October 1, 2026
BENEVOLENCE, Ga. - Bivocational pastors are spiritual heroes. Holding down a full-time job while also pastoring a church is not for the faint of heart. Doing so while pastoring three churches borders on the impossible. Lee Wright, who does just that, says God makes it possible.
Wright, a full-time safety officer for the Georgia Forestry Commission, also pastors Benevolence Baptist Church in Benevolence, Brooksville Baptist Church in Brooksville, and Coleman Baptist Church in Coleman.
“In my past, it was always ‘I'm Superman, I can do anything I set my mind to do’,” Wright said. “It’s humbling to know that there's no way I could do any of that without God giving it to me and Him allowing me to do it.”
When not on the road, Wright preaches the second and fourth Sunday of every month at Benevolence at 11 a.m., every first and third Sunday at 11 a.m. at Brooksville, and every second and fourth Sunday at 9:30 a.m. at Coleman. These are his first church pastorates.
There are a total of 50 attendees in all three churches. He co-pastors Coleman with Jeff Hines, who is a full-time pastor at Fort Gaines Baptist Church. He often fills in on fifth Sundays at Bluffton Baptist Church in Bluffton.
Wright also holds a weekly Wednesday night Bible study and worship service at his home. He facilitates church activities such as Christmas events, revivals, fellowship meals, and community backpack giveaways with fellow Georgia Baptists. He’s been the pastor of all three churches for 11 years.
“The hardest part is when you have five funerals in one week, and you've got things going on at work, and you've got to juggle all that. It's not falling victim to the, 'Oh my, what am I gonna do?' mentality,” Wright said.
"He is heartfelt. He is hard-working, loves his family, believes in his community, and believes in God. Whether a stranger, a next-door neighbor, or someone he deeply loves, he tries to help everyone, and he knows how to meet people and how to mingle with people very well,” said Benevolence church member Karan Pittman.
Wright preaches the same expository text at Coleman and Benevolence, but they can turn out different sermons. “Sometimes it's the whole chapter, sometimes it's not. It just depends. All I do is prepare my heart, and then God does the work,” he said
His greatest attribute is his dedication to delivering the Word as it should be delivered, said Pittman. “He tries to make certain that at no point he puts his thoughts or feelings in what is already in the Bible.”
Wright says pastoring three churches hasn’t been a problem. His officer job, which he started in 2025, allows him to check on people by phone while driving. Visiting church members and checking on them isn’t a hard thing either, because he lives in a small community and everybody knows how everybody's doing.
Balancing secular and ministerial work can be tiresome. “Sunday is that day to just not move,” he said. The support of his wife is imperative, he said. “That kind of forces me to rest sometimes.”
He grew up in Benevolence, which is about 60 miles southeast of Columbus, and is the fourth generation to live on his family farm. Everybody who lives to the right of his house attends Brooksville church, and everybody who lives on the left side of his house attends Benevolence Church. Coleman is 20 miles southwest of Benevolence.
He was teaching Sunday school at Benevolence and attending another church in 2015 before being asked to fill in after the former Benevolence pastor stepped down.
Feeling the need for a message to be delivered, he prepared one with no experience. “I had no clue how to do it,” he said. He accepted the position a few months later.
Except for a short time, Benevolence and Brooksville had the same pastor. He became the Brooksville pastor and Coleman co-pastor around the same time.
“He stepped up to become basically a lay preacher at that time, and he went way out of his own comfort zone and what he knew he could do to deliver to us, and it was just unbelievable. He helped to revitalize the church, no doubt about it.” Pittman said.
Wright says bi-vocational ministry is very important to the Kingdom of God. While the financial ability to support a full-time pastor often isn’t there for small churches, they need a tent maker, too. “You need somebody that's willing to support them and willing to fill the need as long as the need is there. To me, that's important,” he said.
He and his wife, Katie, are currently taking classes to be certified biblical counselors. “I'm big into discipleship. That's one of the main things that I preach, the biblical model of discipleship that Jesus laid out, the Acts 2 model of the church. And biblical counseling really just falls into that process,” Wright said.
He hopes to open a Christian Resource Center that will house a bookstore and also have counseling available.
Wright says he is honored to serve his churches.
“There’s a lot of encouragement, a lot of love, and a lot of support. There are also times when I don't feel like I'm getting where I need to get," he said. "I have to remember in these times God's called me to scatter the seed, to teach the word as it's written, and that he sprouts the seed in his time."
He concluded, “It's just humbling when you think you got it all figured out, you got it all mapped out, and you got it all planned, and then God intervenes and says, 'No, I'm going to show you what you're capable of in My power.'”
Pittman described Wright best, saying, “He has a huge heart, and he wants to use it for the best and the most divine purposes.”
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