Rob Chartrand (00:01.9)
All right, here we go. Well, hey, we're excited to have here on Church in the North, Matt Naismith. He is, I'm gonna say this, it's long, church planting catalyst and collegiate strategist for Send Network based out of Guelph, Ontario. And he also produces and hosts the Sewers podcast. Anyway, that's a mouthful. Matt, welcome to Church in the North.
Matt (00:25.198)
Rob, thanks for having me on. I'm honored and been looking forward to this conversation.
Rob Chartrand (00:30.604)
Well, we want to talk about your back story, your journey into ministry. I don't know if you came out of your mother's womb holding a Bible thinking that you were going to preach the gospel, but tell us about how it all gets started. How'd you end up in ministry?
Matt (00:44.142)
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I started my, my church experience of a long history of Christians in my family. My grandfather moved here from Scotland, with my grandmother. They had one son at the time, shortly after arriving in Canada from Scotland, my dad was born and then they had another son, my uncle Dave, and they were heavily involved in the formation of the Bible chapel slash brethren movement, here in Canada.
And so my grandfather, he was a medical doctor Monday to Friday. And then on Sundays, he would go to breaking of bread services. Then he would preach at family Bible hours. And then Sunday evenings, he would do the Sunday evening service. And so he was one of these itinerant Bible preacher and teachers. He ended up being one of the founders of Hortholake's Bible school, which was a brethren school in Peterborough, Ontario. And so a long history in my family of, of people that love the Lord.
passionate about gospel ministry. And so I was raised in that environment. I was initially in a brethren Bible chapel. And then around my youth age, my parents made the transition to an alliance church local in our city, which was a huge deal to my grandparents that my parents were making that transition. But they saw that what we needed was an environment where there were other young people. And at the time, the Brethren movement was struggling to attract young people.
And so my parents made that transition and that was a really instrumental transition. I came under the leadership of a local youth pastor who invested deeply in my life. And as time went on, as I thought about what he did and his role, he gave me opportunities to lead the junior high parts of the junior high ministry and specifically a junior high group of boys when I was in high school. And I remember having some of the parents of those boys in junior high come.
come up to me on a Sunday, you know, reflecting on the midweek Bible study that I was leading with their sons and just saying, I don't know what it is and what's happening in that Bible study, but they come home and they're talking about things that you've been talking to them about. And so right away there was, they're beginning this affirmation of ministry in my life. I then remember working at a car wash. Like there was a car wash that had you do it yourself, Bae, as you'd pull your vehicle in. But then there was also.
Matt (03:02.734)
car wash that you pull into and it pulls your car through and neutral. And I remember working, a lot of that was independent work and just reflecting on my own, you know, youth group nights that were happening at the time and, you know, verses of the Bible that were focused on. And I remember like walking around, see, it feels very strange, but walking around thinking of unique and different ways to communicate the truths of those scriptures. So in many ways, Rob, I felt like if there's something that I'm made to do, it's to...
work in building the Kingdom of God and participating in the life of local churches and helping local churches take their next steps of faithfulness towards the Great Commission in particular.
Rob Chartrand (03:45.452)
Wow. So just to clarify, was you brethren or brethren in Christ? Okay.
Matt (03:50.03)
So brethren, yeah, so not brethren in Christ. So yeah, brethren.
Rob Chartrand (03:54.444)
And so then a lot of those churches wouldn't have had paid full -time vocational workers.
Matt (03:59.342)
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah. Ministry kind of birthed out of brethren churches that wanted to pursue full -time ministers and that became vision ministries. And actually uniquely after I went to Tyndale graduated from Tyndale in Toronto, I started working as youth and young adults pastor in a church that was connected to vision ministry. So it had brethren roots, but it then began pursuing a partnership with vision ministries.
Rob Chartrand (04:25.868)
Okay, well, I made you jump ahead a little bit, but you know, from working at the car wash, working at the car wash, and you're thinking about how God has uniquely wired you, where did that lead you? How did that lead into ministry? Did that lead you right to Tyndale or was there a gap in there?
