I hadn’t talked to in 10 years. We’ll call him Dave.
Dave had been a pastor of a large church back when I knew him, and since then he had also spent 5 years as the president of a large nonprofit ministry. Eventually the Lord had called him back into the pastorate and he faithfully obeyed.
Despite being a sought-after preacher with decades of experience at larger churches, Dave followed the Holy Spirit’s leading and humbly accepted a role as the pastor of a small rural church in the deep south.
And when I say small, I mean SMALL…
When he started, the church was on the verge of dying. Their small community had been hit hard by COVID and the congregation had been let down by previous leadership.
Dave told me there were some Sundays that his wife and children accounted for more than half of the total attendees. So we’re talking about teens or single-digit attendance most Sundays.
Through preaching the word and ministering with a multi-generational, discipleship-oriented model, God started a new work in this church. Over 4 long years, they slowly grew into a thriving congregation once more. Week after week, Dave would faithfully preach the Word, and the next week more would come.
He started to see faces show up on Sunday morning that nobody in the congregation recognized. He didn’t know how they had found the church on the country backroad where it was located, but there they were nonetheless — hungry for the gospel.
By 2025, the church had grown to 100-120 members. They experienced a season of weekly baptisms, people getting saved, lives being visibly transformed by the gospel.
Praise God!
So, Dave was familiar with my branding work, and he was curious what my branding process looks like for a church that size, and if I had any recommendations for them. Of course I shared my process with him, and I had reviewed the church’s website so I knew a bit about what branding they had done up to that point.
I told him, “look I’m probably not in your church’s budget right now, but if you keep growing I would love to help you develop your brand and start reaching beyond your local community.”
He was understanding of that and I started to mentally wrap up the conversation.
But Dave suddenly stopped me and said, “Braden, there’s something else I need to ask you about…”
I could hear the concern and uncertainty in his voice.
Now keep in mind that I haven’t talked to Dave in 10 years, and we’ve had no other interactions that I’m aware of except through Facebook.
So my mind is suddenly racing — What could he possibly want?
“Yeah… um… ask away.”
“I don’t mean to sound conceited, so please don’t hear it as that, but I’ve 30 years of all different kinds of ministry, preaching, and speaking experience…”
It’s true — Dave was an exceptional communicator.
He went on.
“I feel stuck… I have so much I preaching leftover each week to share with more people than just my congregation”
This church didn’t livestream or record his sermons due to their small size, and he had started to realize that this was handicapping his personal ministry. Without recent sermon recordings to share, Dave was missing opportunities to speak at conferences and partner with other churches to help with revivals.
Because he was very pastorally-minded, he had all this content that was ready to publish under his own personal ministry, but no way to get it out there into the world.