Dino Rizzo is a renowned pastor with thirty-five years of ministry experience, including two decades of planting and pastoring a megachurch. Dino's extensive years of experience have allowed him to live, love, and lead with remarkable skill, making him a valuable source of guidance and inspiration for many people.

Dino Rizzo and his wife, DeLynn, founded Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge in 1993. The church began with just twelve people and grew to over 10,000 in weekly attendance across nine locations worldwide, focusing on serving the poor and the hurting. Dino also founded the Servolution movement, encouraging churches to join hands and embark on a revolution of helping others. Dino's passion for outreach and mission work is evident in the numerous outreaches and programs Healing Place Church involves, from offering free medical and dental clinics to helping ex-prisoners re-enter society.

Dino is also the co-founder and Executive Director of the ARC (Association of Related Churches), which has planted over 1,000 churches worldwide. Pastor Rizzo also serves on the Senior Leadership Team at Church of the Highlands, leading all areas of outreach, missions, prison ministries, dream centers, and Serve days. Dino is a gifted author who has written several books, including Serve Your City. He and his wife have been married for 34 years and have three adult children. 

Dino Rizzo: When you look at these amazing numbers, if you’re not careful, you can forget that that is an individual. They are all “ones.” They are all one person who needs help, that needs the gospel, that needs the scripture, that needs encouragement, that needs Jesus.

And that’s what I love about our churches. We’re able to take this volume, this generosity, and bring it down to an individual, whether that’s locally, that’s nationally, that’s around the world, some of the least of these, as Jesus talks about. And that’s what I love about these reports, what I love about this vision that God’s given our church and given everybody.

Dino Rizzo: We have opened up a new campus in Alabaster; we’re expanding in Huntsville. That just says to me, “Let’s go reach more people.”

What we did in Alabaster, on the grand opening before our first service, we were serving, packing backpacks, letting the community know, “We’re here for you.” Having people on property to be able to say, “Hey, we’re a church not only that holds service, but we’re a church to serve you.”

Now, we have the Huntsville campus, which is already under construction. We own land in Sylacauga. We own land in Oxford. And we are about to start construction in Opelika and in The Shoals. It’s just an exciting time to be a part of Church of the Highlands.

What you see happening at Highlands is amazing. I’ve never met more generous people like I have met in our church. But the impact that boils down to a family, a single mom, someone who needs a Bible in their hand, someone who needs hope for the day that it’s maybe incarcerated, and we’re there as a dream team preaching the gospel, we’re loving them, we’re encouraging them. We’re giving them Jesus.

Just this year alone, we’ve had over 3,000 people give their lives to Jesus Christ. That’s 3,000 ones. There are churches in 24 correctional facilities in Alabama. We have a vision, of course, to go to all 28.

And then one of the things that we really have a heart for is to make sure that we’re doing all we can to reach into the juvenile centers that are across the state. We’ve got a big vision for that. We want to be in every single juvenile center. How many of these young people are vulnerable? They’re in the valley of decision. They’re trying to figure out what type of life they’re going to live. So that is an exciting thing for the future. I believe that in every single type of correctional facility, our jails, and our juvenile centers, we’re going to be there bringing the gospel.

Dino Rizzo: I look back over this year and think about the mass of what we’ve done through missions and giving around the world. But then you bring it down to planting new churches: we’ve currently launched 1,079 new churches. This year alone, we’ll launch about 44 churches in this calendar year. A lot of people give their lives to Christ in those first services. So I love those new churches that are starting in unique cities.

I see faces right now. I think about families that have been through tragedy, and something has happened to someone and their loved one. And I see our team out there building a wheelchair ramp and saying, “Hey, the church provided this for you.” I see those faces. Those are the faces and the things I think about when I look over the year. That’s our church. That’s our team. That’s our generosity. Every single day, I see the faces that God sees.