Matt (04:31.31)
Yeah.
Matt (04:42.286)
Yeah, you know what, there was a, there was a small gap of time where I wanted to go into firefighting. And I think it was because there was a guy in the church that was part of our local church at the time who was also in firefighting. So I think there's this class that I took in high school at the time careers class, I think it was called and you had to pick a career. And at that point I was like, I'm going to pursue firefighting, but just didn't have a lot of peace about it. And the invitation towards the pastoral vocation just became really,
present in my mind, couldn't escape it. And so began exploring what it would look like to go to Bible school, explored Ambrose a little bit in Alberta, because we were connected at that point to the Christian Missionary Alliance denomination. Then randomly met some people that were going to Tyndale and really felt like, why do I need to go out of province when Tyndale is about two hours from where I live? And wanted to have the convenience of being able to go back home on weekends if I, you know,
obviously more available than going out of province. And so began pursuing the Tyndale route.
Rob Chartrand (05:45.932)
Yeah, well, and that seems very common today with theological education. It's largely regionalized. People would sooner go to the college near them than across the country to say a denominational school or a school that maybe their family had gone to, et cetera. Just curious, because I worked out East in Alliance Churches. What Alliance Church were you at?
Matt (06:00.27)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (06:07.246)
So I was at Tilson Berg Alliance Church. that was the local. Yeah. So that's in a little small town called Tilson Berg. the joke is my back's the lakes. When I hear that word, Stomp and Tom Connors wrote a song about Tilson Berg because of all the tobacco fields. And actually in high school, I picked tobacco. it was a great job for a high school student and, you know, just really taught me the, the value of hard work, as a high school student. And, and so anyways, yes, Tilson Berg Alliance was, is where I was.
Rob Chartrand (06:10.156)
Never heard of it.
Rob Chartrand (06:22.38)
Okay.
No way.
Rob Chartrand (06:37.676)
Wow, okay. So how did you end up going from that vision church and end up planning a church? How did that come about?
Matt (06:48.942)
Yeah. So I came to that church, vision ministry's church and started working in youth ministry transitioned. That was a real season. Like I would just call it a greenhouse of opportunity. I was given lots of opportunities to lead. that was a church of about a thousand attending on a weekend. And so we had a junior high ministry of, you know, 70 to 80 kids, 50 to 60 in high school ministry. And in that season, I started working as the junior high pastor, but then after about a year and a half,
Rob Chartrand (06:59.756)
Hmm.
Matt (07:17.262)
My gifts were very complimentary with the senior high ministry leader. And so we actually took a team leadership approach to our next generation ministry. Just some vision of the pastor at the time and also some convictions of myself and the senior high pastor. So I became the teaching and leadership pastor for junior and senior high ministry. And then we didn't really have much happening as far as young adult ministry. And so we started a ministry, we started sending a bus to the university.
and in that season, we were also, our leadership was extended to also give leadership to the young adult ministry. And we hired an administrator to help on the administrative side of things. So from a next generation ministry, it was really looking forward. And a lot of people are nowadays are talking about, you know, Co leadership with different gifts. We were doing that, you know, 14, 13 or 14 years ago in the context of our next generation ministry in Canada.
And then as time went on, I just, God was giving me visions and pictures of church planting. I went through an ordination process in the church, came to some secondary theological convictions, started thinking about church planting, started thinking about denominations I could work with that would align more closely with my theological convictions at that stage and discerned that church planting was going to be.
Rob Chartrand (08:30.38)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (08:44.238)
the next thing that I was going to pursue up to that point in my vocational ministry life. As I talked about the junior high, the senior high ministry, and then starting a young adult ministry, many of the things that I was involved in were the starting of things or taking a more entrepreneurial approach to leadership.
Rob Chartrand (08:57.004)
Okay.
Right, right. So how old were you at this time? Where were you at in terms of family life? What was going on there?
