Dino Rizzo (born circa 1964) is an American pastor and author who co-founded Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1993 and grew it into a 10,000-member congregation known for its outreach to the poor.
Rizzo later co-founded the Association of Related Churches, which has helped plant more than 1,000 churches worldwide, and now serves on the senior leadership team at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama, a ministry path that took a painful turn in 2012 and, more recently, an even harder one in 2026.
Dino Rizzo at a Glance
| Personal | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Dino Rizzo |
| Born | Circa 1964, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, USA |
| Age | Approximately 61 to 62 (as of 2026) |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | DeLynn Rizzo, née Austin (married since the late 1980s) |
| Children | McCall Haymon, Dylan Rizzo (d. 2026), Isabella Rizzo |
| Education | |
| Graduate | Master of Divinity, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Doctor of Ministry, Fuller Theological Seminary |
| Ministry | |
| Church founded | Healing Place Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana (1993 to 2012) |
| Current role | Outreach and Missions Pastor, Church of the Highlands, Birmingham, Alabama |
| Other role | Executive Director, Association of Related Churches (ARC) |
| Denomination | Non-denominational, Charismatic-adjacent |
| Career | |
| Books | Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving; Serve Your City: How to Do It and Why It Matters |
| Net worth | Not independently verified; some sources estimate around $1 million |
Early Life and Background
Dino Rizzo was born the youngest of three children in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and has said he was not raised in a churchgoing family.
He came to faith later, after attending an outreach event hosted by a local church, an experience that shaped his lifelong conviction that serving people is the front door to sharing the Gospel with them.
Rizzo relocated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to attend Bible college. During his senior year, he met DeLynn Austin, then still in high school, while she was leading worship at a church service.
As a young man in his early twenties, Rizzo worked as a youth pastor under televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, a prominent Baton Rouge ministry figure, where he ran a large bus ministry that transported people to services.
Education
Rizzo earned a Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and later a Doctor of Ministry degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, theological training that grounded his later work building both a local church and a national church-planting network.
Ministry Career and Healing Place Church
Dino and DeLynn Rizzo married in the late 1980s, and five years later, in 1993, they took over a small, struggling congregation in Baton Rouge that a denominational overseer was preparing to shut down.
Rizzo has said his first Sunday as pastor was so nerve-wracking that he left the building to walk around a nearby mall before finding the courage to preach.
Within four months, the fledgling church, renamed Healing Place Church, grew from a handful of people to more than 70.
The church’s identity crystallized around an early “free garage sale” event that unexpectedly went viral in the community, and Healing Place became known locally as “the church that gives stuff away.”
Their first offering came as a $400 check from Lakewood Church founding pastor Joel Osteen, who wanted to be the first to invest in their vision to reach the poor.
Growth and Hurricane Katrina Relief
Over the next 19 years, Healing Place Church grew from a dozen people to more than 10,000 in weekly attendance across eleven campuses, including a location in Maputo, Mozambique.
The church built a reputation for hands-on outreach: cooking meals for the homeless, running free medical and dental clinics, helping former prisoners reenter society, and caring for children orphaned by AIDS.
When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Healing Place Church transformed into a refuge for tens of thousands of displaced residents fleeing nearby New Orleans, housing, feeding, and clothing people in its sanctuary and hallways for months.
The church’s outreach model, later branded Servolution, became a widely copied template across the broader church-planting movement Rizzo helped build.
Rise to Prominence
In 2000, Rizzo joined five other pastors to co-found the Association of Related Churches, known as ARC, an interdenominational network built to help launch and support new churches.
ARC has since helped plant more than 1,000 churches worldwide, and Rizzo’s 2009 book, Servolution, propelled a movement of hundreds of churches to organize around serving their local communities as a form of daily ministry rather than a onetime event.
Healing Place Church was named one of the country’s top 25 most innovative churches during this period, and Rizzo’s national profile grew steadily through ARC conferences, his Serve Day initiative, and frequent appearances at Christian leadership events across the country.
Books and Publications
Rizzo has authored several books centered on his core conviction that outreach and service are inseparable from evangelism. Notable titles include:
- Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving (2009)
- Serve Your City: How to Do It and Why It Matters
Personal Life
Marriage and Children
Dino and DeLynn Rizzo have been married since the late 1980s and have three children: McCall, now McCall Haymon; Dylan; and Isabella.
DeLynn has built her own ministry alongside her husband, speaking to women in church and leadership settings and serving as a co-pastor throughout their years at Healing Place Church.
The Death of Dylan Rizzo
On May 30, 2026, the Rizzos’ son, Dylan Robert Rizzo, died of cardiac arrest connected to a recently diagnosed heart condition.
He was 30 years old. Dylan was born in Baton Rouge on March 7, 1996, and had married Layne Stone Rizzo in July 2024. The couple had a son together, Redding Robert Rizzo.
Friends of the family established the Redding Robert Rizzo Trust in the days following his death to support his young son’s future.
Dylan’s memorial service was held at Church of the Highlands’ Grants Mill Campus in Birmingham on June 9, 2026, where his father continues to serve on staff.
Theology and Ministry Philosophy
Rizzo’s ministry philosophy centers on the belief that serving hurting people is not a program a church runs but a daily identity it lives out.
He has said that if you “cut him,” he still bleeds outreach to hurting humanity, a conviction that traces directly back to how he himself came to faith, through a church’s outreach event rather than a traditional sermon.
