By Bob Allen
The pastor at the largest Southern Baptist church in Tennessee died Nov. 18 after a nearly two-year battle with cancer.
Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., announced that David Landrith, pastor since 1997 and the third senior pastor since the 9,000-member megachurch’s founding in 1977, died early Tuesday morning at home.
Landrith, 51, a married father of three, was diagnosed in March 2013 with a rare and aggressive form of cancer called colorectal melanoma. Despite several surgeries and clinical trial medicines, the cancer continued to spread to his lungs and then to his brain.
Landrith posted updates on his condition on the church website as recently as Oct. 23. Executive pastor Lance Taylor added a post Nov. 9 reporting that Landrith’s condition had declined during a two-week hospital stay and on Nov. 18 shared with “great sadness” that “Pastor David has gone to be with the Lord.”
Landrith, a 1986 graduate of Belmont University who went on to earn his M.Div. at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, arrived when Long Hollow Baptist Church had a single campus and average attendance of 350.
Over the years he led the congregation to expand to five campuses with an average weekly attendance of 7,154. In 2014 Long Hollow bypassed Bellevue Baptist Church in suburban Memphis as the largest SBC church in Tennessee and the 21st largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Despite Landrith’s illness, in 2013 Long Hollow Baptist Church became the first church in the Tennessee Baptist Convention to baptize at least 1,000 people in a single church year.
Funeral arrangements are pending.