Matt (09:05.998)
Rob, that's totally, this is totally God's grace. I think when I was first hired as the full -time junior high pastor, I was 21. I was then at that church for about four, four and a half years and at 25 I planted. So that was, it felt like every time for the last 10 years that I have had my birthday, it feels like when people ask me, how are you doing today on your birthday? It's like, I feel like I'm catching up a little bit with my life.
because we planted then at 25 and then I was with that church for nine years before stepping away and it being transitioned to other leadership. And so just a real gift of God's grace and just trusting the Lord with the gifts that he'd given me and trying to be faithful.
Rob Chartrand (09:50.124)
Yeah. Yeah. 25. That's, that's young man. I didn't plant a cross point until I was in my thirties. And even then I felt young. I'd felt like I had so much yet to learn at that time. Yeah.
Matt (10:04.69)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting looking back because my character certainly was not in line with my competency. And so again, as I say, that was totally a gift of God's grace. I got married young when I was 21 or 22, I got married. And then we planted before we had our first son. So about a year after we planted, we had our first son.
Rob Chartrand (10:13.26)
Right. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (10:32.94)
Yeah, our kids were younger. We had two daughters and they were under 10, I think around, yeah, about that, yeah, when we planted. So that's a different story. But to be planting and carrying around a little baby, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of energy.
Matt (10:45.678)
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, though, like the people that the Lord invites to be part of your plant with you that you pray and say, okay, God, who are the people kind of within our relational circle that that you are putting on our hearts to invite to be part of the plant? Some of them were were very similar life stages as us. And so in the early days of the church, we were all very much in similar, similar phases of life.
There were a few that were older, but mostly a very similar phase of life. And so we were able to walk that journey out together.
Rob Chartrand (11:16.812)
Yeah, and I can imagine it would have a certain attraction and appeal to a certain demographic as well, knowing that their pastor is kind of in the same stage of life as them. And so you can kind of grow up together. So, okay, the church was called, and it's in Guelph, and it's called Church of the Ward, is that correct? Tell me about that name, of the ward, for our listeners who don't know what that exactly means.
Matt (11:35.982)
Yes. Yep.
Matt (11:41.806)
Yeah, so I'll connect it a little bit with the backstory. When I was on staff at that, the other larger vision ministries church, there was a couple Sunday mornings, it was a church around a thousand, as I was saying on a Sunday morning. And I just started having these visions of what would it look like? And we had a campus, like a larger campus to be able to house this number of people in ministries. I just had a couple of visions a couple of Sunday mornings where I looked out on the group and I wondered, you know, if we were to sell all the real estate we have out here and spread ourselves across the city.
into the different municipal wards and situate ourselves into smaller buildings, that would look more like we'd saturated the city rather than inviting people out to this church building that was a little bit outside of the city limits and was really, in some sense, felt like more of a destination for the people of our city. And so that sort of began birthing these concepts and ideas in my mind. I then came across the ministry of Jeff Vanderstelt. He had
planted, sort of replanted, if you look back at that story, Soma Tacoma and the Soma family of churches. And so we were really taking in a lot of their content, a lot of their initial videos and resources. And so just this vision of being a church of missional communities really was impressed upon our heart. At the same time, I was also down at catalyst leadership conference in Atlanta and went to the session that was called this workshop that was called leading from the difficult places.
Rob Chartrand (12:41.836)
So much. Yeah.
Matt (13:05.582)
And quite honestly, Rob, I thought it was about, you know, challenges in leadership. The people won't follow you, you know, all those sorts of things that leaders face. And it was actually three people that had all sold their homes, moved to low income neighborhoods and had planted churches and started entrepreneurial businesses on the side. And I was just convicted to the core because somebody at the end in question period raised their hand and they said, how do you get the people in your church to live this way? And again, this is now in combination with some of those
Rob Chartrand (13:22.956)
Okay, yeah.
Matt (13:35.342)
visions I had of this large gathering and multiplying throughout the city. And someone from the stage, one of the presenters said, you've got to lead the way. You've got to do it first. And so that night, my wife wasn't in that workshop session with me and I went back and we were in our hotel room and I said, sweetie, I think we've got to sell our house and move to a lower income neighborhood in our city and plant a church. And she said, well, she said, let's sit on that for a few weeks.
