DawnCheré Wilkerson (born August 11, 1984) is an American pastor, author, singer, and songwriter based in Miami, Florida. She co-leads VOUS Church alongside her husband, Rich Wilkerson Jr., and has built a public ministry around two things she knows from the inside: waiting on God for something you desperately want, and telling the truth about how long that wait can actually last.
Her 2025 book, Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait, turned her own eight-year struggle with infertility into a message that’s resonated with people who have nothing to do with church at all.
She married her high school sweetheart, helped him build one of Miami’s most talked-about churches, spent the better part of a decade praying for a baby that wouldn’t come, and then wrote a book about what she learned in the meantime.
DawnCheré Wilkerson at a Glance
| Personal | |
|---|---|
| Full Name | DawnCheré Wilkerson (née Duron) |
| Born | August 11, 1984, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA |
| Age | 41 (as of 2026) |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Rich Wilkerson Jr. (m. August 2006) |
| Children | Four: Wyatt (b. 2018), Wilde (b. 2019), Waylon (b. 2021), Wolfgang (b. 2024) |
| Parents | Denny Duron (father), DeAnza Duron (mother) |
| Education | |
| University | Lee University, Cleveland, Tennessee (graduated 2007) |
| Ministry | |
| Title | Co-Lead Pastor |
| Church | VOUS Church, Miami, Florida |
| Denomination | Non-denominational |
| Since | 2015 (VOUS Church); 2007 (The Rendezvous, at Trinity Church) |
| Career | |
| Book | Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait (2025) |
| Music | Vocalist, VOUS Worship; contributed to Into the Night |
| Net Worth | Estimates vary widely and are unverified, ranging from roughly $1 million to $5 million |
Early Life and Family Background
DawnCheré Duron grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, the daughter of Denny and DeAnza Duron, who served as lead pastors of Shreveport Community Church. Ministry wasn’t something she discovered later in life. It was the dinner table.
She’s one of six children, and church work ran through the whole family. Growing up as a pastor’s kid means you learn early that faith isn’t a Sunday performance.
You watch your parents counsel people through real crises during the week, then stand up and preach about hope on Sunday morning.
That kind of upbringing shapes how a person talks about hard seasons later, and it shows in how directly DawnCheré writes about her own.
Meeting Rich Wilkerson Jr. and Building a Marriage
DawnCheré met Rich Wilkerson Jr. when they were both 17 years old. They became best friends first, which she’s said gave their relationship a foundation that lasted past the awkward teenage stuff most young couples have to outgrow. The two married in August 2006 in her hometown of Shreveport.
Rich is the son of Rich Wilkerson Sr. and Robyn Wilkerson, who lead Trinity Church, a Miami megachurch affiliated with the Assemblies of God. Rich Sr. is also a cousin of David Wilkerson, the evangelist best known for writing The Cross and the Switchblade. After DawnCheré graduated from Lee University in 2007, the couple moved to Miami so Rich could work alongside his parents at Trinity.
From The Rendezvous to VOUS Church
Rich and DawnCheré didn’t start by planting a church. They started by showing up to lead a Tuesday night youth gathering at Trinity Church called The Rendezvous. Twelve people came to the first one.
That number didn’t stay small for long. By the time the gathering spun off from Trinity in 2015 to become its own independent church, shortened to VOUS, weekly attendance had grown from a dozen people to well over a thousand.
VOUS now runs multiple campuses across Miami, including locations in South Miami, Little Haiti, the Design District, and Miami Gardens, and regularly draws tens of thousands of online viewers to its livestreamed services.
The church’s annual VOUS Conference, held at the historic Fillmore Theater on South Beach, has become one of Miami’s bigger faith-and-arts gatherings, pulling thousands of attendees from outside Florida entirely.
DawnCheré has been a co-lead pastor through all of it, not a pastor’s wife standing off to the side. She preaches, she records music with the worship team, and her name sits next to Rich’s on the church’s leadership page, not below it.
Rise to Public Attention
Most people who’ve heard of the Wilkersons first heard about them for a reason that had nothing to do with VOUS Church directly.
In 2014, Rich officiated the wedding of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, a connection that traced back through a Trinity Church member who knew Kanye through a Miami boutique.
The press coverage that followed turned Rich and DawnCheré into recognizable names well outside Christian media.
The couple leaned into that attention rather than running from it. Oxygen built a ten-episode reality series around their lives called Rich in Faith, which aired in 2015 and 2016 and followed them as they launched VOUS Church while also navigating their own struggle to start a family.
It’s an unusual thing to watch a couple’s infertility journey play out on a reality TV network, but DawnCheré has said since that the openness was worth it. People walked through the wait with them in real time, which meant people could celebrate with them in real time too.
The Eight-Year Wait: DawnCheré Wilkerson’s Infertility Journey
This is the part of DawnCheré’s story most people search for, and for good reason. It’s the most honest thing she’s ever talked about.
She’s said a doctor told her on her 25th birthday that conceiving would be difficult. She didn’t believe it. “I never dreamed it would take eight years before we heard the words, ‘You’re pregnant,'” she told People magazine.
Eight years is not a metaphor here. It’s eight years of trying, praying, and watching other people’s pregnancy announcements while holding her own private grief mostly to herself, including from her parents.
Their son Wyatt was born in January 2018, and the Wilkersons called him their “miracle baby.” Three more children followed: Wilde in 2019, Waylon in 2021, and Wolfgang in December 2024.
DawnCheré has said she carried the infertility years privately for the first six years before going public, because she wanted to wait until she had the baby to talk about the struggle behind him.
