Freed, Not Fired: How Brittany DeRoche Turned Unexpected Loss Into a National Church Consulting Ministry

There are moments in life when everything a person has built, the career, the stability, the identity, and the sense of calling, seems to be stripped away in a single conversation. For Brittany DeRoche, that moment came in December, when she was unexpectedly fired from a company she had given six years of her life to.

The decision did not make sense to her. The reasons she was given did not align with the work she had been producing, the praise she had received, or the promotion conversations that had been unfolding. She had been carrying two roles at once, preparing to move out of project coordination and fully into the work she loved most. There had been no performance reviews warning her that the end was coming. She was blindsided, and in an instant, she lost what she believed had become her forever dream job.

Then, in January, Brittany caught up with a new connection, and he offered words that reframed the season in a way she could not ignore: “You weren’t fired. You were freed.”

Looking back, she can see the truth in that sentence. “I can see where God was protecting me, that I was really made for more. And that’s how I launched my business.”

That freedom, as painful as it felt, became the foundation for Church Activation Strategies, a national consulting company based in Augusta, Georgia, that helps churches activate underutilized spaces through strategic childcare partnerships and other community focused opportunities. Brittany works with churches across the country, bringing a rare combination of project management discipline, lived experience as a mother who has faced the childcare gap firsthand, and a deep desire to help churches keep mission and vision at the center of every partnership.

A Story Worth Telling

To understand where Brittany is today, you have to understand where she has been. Her story is not simply about a career disruption or the launch of a new business. It is about endurance, obedience, survival, rebuilding, and the kind of faith that keeps showing up when life keeps trying to knock you down.

Doctors have told Brittany that, medically, she should have died four times. The first came after the birth of her oldest daughter. Brittany was 19 when doctors removed what they initially believed was a large ovarian cyst. It turned out to be a rare malignant ovarian tumor, roughly the size of an ostrich egg. The cancer had been encapsulated. Had it ruptured, doctors told her she would not be here today. Her daughter’s birth became the unexpected doorway to discovering the cancer that might otherwise have gone undetected. In a very real way, Brittany says, that daughter saved her life.

After cancer, while raising her daughter as a single mom, Brittany found her way into endurance sports. She began running marathons, triathlons, and ultramarathons. She was not chasing easy finish lines. She was building strength, one impossible looking goal at a time. When she was training for her first full Ironman, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and told she would likely never finish a full Ironman. She finished anyway and then went on to complete four more full Ironman races. She met her now husband and was racing to inspire others to never give up.

During her second pregnancy, Brittany was still living as an endurance athlete. She ran a 100 mile race while nine weeks pregnant, along with 50Ks and half marathons during that season. Then, after delivery, life flipped upside down again. She was diagnosed with pregnancy induced heart failure. Her heart function had dropped to 15 percent, and doctors were not sure she would make it through the night.

That was when she was told she would never race again. Brittany’s response carried the grit that runs through her whole story.  She married her best friend in the fall of 2019, but even that joyful season carried a deep and unexpected grief. A close friend from her racing days, an ordained minister who had become like family, officiated the wedding for Brittany and her husband. The very next day, he suffered a stroke. Instead of beginning her honeymoon in celebration, Brittany spent four days in the ICU by his side as he passed away, helping take phone calls from friends and family who wanted the chance to say goodbye.

The hurdles did not stop there. Her third pregnancy brought serious complications and an emergency C-section to keep both her and her son alive. Then, ten months after her fourth baby was born, her cancer returned. She underwent a full hysterectomy, and post-operative complications sent her back to the hospital with two large pulmonary embolisms in her right lung, something many people do not survive.

Despite the hurdles, Brittany did not lose her faith, and she did not give up. She wrestled. She grieved. She questioned. But she kept returning to God as her anchor. Today, she is making a comeback not only in her career, but also as an athlete. Since being told she would never race again, she has crossed the finish line of a half Ironman, completed multiple half marathons, and is training toward her sixth full Ironman.

The Lane She Did Not Know She Was Building

Two weeks before COVID shut down the country, Brittany was hired as a project administrator for a consulting company that worked with churches. She did not come from the church consulting world. She had grown up Catholic and was unfamiliar with much of the non denominational church culture around her new role. She was hired for project management background, structure, and process, not because she knew the church landscape.

About a month into the job, she began asking God why she was there. Then she remembered something a woman at a home church had told her about a year earlier. The woman had seen a vision of Brittany working as an administrator in the church. At the time, Brittany had politely dismissed it. But now she was sitting in a project administrator role, working with churches.

“I felt like God was like, hey, you remember a year ago at that home church? You’re a project administrator working with churches. Holy cow, I am on God’s path.”

Three years into that role, Brittany was asked to help research childcare providers who might partner with churches that had underutilized space. The original opportunity was not something she claims as her own idea. Her former employer saw the need, and Brittany began seeing it alongside him as she stepped into the work. What made her passionate was that it made sense from both sides. As a mom who had personally faced childcare waiting lists, she understood the pressure families were under. As someone working closely with churches, she loved seeing how a building could become a blessing to the community beyond Sunday morning.