Rob Chartrand (13:58.604)
How'd that go over?
Ha ha ha.
Matt (14:05.134)
in all of her graciousness. And after about three weeks, we came back together and she said, yep, I think we're supposed to do this. You know, we were both exactly on the same page. And then we started praying about neighborhoods in our city. And the one that God ended up bringing unity over for ourselves was this neighborhood called the Ward, St. Patrick's Ward in Guelph. It was one of the top three neighborhoods in the city. Low income over half the neighborhood was renting at the time when we moved in.
Since that time when we first moved in, we still live in this neighborhood. 14 years ago, there's been quite a bit of gentrification. A bit of the history of the neighborhood is that Italians immigrated, built homes, and then those homes were sold. And the new people that bought them made single -family homes into multi -resident homes or multi -apartment dwellings. And so that's how it became kind of a...
neighborhood dominated by rental market primarily, and also more lower income, blue collar, higher population density. And the last neighborhood in the city of Guelph that really went through gentrification. And now we are very close to Go Train, which takes you right into Toronto. Lots of folks have started to move to this neighborhood because they can get on a Go Train and get into Toronto. And Guelph, like many cities that surround the greater Toronto area have kind of...
Rob Chartrand (15:07.756)
higher population density as well. Yeah.
Matt (15:32.046)
face this reality of prices increasing and things of that nature. But we really felt like this neighborhood was the place that we were supposed to plant. And so we called the church Church of the Ward. You know, when Paul writes letters to the church, he'd write to the Church of Ephesus. And so we really imagined our child self, we are going to be the Church of the Ward. And so we invited people to move from where they were living into this neighborhood and to be the incarnational presence. You know, as Eugene Peterson in the message.
And John describing that he says, and Jesus moved into the neighborhood. And so we really took that seriously. Hey, if we want to become part of this church, we invite you to move from where you are into this neighborhood. And we started prayer walking every single morning and just inviting God by His spirit to do something amazing here.
Rob Chartrand (16:20.204)
So what was it with Soma? Was it that Soma video, that 10 minute video they showed that's just beautiful cinematography and just compelling story? Did that grip your heart? Come on.
Matt (16:27.278)
Yes, yes. And you know what's very interesting because I've gotten to know Jeff Vanderstelt over the years. And I remember being at one of the conference with him and I just said, Hey, do you think you could share some of like the not good missional community Soma stories? Because I think people have this idealized vision. And I think in part that's come true actually over the last 14 years, I reflect as I reflect on that ministry and that movement is that.
Rob Chartrand (16:42.188)
Yuck.
Matt (16:54.286)
you know, people were looking for the next big thing in church planting or the next big thing as far as church models, which we'll probably get into here in a little bit. And, you know, they're like, we're going to do this mission or community thing. And then once you start actually embodying it, you discover, my goodness, people's lives are messy. This whole life on life thing, life in community and life on mission thing is so challenging. And so it's like they dip their feet and then quickly came out of it. and that's not the case everywhere. Some churches have been,
Rob Chartrand (17:11.948)
Totally, yeah.
Matt (17:22.766)
committed to staying within the model of missional communities, but they're definitely talked about less today than probably you remember, you know, 10 to 15 years ago.
Rob Chartrand (17:28.781)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, speaking of Eugene Peterson, I mean, it is a long obedience, right? You got to be at it for a long time to see fruit. And I think it was captivating for a very young church planter audience. And I don't think anybody everybody thought maybe it was like a microwave dinner. You could just get in, move into the neighborhood and everybody's lives would be changed, not realizing that this could take decades.
Matt (17:36.494)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (17:58.03)
Mm -hmm.
Rob Chartrand (17:58.444)
before you see real transformative work within a community. So those folks who came with you, how many families moved into the neighborhood? Because I mean, that's a big ask. That's a huge ask for people.
