If you’ve come this far into the website, you’re somewhat interested in findout out about me, Matt, the teaching pastor, and maybe from that learn about who we are.
I often say, “as the leadership goes, so goes the body.” My experience in churches has been that as leadership grows spiritually, so grows the church body spiritually. B/c of that I deeply consider all that Paul says to Timothy in the Scriptures such as, “Keep a firm grasp on both your character and your teaching. Don’t be diverted. Just keep at it.” (from The Message I Tim. 4:16).
Just keep at it! I’m still learning and growing in my faith, knowledge, and relationship with God.
My wife and I have experienced good and bad things in life. We have been incredibly blessed in health and provisions, and not for anything we have done. In fact, we have been far from deserving of God’s grace or blessing on us nor His forgiveness that he has given us in Jesus.
So, b/c of his kindness and mercy to us we persevere - we keep at it only by His provisions and strength.
SOME DETAILS OF MY LIFE ARE…
I grew up in Kentucky and graduated from Henderson County about 17 years ago. I went to college (Taylor University) where I met Mary Ruth, who was from Chambersburg, PA (her family now lives in Philly). I came to a believing trust in Jesus as God and his death as punishment for my failures/sin when I was 13 years old. I was alone and in my bedroom after listening to the gospel for several years at Fellowship of Christian Athletes and random youth and church events. I was baptized several years later at a church in Henderson.
Mary Ruth and I met and married two weeks after college graduation, and before I married her we both discussed our faith deeply before we ever were engaged or dated. She was my friend long before we dated and she is one of the greatest blessings God caused me to stumble into.
We married and moved to Seattle with an intention of working and attending graduate school part time. Niether one of us at the time had any intention of being in church leadership, or being pastors. In fact, before we were married, we had discussed that we both were markedly opposed to that idea at the time. But I did want to study Scripture in more depth and it was coupled with a passion for Counseling/Psychology. So, we moved to Seattle where we worked and attended Western Seminary Seattle for 3 years. I was a full time stockbroker for 3-5 years, and all of that time I was working in homeless shelters, crisis care, suicide hotlines, and as a therapist/counselor. I graduated with an MA in Counseling and we moved to Indianapolis where I became a full time stock broker.
We had our first son in Indianapolis and I trained and studied to change my “career” from stockbroker/financial planner to IT professional. But during that time I was unsettled and started re-evaluating my faith and sense of career. I made some decisions in prayer to follow God’s leading for further involvement in the body of Christ however that might come. A few weeks later I attended a small men’s study, and after a moment of teaching/sharing an older gentleman I did not know proceeded to let me know he was spending his blessed wealth on financing people to study Scripture so they could more effectively teach or lead and wanted to help pay my way to specifically study the Scriptures.
We took that as a leading from God and moved to Deerfield, IL, where we spent 3 years studying Scripture and pastoral work in great depth. I chose Trinity Divinity in Chicago for it’s commitment to the original languages (Hebrew/Greek) and it’s high academic standards.
I love studying and teaching the Scriptures, but I am aware of what Jesus says to the intelligent/academics of his time:
39-40“You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want. ”
From Chicago, we were invited to move to a small town in Pennsylvania and help pastor/teach at a church. I wish I could say I was a huge success as a pastor and leader in that small town, but there is no outward evidence of that. I love many people still there, and remember them and my time there fondly. But my departure was not necessarily an unhappy thing for many of them. Even so, I found that the personal challenges and hardship were not outside of God’s design. He has worked in the hearts of many, including myself, in learning from Him and about Him. As a good friend there told me, “Does God want us to do something or talk to someone? Maybe. But even if we are not at our best game, He will work through us. Trust.”
When we moved back to Evansville, IN in the fall of 2007, we came with the purpose of finding work. We did plan on participating in a small group that had developed into a small church plant (you can read some of their history here) but we were not sure of the details of how that would work out.
We found that doors quickly opened, and we were given a church planting grant from the Converge Mid America Church planting conference. It provided resources and encouragement to reach out to unchurched and de-churched around our area.
That is a brief sense of my story before I returned to the Tri-state area. Probably more than you are wanting to read, and if you’ve gotten this far, I’m impressed :-).
We have two boys and we are continueing to work out our faith with “fear and trembling” as the Bible says, and that includes leading and shepherding of the body of Sojourn Church.
We know God is gracious and merciful b/c we have experienced that in our lives. The Scripture remind us of those things that we have known in our lives about God as a Father who loves us b/c Jesus took our sins and washed us clean. And that is what we want to live out and tell people about.
We also know he died for those who were sick with failure of their sin, not the righteous who had their lives together (Luke 5:31-32), and he works through the broken. As a church, our mission is stated as “Helping people find their way back to God.” Whether you have chosen to trust Jesus death for your sins, or know little to nothing about Him or what that means, we are interested in walking alongside others to live our lives finding our way back to God.
