ORLANDO, Fla. – First Orlando a multisite, multicultural church in Central Florida, has launched a new shared leadership model in which three senior pastors will share church oversight and collaborative governance.
The three senior pastors and their new leadership roles are: David Uth, who has served as First Orlando senior pastor for 20 years, is now senior shepherding pastor; Danny de Armas, who has served First Orlando since 2008, is now senior executive pastor; and Trey Hildebrant, who has served most recently as pastor of ministries at 12Stone Church, a multisite church in greater Atlanta, is the newly elected senior teaching pastor.
In their new roles, Uth will embody prayer, presence and pastoral leadership; de Armas will steward operations, ministries and organizational leadership, and Hildebrant will provide pulpit leadership, biblical instruction and doctrinal clarity.
Uth stated that he believes the shared leadership model “lines up more appropriately with Scripture,” citing numerous New Testament passages (Acts 13:1, 15:28, 20:17; Titus 1:5 and 1 Peter 5:1-2) in which early church leadership was built around a plurality of leaders rather than a single leader. The shared leadership model, he believes, also complements the giftedness of each leader.
He said he first became acquainted with the idea of shared church pastoral leadership as a doctoral student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
During Uth’s tenure at First Orlando, the church has grown from one location and two services to six locations and 13 services.
“It’s not the same church,” he said. All measurable church health numbers at First Orlando, such as baptisms, attendance and giving, are on an upward trend.
Still, he sensed some kind of leadership realignment was needed, and he wanted to move forward with care and prayer, acknowledging the church’s rich past while preparing the church for a future of continuing to reach individuals with the Gospel of Christ.
“This is the Bride of Christ,” he said. “These are the people I love. I was thinking about what’s best for the church. What’s best for us, where we are in this city, but also what’s happening in the country?”
Uth began to explore the possibility of shared pastoral leadership more than three years ago.
“Danny (de Armas) and I began to dream a little bit,” he said, and they discovered a few churches using a shared pastoral leadership model, which First Orlando is describing as a “table of three.” Many corporations, he added, have also moved to a plurality of top leaders sharing responsibilities.
When Uth presented the shared pastoral leadership team model to the church about a year ago, he told the congregation that God was “moving us in a direction of a model that’s going to bring strength and greater possibilities for this church.”
He expected “some pushback because this is not very common among our Baptist churches, but the room was silent,” with only a few good questions, Uth said. Church members were ready to move forward and seemed pleased that the new leadership model meant that both Uth and de Armas would continue to serve the church they both loved.
Such shared pastoral leadership, he said, provides accountability and stability.
Hildebrant, a third-generation pastor with rich Southern Baptist roots, was the unanimous decision of the search team tasked with finding the new teaching pastor.
As the three sat around a table, Uth said that the shared leadership model is an answer to his prayer that First Orlando would be the “biggest small church” that anyone would ever come to. His prayer is that those who walk through the doors of First Orlando would find a “family. That’s what we want for the city of Orlando and beyond.”
As he walked into his office on Nov. 9, Uth recalled, he read Psalm 139:15-16, which states that a person’s days are ordained by the Lord. The Lord knew this day was coming for First Orlando, he said. “This is the day the Lord has made, and we are going to rejoice and be glad in it, and welcome our new senior teaching pastor, Trey Hildebrant,” he said as the congregation applauded.
Minutes later, Hildebrant stepped up to preach his first sermon at First Orlando. He read 1 Thessalonians 2 and shared his core convictions, which he described as promises to the church: “I will preach for God first. I will give this work all I’ve got. I will honor you by how I live, in public and in private. I will care for you.”
He continued, “We are going to preach the Gospel of Jesus here so clearly and so compelling that one day we are going to stand before God and thousands and thousands of people will be standing there with us. We will be soul-winners.”
Uth acknowledged that he and de Armas would help mentor the young senior teaching pastor, who’s in his 30s, just as former First Orlando pastor Jim Henry did for Uth 20 years ago.
“We’re going to be able to really help Trey, build him up, resource him and build around him everything he needs to succeed,” Uth said.
He added that he believes Uth is the “perfect one” to share the Gospel in a context young adults can understand.
For Uth, the change is real as he will not be preaching each Sunday, which has been his role, he said, for the past 49 years. With the transition, he said he is looking forward to becoming “better acquainted with our church” that he has pastored for 20 years. “What an incredible people they are,” he said.
The most common question that Uth says he has received about the new leadership model is: “What happens if the three leaders disagree?” For Uth, “That was never even a question. I’ve done collaborative leadership all my life.”
If someone asks, “Who is the pastor?” Uth answers, “There are three of us, but really the top is the Lord Himself.”
This article originally appeared at flbaptist.org.
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