Matt (18:08.91)
Yeah, so there was two families that moved in. There was another family that had recently relocated to the neighborhood. So it wasn't immediately connected to the plant, but it was kind of connected to their own lives. They joined. And then there were three other families that were all in another neighborhood and they really prayed intensely about moving. But for a number of different reasons, it didn't make sense at the time. And so,
almost at the very beginning of the plant, I had this leadership decision to make. Do I invite these people to leave their neighborhood and come to this one to do ministry, or do I commission them almost right away into their own neighborhood to be the presence and to be the church of that ward? And so that's what happened. Like four weeks, five weeks into us doing weekly potluck dinners in our homes, we just said, hey, I think the...
three families that are up there, you guys stay there and start hosting a potluck dinner weekly in one of your homes and inviting your neighbors to it. And so right away, we almost launched here in these two neighborhoods. We did some unique missional things in the neighborhood that I'm in, but very much wanted the presence, the church of this neighborhood on the east end of the city to be the church there.
And there's lots of different models again of ministry of people leaving a neighborhood, going and do ministry in other places. But our vision, the incarnation of what we wanted to see was very much that putting flesh on in your neighborhood. We wanted to be a church of the neighborhood for the neighborhood. That was a slogan that we would say over and over again.
Rob Chartrand (19:44.748)
So in those early days, were you fully funded as a church planter then?
Matt (19:50.606)
Yeah. So I, I fundraised, the people that were part of our core team they gave, we were being supported monthly by our denomination about a thousand dollars a month. and then beyond that was individual fundraising. And so I always felt like Rob, that if, if I could do it full time and a couple of the metrics that I used at the time was one, you know, finances were being met and two, I was remaining busy.
Like there were things for me to do on a daily basis. and there were people that I was being invited to serve that I would continue in, in that capacity full time, but I always had it on the table with the Lord, like God, if you want me to do this, you know, convocationally do something else. I'll I'm totally willing to do that. But again, use those couple of other kinds of pieces to say, okay, God, if, if our finances are continuing to be met and there's things for me continually to give my time to on a daily basis.
know, and kind of fill that full -time week realm, then I'll continue doing this at a full -time capacity and God for whatever reason in His grace and bless that.
Rob Chartrand (20:59.244)
So did you eventually then move towards like a Sunday gathering expression on top of the weekly missional communities?
Matt (21:08.046)
Yeah, once our missional communities multiplied, just really recognized there is a need for us all to get together and kind of have the vision rehash scriptures taught, you know, all the things you read about in acts as far as committing themselves to the apostles teaching. And so we started, you know, bi -weekly gatherings at that stage. And then after about four or five months felt there was enough momentum that we'd started gathering, but it was really low key. it was in a bar in downtown, the downtown part of our city.
And, you know, kids ministry was one big, you know, there was no different age groups. Yeah, babies were mostly kept with their parents. I mean, it was really simple and it was also really affordable. One of the guys that was in our church was owned the building that the bar was in. And so we were able to use that space. It was extremely economical. And we just kind of kept on pace with where we were at.
Rob Chartrand (21:42.924)
put them all in a room together. Yeah.
Matt (22:03.406)
financially. And I mean, our first year budget was really low, like it was under $80 ,000. And we were able to do that for the first couple years. And people really just gave of themselves and their own finances above and beyond, you know, tithing to local ministry, like they just, we're going to do a barbecue for our neighbors, we'll pay for the barbecue, we're not going to depend on the church budget for those things.
Rob Chartrand (22:08.46)
Wow.
Rob Chartrand (22:27.116)
Yeah, so I'm gonna anticipate a problem and I'll see if it happened with you guys. People show up to Sunday mornings and they've never been in a missional community and you have to think through how do we integrate them into our philosophy when they're happy just to sit and soak on a Sunday. Did you guys face that problem?
Matt (22:43.726)
Yeah, almost, almost right away. Like, and I remember at that stage, you know, everybody that's kind of part of your core team is part of the email thread, you know, so pretty quickly there was an email thread. Hey, someone visited us on Sunday and you know, they're not connected to a missional community. Is it, is it all right if I invite them to ours? And so right away there was this invitation. Okay. How are we going to orient people that are joining us on a Sunday as being their front door experience to the life of what we're doing? Because probably those people.
