A former chief financial officer is using his business sense to start a cowboy church in Marana.
Cowboys, corporate experience and church actually do go together, says David Willard, pastor of The Gate Church.
The church’s launch team began meeting in the Willard family’s living room last summer. It has since hopped from there to Canyon del Oro Assembly of God, 2950 W. Lambert Lane, and then to the Marana Middle School complex at 11279 W. Grier Road this summer.
Yes, church is spiritual, but applying business principles doesn’t hurt, Willard says.
“We started in the living room with 12 people — and we were six of those 12,” he says. “Then the next month we had 20 and then 30, and now we’re at about 50.”
HOME SWEET HOME
Although David and Gretchen Willard, both 44, and their four children have lived in Texas, New York, New Jersey and Colorado, Tucson is home.
“In Texas, there would be complete strangers, and they would say, ‘Hey, what church do you go to?’ It’s the Bible Belt,” David says. “In New York, the first question is, ‘What do you do?’... In Arizona, it’s like, ‘How good is your air conditioner?’ Here, it’s far more relaxed and laid back.”
The Willards lived in a New York suburb for about five years, while David worked as the CFO for Kroll Associates Inc., a risk management consulting company. During that time, he managed New York, Canadian and Latin American offices, along with 25 financial accountants and analysts.
Through all of it, the family remained involved in their local churches, with David struggling to balance career, family and church life. That juggle ended up becoming the topic of his book, “Conflict Balance Breakthrough: The Choice is Yours.”
“Corporate America, it’s a grind,” he says. “The opportunities are great, but I just thought it was chewing up people and their families.”
After almost 20 years of working in that environment, he opted out. More than eight years ago, the family moved back to Arizona, where David and Gretchen had met at the University of Arizona.
“I left corporate America right at the start of the Great Recession and started my own business, so the timing was perfect,” he jokes about the professional consulting business he ran for about three years.
He ended up going back to work, this time commuting from Tucson to Phoenix for a job as the statewide business director for the Arizona Ministry Network of the Assemblies of God. He only stopped that time-consuming drive this May, to pastor his church full-time.
MARRIAGE MINISTERS
David and Gretchen met in a Spanish class at the UA, where David earned a bachelor’s degree in business management, and Gretchen received one in finance. David later followed that up with an MBA from the University of Phoenix.
They spent the early years of their marriage researching how to make it last and became Christians during that time. Later, they would work in church leadership positions, teaching on marriage and families.
In July, they celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary.
“I always felt sort of the pull to go into ministry, because I always had a knack for it, I guess, and a love for people,” David says. Both now have minister credentials from the Pentecostal school Global University.
ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
The idea to pastor his own church first struck David as he sat in a meeting for the Arizona Ministry Network.
“I just really felt the tug to start the church, the call of God,” he says. “It just felt like, ‘Gosh, I’m supposed to do this,’ and felt like it was supposed to be in Tucson.”
As it turns out, the Assemblies of God was looking to start cowboy churches as a way to connect with the state’s pockets of Western culture. It appealed to David, who had grown up in Morenci and had friends involved with rodeo in high school and college.
But opening a new church would take some work.
Leigh Metcalf, the network’s church planting director, says starting a church is like starting a business. Both require people, equipment, marketing, money and a business plan.
“You have to be an entrepreneurial person, because you’re starting something from nothing,” Metcalf says. “You have no facility, no people.”
Each week, the Willards have to prepare a sermon, set up and take down and make sure everyone has what they need to make a Sunday service happen.
“You are never prepared enough,” David says. Organizing a church for people is one thing, but “it’s also for the Lord, so you always want to do your best.”
FAMILY BUSINESS
Suddenly, the Willard kids became pastors’ kids.
“You feel like people are always watching you,” Savannah Willard, 18, says. “You have to be on your best behavior.”
But this is nothing new.
“They have always been in leadership,” says Savannah of her parents. “We have always sort of been scrutinized.”
Savannah is one of the lead singers on Sunday mornings, and her 20-year-old sister Georgia Willard leads the church youth group. Their 15-year-old brother Oran Willard helps where he can. Truman, 12, is “just along for the ride,” David says.
“They have always had a certain amount of pressure because we have done parenting classes,” says Gretchen, who home-schools the kids.
But that’s not parental pressure.
“We have always made sure that the church does not get in the way of our family or their lives,” David says. “We’re not going to lose our kids over the church. That’s not going to happen.”
“The whole clich
É
”
If the Willards were to dream big, The Gate Church would someday have its own property on the Interstate 10 corridor, with RV spaces and an indoor arena, Gretchen says.
Cowboy church “is just church as you know it, but we wear jeans and shorts and outreach to the rodeo and Western community,” David says.
In February, the church won second place as the “Best Family Group” in the Tucson Rodeo Parade for its float with hay bales, a picket fence and cross.
“We have a real heart for the Western community,” says Gretchen, who is also a pastor at The Gate.
A cowboy church is perfect for the family, says Savannah.
“It’s the whole cliché bit, even the cowboy-hat wearing,” she says of her family. “We go camping all the time and skeet shooting. We do all sorts of cowboy things.”
And for the first time, her dad can combine his background in business with his desire to serve full time in a local church.
“The principles are the same of how to manage an organization and your resources, time and finances,” David says. “Coordinating volunteers and church members is like coordinating employees.”
In both jobs, he has to wrangle financial resources and corral people.
In business, he dealt with unhappy customers and employees. As a pastor, he works with hurt people.
“Communication is absolutely huge for the business and church worlds,” he says. “Maybe that is the best thing I learned — how to communicate. That’s all ministry is, and that’s all a successful business is: Good communication.”