That philosophy shaped every phase of his ministry, from the free garage sale that launched Healing Place Church’s identity to his current role overseeing outreach, missions, prison ministries, and Serve Day initiatives across Church of the Highlands’ network.
Influence and Legacy
Rizzo’s Servolution movement and the ARC church-planting network he helped found have shaped how a generation of American evangelical churches think about community outreach, treating service to the poor as central to the church’s mission rather than a peripheral program.
ARC’s growth from a handful of church plants in 2000 to more than 1,000 churches worldwide represents one of the larger church-planting success stories in recent American evangelical history.
At Church of the Highlands, Rizzo has also become a central figure in the church’s pastoral restoration work, helping guide other pastors who have gone through moral failures back into ministry, informed directly by his own experience going through that process himself.
Criticism and Controversies
In July 2012, Healing Place Church’s spirituality board placed Rizzo on a sabbatical, citing spiritual, physical, and emotional exhaustion.
Two months later, Rizzo and DeLynn resigned as co-pastors of the church they had founded nearly two decades earlier.
At the time, church leadership offered few public details, and Rizzo told the congregation only that he had “not made good choices as a dad, as a husband, as a leader” during that period.
In August 2013, after a 14-month restoration process overseen by Chris Hodges and a group of fellow pastors, Rizzo was welcomed back into public ministry as an associate pastor at Church of the Highlands.
During that restoration announcement, Hodges disclosed that Rizzo had been involved in what he called a “brief but inappropriate friendship with another woman,” publicly confirming that the 2012 resignation had stemmed from an extramarital affair.
Rizzo completed a 31-point restoration plan that included counseling for both him and DeLynn before returning to the pulpit.
More recently, Rizzo has been named as a defendant in a 2021 lawsuit filed by a former intern at Vibrant Church in Columbus, Mississippi, an ARC member congregation.
The lawsuit alleges Rizzo, in his role overseeing ARC, failed to protect the intern after learning she had been sexually harassed by a pastor at that church, and that similar complaints against the same pastor had been reported as early as 2016.
As of this writing, the allegations in that lawsuit remain unproven in court, and Rizzo has not publicly responded to the specific claims.
Net Worth
There is no independently verified net worth figure for Dino Rizzo.
A small number of low-quality aggregator sites estimate his net worth at around $1 million, but that figure is not backed by any public financial disclosure. Flicxa treats this as an unverified estimate rather than a confirmed number.
Interesting Facts About Dino Rizzo
- He worked as a young youth pastor under televangelist Jimmy Swaggart before founding his own church
- Healing Place Church’s identity as “the church that gives stuff away” started from a garage sale that was never meant to be a giveaway
- The church’s very first offering came from Lakewood Church founder John Osteen, who wanted to support the Rizzos’ vision personally
- Healing Place Church housed and fed tens of thousands of displaced residents during Hurricane Katrina in 2005
- He hosts a YouTube interview series called Unscripted, featuring candid conversations with pastors and church leaders
Timeline of Key Events
- Circa 1964: Born the youngest of three children in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
- Late 1980s: Marries DeLynn Austin
- 1993: Dino and DeLynn found Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- 1996: Son Dylan Rizzo is born in Baton Rouge
- 2005: Healing Place Church shelters thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees
- 2009: Publishes Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving
- 2000: Co-founds the Association of Related Churches (ARC)
- July 2012: Placed on sabbatical by Healing Place Church’s spirituality board
- September 2012: Resigns as senior pastor of Healing Place Church
- August 2013: Returns to public ministry as an associate pastor at Church of the Highlands
- 2021: Named as a defendant in a lawsuit connected to an ARC member church in Mississippi
- May 30, 2026: Son Dylan Rizzo dies at age 30 from cardiac arrest related to an undiagnosed heart condition
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Dino Rizzo leave his church?
Rizzo resigned as senior pastor of Healing Place Church in September 2012 following an extramarital affair, a fact Church of the Highlands pastor Chris Hodges publicly confirmed the following year when Rizzo returned to ministry.
When did Dino Rizzo leave Healing Place?
He took a sabbatical in July 2012 and formally resigned as senior pastor two months later, in September 2012, after 19 years leading the church he and his wife founded.
Where is Dino Rizzo today?
Rizzo serves as Outreach and Missions Pastor on the senior leadership team at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama, and as Executive Director of the Association of Related Churches.
What happened to Dino Rizzo’s son?
Dino and DeLynn Rizzo’s son, Dylan Rizzo, died on May 30, 2026, at age 30, following cardiac arrest connected to a recently diagnosed heart condition. He was survived by his wife, Layne, and their young son, Redding.
How old is Dino Rizzo?
Rizzo’s exact birth date has not been publicly confirmed, but available details place his birth around 1964, making him approximately 61 or 62 years old as of 2026.
Who is Dino Rizzo’s wife?
His wife is DeLynn Rizzo, née Austin, whom he met while she was in high school and leading worship at a church service. The couple has co-led ministry together since founding Healing Place Church in 1993.
Final Word
Dino Rizzo built a career on the conviction that serving hurting people is the clearest way to show them who God is, a conviction that carried Healing Place Church through Hurricane Katrina and helped plant more than a thousand churches through ARC. That same church has now become the place where his family gathered in June 2026 to grieve his son, a reminder that the man who spent decades showing up for other people’s worst days is now living through one of his own.