What changed her mind wasn’t just having Wyatt. It was realizing the wait itself was the story worth telling, not just the ending.
“We think waiting is a curse. But once you get that thing, whether it’s the job, the spouse, the baby, you just move the goalposts and start waiting for something else. Waiting isn’t a season. Waiting is life.” — DawnCheré Wilkerson
Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait
That conviction became the spine of Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait, released in April 2025. The book draws on her own eight-year infertility journey and over a decade of what she calls spiritual wrestling, but it’s not framed as a fertility memoir.
It’s a book about surrender as a daily choice rather than a one-time decision, built for anyone stuck waiting on something they can’t control, whether that’s a diagnosis, a relationship, or a calling that hasn’t opened up yet.
She’s been candid that writing the book and giving birth to her fourth child happened in the same year, which she’s called a labor of love in more than one sense.
The book gives language to a tension a lot of believers feel but rarely say out loud: what do you do with faith when the answer to your prayer simply doesn’t come on your timeline, or doesn’t come at all?
Family Life Today
Rich and DawnCheré now have four children, and DawnCheré has spoken about how present they are in her actual day-to-day ministry work, not just her Instagram captions.
She’s described her kids sitting beside her in church coloring in journals while she works, which is a more honest picture of pastoral family life than most platforms show.
The family’s openness about both the hard years and the full house that followed has made DawnCheré a go-to voice for people walking through infertility themselves, particularly within Christian community.
She and Rich have both said they’d never trade the waiting years away, even with four kids now filling their home, because of what those years taught them about depending on God instead of an outcome.
Ministry Philosophy
DawnCheré’s central conviction, repeated across interviews and now formalized in her book, is that surrender isn’t a single transaction with God. It’s a posture you choose again every day.
She frames waiting not as punishment or delay, but as the actual substance of a life of faith, not a stage you pass through on the way to the real thing.
That philosophy shapes how VOUS Church talks about discipleship more broadly. The church leans on original music, teaching, and the arts to reach people who might never walk into a traditional sanctuary, and DawnCheré’s own willingness to talk about unanswered prayer and prolonged waiting fits that same instinct: meet people in the actual, unresolved middle of their story, not just the highlight reel.
Influence and Legacy
VOUS Church’s growth from a twelve-person youth gathering to a multi-campus congregation with tens of thousands of weekly online viewers owes a real share of its momentum to DawnCheré’s role as co-pastor, not just supporting cast. She’s preached, written, and recorded music as a full partner in the ministry since its earliest Rendezvous days.
Her public infertility journey has likely reached further than any single sermon. Christian Post, People magazine, and Digital Journal have all covered her story specifically because it crosses over to readers who aren’t looking for a sermon, just an honest account of a hard wait that didn’t resolve on anyone’s convenient schedule.
Interesting Facts About DawnCheré Wilkerson
- She met Rich Wilkerson Jr. when they were both 17, and they were best friends before they were a couple.
- She kept her infertility struggle private from her own parents for years before going public with it.
- She gave birth to her fourth child and finished writing her first book in the same year.
- VOUS Church’s name is simply short for “Rendezvous,” chosen partly because people kept misspelling the original word in Google searches.
- Her husband’s family ties her, by marriage, to the legacy of evangelist David Wilkerson, author of The Cross and the Switchblade.
Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1984 | Born in Shreveport, Louisiana |
| 2001 | Meets Rich Wilkerson Jr. at age 17 |
| 2006 | Marries Rich Wilkerson Jr. in Shreveport |
| 2007 | Graduates from Lee University; moves to Miami with Rich to join Trinity Church |
| 2014 | Rich officiates the Kardashian-West wedding; the couple gains national attention |
| 2015 | The Rendezvous spins off from Trinity Church to become VOUS Church; “Rich in Faith” airs on Oxygen |
| 2018 | Son Wyatt born after eight years of infertility |
| 2019 | Son Wilde born |
| 2021 | Son Waylon born |
| 2024 | Son Wolfgang born |
| 2025 | Releases Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait |
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is DawnCheré Wilkerson?
DawnCheré Wilkerson is an American pastor, author, and worship singer who co-leads VOUS Church in Miami, Florida, alongside her husband, Rich Wilkerson Jr. She’s also the author of Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait, drawn from her own eight-year struggle with infertility.
How old is DawnCheré Wilkerson?
DawnCheré Wilkerson was born August 11, 1984, making her 41 years old as of 2026.
Who are DawnCheré Wilkerson’s parents?
Her parents are Denny and DeAnza Duron, who served as lead pastors of Shreveport Community Church in Shreveport, Louisiana.
How old are DawnCheré Wilkerson’s kids?
As of 2026, her four children range in age from about 1 to 8: Wyatt (born 2018), Wilde (born 2019), Waylon (born 2021), and Wolfgang (born December 2024).
What is DawnCheré Wilkerson’s book about?
Slow Burn: The Work and Wonder of the Wait draws on her eight-year infertility journey to make the case that waiting on God isn’t a punishment or a pause, but a daily act of surrender that shapes the whole of a person’s faith.
Did DawnCheré Wilkerson struggle with infertility?
Yes. She and Rich Wilkerson Jr. tried to conceive for eight years before the birth of their first son, Wyatt, in 2018. She’s written and spoken extensively about that journey, including in her 2025 book.
What is Rich and DawnCheré Wilkerson’s net worth?
Public estimates of their combined net worth vary widely, generally ranging from around $1 million to $5 million, but these figures come from celebrity-tracking sites rather than any official disclosure, so they should be treated as rough estimates, not confirmed fact.