As Brittany stepped into the work to help a co-worker who was doing the work, she saw there was not yet a strong process in place, so she began building one. She organized the work, started leading calls, nurtured relationships, and helped turn the concept into a functioning lane. Brittany is now building on and refining the model she helped create and lead at her previous company. In that role, she connected roughly two dozen churches with childcare providers, helping create an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 childcare spaces. The projected ministry impact was significant, approximately $77 million over the next 15 years, or about $200,000 annually for each participating church.

The work lit her up because it carried both practical and kingdom impact. It was not simply about filling classrooms. It was about helping churches steward what they already had, serve urgent needs in their communities, and create sustainable pathways to fund ministry. Then, without warning, the work was taken from her.

When God Disrupts the Comfortable

The firing was a shock. Brittany had been loyal, productive, and deeply invested in the work. Praying through what the next chapter would be, she heard God telling her the work was not done and to rebuild. She had no non compete and no non solicit agreement holding her back. Legally and practically, she was free to rebuild.

Her husband was one of the first people to push her forward. “You built this for them,” he told her. “Why not build it for yourself? I have 100 percent faith you can rebuild this.”

So Brittany filed the LLC, began setting up the infrastructure, and stepped into the unfamiliar reality of building something from scratch. As former clients and relationships heard the news, some began reaching out. They knew Brittany. They had built trust with her. They wanted to stay connected.

On a trip to Colorado Springs to reconnect with faith leaders from a keynote speaking engagement she had been invited to months earlier, a snowstorm grounded her flight. The delay meant more expense in a season when margins were thin. Brittany felt the stress, but she went with the flow. When she walked down to the lobby to extend her stay, she discovered a church networking group hosting a conference in the very hotel where she was staying. She had no idea it was happening.

She called her husband, barely able to contain herself. “Isn’t this one of those God moments?” he asked. “Yes,” she told him. “It’s a God wink.”

Brittany did some work in the lobby, connected with a few pastors from the conference, and received what felt like a reminder from God: He was present in the transition, even before every door was fully open.

Showing Up While Rebuilding

Brittany is candid that she is still in the early stages of building. Church Activation Strategies launched in January, and while the company is new, the work itself is being rebuilt from experience. She is learning the business side in real time, but she is not learning the mission from scratch. She has already lived the process, built the relationships, led the conversations, and seen what happens when a church and a provider align around a shared community need.

The finances are tight. The uncertainty is real. But Brittany does not frame this season through panic. She frames it through faith, honesty, and steady obedience.

“I have seen God show up more in this season than I ever imagined. We’ve somehow been able to stay afloat on one income when we couldn’t figure it out before. It’s all God.”

What she brings to churches is not just a business model. She brings a conviction that God is in the work, and that kingdom strategy must never outrun mission alignment. For Brittany, the value is not only connecting a church building with a childcare provider. The value is keeping the church’s mission and vision front and center so that any partnership serves the congregation, the provider, the families, and the broader community with integrity.

Her work sits at the intersection of urgent needs. Families need safe, quality childcare. Providers need appropriate space. Churches often have strategically located buildings that sit underused throughout the week. At the same time, Brittany sees many churches navigating shifting giving trends and looking for new ways to fund ministry without making yet another ask from the pulpit. Church Activation Strategies exists to connect those realities in a way that turns a building into a community asset and a ministry funding strategy.

The Invitation in the Story

For years, Brittany gave people the high level version of her life. Cancer. Heart failure. A complicated pregnancy. Pulmonary embolisms. Miraculous children. Losses. Finish lines. Setbacks. She would share the headlines and watch people’s faces change. Now she is learning to lean into the full story, not because it is easy, but because she believes it has a purpose.

Her life has taught her that survival is not the same as calling, but survival can prepare a person to recognize calling when it comes. Every diagnosis she outlived, every race she finished after someone said she could not, every season she had to rebuild, and every door God opened in a way she could not have planned, all of it became part of the foundation she is standing on now.

Her encouragement to other Christian business leaders is simple, but hard earned: do not give up. Building a business is not easy. Obedience is not always comfortable. There are seasons when the seeds are expensive, the tears are real, and the fruit has not appeared yet. But Brittany believes God is still working while the leader is waiting.

“You have to blindly trust that God’s going to provide,” she said. “Build the business, trust the process, stay consistent. Fruit is the last thing that grows on the tree.”

For any leader sitting in their own storm, especially the season where the thing they worked for is taken without warning, Brittany DeRoche’s story carries a practical word: the work you did for someone else may have been part of the foundation God intended to use when it was time to build something through you.

The work is national. The need is real. And the woman leading it has already survived enough to know that what looks like an ending may actually be a release into what God had prepared all along.

Learn more about Brittany DeRoche and Church Activation Strategies through her LinkedIn profile or by reaching out directly through her growing network.