Why are there two lead pastors instead of one?

Dwell has two lead pastors, or "senior elders", Conrad Hilario and Ryan Lowery. We consider this distinctive to be an unimportant and peripheral feature, by no means mandated in Scripture. We wouldn't suggest this working in every church, but have found this arrangement provides a special level of support for each of these leaders and an additional level of accountability between them and other leadership.

The arrangement at Dwell is based on the unique history of the original two founders of the church, who worked in Christ's yoke together for over 45 years, after knowing each other since kindergarten! They were not only partners in ministry, but also co-owned a business for years before they joined Dwell staff. Their organic partnership was clearly mutually beneficial, as they saw their personalities as complementary and their relationship as clearly from God.

While we initially thought that it would be both difficult and perhaps pointless to try to duplicate such a partnership in most cases, our leadership felt we would ask Ryan and Conrad if they felt they could work under a similar approach. Usually coequal partnerships become a deadlock and a liability, but in our case it seems to work out well as a second generation has followed in the footsteps of our trail-blazing founders and pursued "co-leading" together to great effect in their lives and in the life of His church.