I remember riding in the back of Kevin Jonas’ car while attending Bible college. He asked me what I wanted to do in life to which I responded, “I just want to lead worship.” “Just lead worship?” he quipped. He was the worship leader for chapel services at the college, so he jokingly acted as though he was insulted.
It wasn’t until a few years (’94) later that I would preach my first sermon. I had gone to Canada to stand as best man for my good friend Bruce Crowe’s wedding. On Friday at lunch, he said, “Matt I want you to preach tonight. You can go pray about this, but you should spend most of the time getting the message together, because I don’t think God is going to let you off the hook on this.” You can not know how terrified I was. If there was a way to say no to Bruce that day I would have found it, but from the moment Bruce ‘volunteered’ me for this, I had the sinking feeling that Bruce was right – God wanted me to share that night with this youth group. I ended up mainly just sharing my personal testimony. I talked about the death of my father at age 12 and how God’s grace became real to me. Though I very much hope that the master tape for that message has been destroyed, I can say that I keenly felt the Holy Spirit’s presence that night. I started the message trembling and terrified but within moments there was a peace that settled over me. After it was all over and most everyone was gone a mother came forward and asked me to pray for her daughter. She was 12 and that week she had lost her father. I felt as if God was saying, “This is why you couldn’t say “no” this afternoon. I brought you here for her.” I walked toward the back and found the girl on the back pew. She looked up at me with her skinny face and long blonde hair, then with her shoulders and head curving down towards her legs began weeping. I felt God’s heart for her . I wept with them for several minutes, praying when I could.
In the following years I had a growing desire to understand Scripture and think on paper about various doctrinal and practical topics. I was called upon by different pastors to preach and felt both an increasing personal sense of a calling to preach as well as outside confirming voices from leaders God put in my life that this may be what God was calling me to do. These were the birthing years of what would become an increasing and indeed compelling desire to do what I most desired not to do – to preach God’s Word.
I don’t have time here to tell the rest of the story, but God would take me through several years of development and preparation before I came on full-time at Lakeview in 2002. I am still growing and developing. And I have grown much more as a result of being, if you will, thrown into the task of preaching. And I have wonderful mentors and friends who help me grow and mature. Pastors Keith Collins and Peter Davidson have given me scores of helpful encouragements, corrections and wisdom gained by thousands of given sermons and counseling sessions! “Matt,” Keith said early on, “you need to connect the doctrine of the passage to existing thought patterns and life issues people are facing.” “Matt,” says Peter in a fatherly tone, “you talked about boldness from Acts and only mentioned the Holy Spirit in one sentence.” I’ve benefited immeasurably by their input along with Jeff’s tremendous ability to encourage and sharpen me over these past 5 years.
Perhaps you too are starting to sense a possible call to pastoral ministry. If so, here are some helpful words from a man who has spent many years identifying, training and deploying pastors into the vineyards of local church ministry.
