A Fractional Executive Pastor is an experienced church leader who serves your church in an XP capacity on a part-time, contracted basis rather than as a full-time employee. You get the operational leadership, staff oversight, systems thinking, and strategic support of an Executive Pastor without the full-time salary, benefits, and long-term hiring commitment. It is a model that works especially well for churches that are growing into needing an XP but are not yet ready to hire one full-time, or churches that have lost their XP and need experienced bridge leadership while they search.

Most churches that benefit from these services are in the 100 to 1,500 member range, large enough to have real organizational complexity but not yet staffed to handle it all internally. That said, church size is less important than where the church is. If your Lead Pastor is carrying operational responsibilities that are pulling them away from vision, preaching, and pastoral care, and if your team lacks the structure, clarity, or leadership bandwidth to keep up, these services are worth a conversation regardless of attendance numbers.

The discovery call is a free, 30-minute conversation. There is no pitch and no pressure. The goal is simply to hear where your church is, what you are navigating, and whether there is a good fit. You will leave the call with clarity about whether working together makes sense, and if it does not, you will still leave with some honest perspective on your situation. Either way it is worth 30 minutes.

It depends on the service. Fractional XP engagements typically operate on a monthly retainer with a 90-day minimum to give the work enough time to take root, though the structure is always scoped to your situation. Church Consulting projects are defined-scope engagements with a clear deliverable and a defined finish line, with no ongoing commitment required. Leadership Coaching engagements are typically structured in 6-session blocks. Church Staffing engagements are scoped to the specific search or staffing need. Everything is discussed and agreed on before any work begins.

Primarily Lead Pastors, though Executive Pastors, Campus Pastors, and church elders or boards navigating a leadership transition also find value in these services. The coaching and consulting work in particular can apply to leader carrying significant organizational responsibility in a church context.

Working with Dennis directly means you are always working with the same person, someone who has served in pastoral and executive pastor roles, understands church culture from the inside, and is not handing your engagement off to a junior associate. There are no lengthy onboarding processes or institutional overhead. The work is direct, practical, and tailored to your specific church rather than delivered from a generalized playbook.

Yes. While Dennis's background is in evangelical Protestant ministry, the operational, staffing, and leadership challenges that these services address are not unique to any one tradition. Churches from a wide range of denominational backgrounds have benefited from this work.

That is exactly what the Church Consulting bucket is designed for. Whether you need a Secret Shopper assessment of your guest experience, a compensation review, help designing an onboarding process, or support navigating a pastoral transition, these are focused, scoped engagements with a specific deliverable and no long-term commitment required. Start with the discovery call and we will identify the right scope together.