Rob Chartrand (23:01.452)
Heheheheh
Matt (23:13.07)
have church background experience and people with church background come with certain expectations, experiences. And so how do we orient them to being a church of missional communities, you know, compared to what is known as the more traditional model of church.
Rob Chartrand (23:15.372)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (23:31.5)
Yeah, I mean, those are traditional models include small groups as a thing you attend, but a missional community is not something you attend. It's a way of being, it's a way of life. It's a radical reorientation of your life around the gospel. And so the commitment level is huge, right? I remember it was Hugh Halter's church. They would have this event every once in a while. It was supposed to be like the newcomers banquet, but it was basically the newcomers event where they talk you out of joining their church because...
Matt (24:00.782)
Mmm.
Rob Chartrand (24:01.26)
If you're not in, in their missional way of life, they say there's a better church for you down the road. How did you guys navigate those types of conversations?
Matt (24:07.086)
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I mean, as time went on, another part of our stories, we merged with another church and that really brought critical mass. And so suddenly when you have critical mass, you become more attractive to Christians in your city. And so we really then had to begin having some of those conversations more intentionally. Okay. What's it going to look like for us to orient somebody that's new to our church?
that is coming from another church? Is there an invitation we need to make these people to go back to where they came from? But how do we also orient them to who we are? And as our experience went on, we discovered that, you know, as I would say in the later time of my time with the church, like in the first five years, and this is also now thinking about like pandemic impact, but in my first five years, you know, someone was willing to make a decision about this being their church, you know, let's say an average of like five months.
After the pandemic, it was taking people like over a year of attending a Sunday gathering for them to say, yeah, I'm staying or I'm not going to stay. Like we just found that the timing for them to assimilate to the church and to go through, then we introduced like a basics class, just describing what missional communities are. So that's something we eventually created as part of our structures that rather than just having people show up on Sunday and then.
randomly showing up to different missional community potluck dinners. Because inevitably, as you can imagine, that ended up deterring that missional community from living and being on mission. And sometimes one group would get really full with, you'd say, our healthy disciples. And then another one was really struggling. And so we took the position of, let's get people oriented through an assimilation process to who we are philosophically, theologically. And then we'll invite them.
Matt (26:01.646)
to participate in the life of a particular missional community that needs their gifting and their leadership. Or we're going to start a new group and this new group that goes through our basics class is going to start this new group. And so, you know, I remember we were getting coached for a little while by the Soma executive director at the time. And he asked us the question, you know, what, how long are you willing to have somebody attend on a Sunday morning? And we actually called our Sunday morning reunion. We didn't call it church. The church still calls Sunday mornings reunion.
Cause we, again, it was a semantics thing, but we thought that semantics and how you talk about something communicates vision. And so we would say our Sunday morning gathering was a family reunion. And so we called Sunday mornings reunion. Are you going to reunion? Are you coming to renew? Do you want to come meet me at reunion? Are you going to reunion this morning? all of that was, and I remember answering that question when I was asked of it. And I said, I would, I'm comfortable with a year because I was just feeling out what somebody was doing. Now someone else maybe would say, hold on. I'd prefer them like a month.
And probably when we first planted, I was like, two weeks, they've got to figure it out. But as time went on, as the church grew, as I began to learn people's different experience and why they were coming and how they ended up there, I just came to see that, you know what?
Oftentimes when people, if they have a Christian background, I mean, someone would have to reflect upon their own Christian story, but I would say this story would be common. And I can say it's common because some of us that are also other pastors, I know in the Soma family of churches would say this too, is that there's no such thing as a second conversion. Like you come to Christ once, but we would use the language of almost the second conversion towards mission or towards becoming a person.
Rob Chartrand (27:44.652)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (27:47.63)
that sees the world as a place that needs to be reached with the gospel, believing that you've been saved from something to something. And so what we would experience often with someone who had a Christian background, had been discipled, and again, a more environment that just sort of allowed them to participate but didn't expect much of them realistically was that they went through a moment in our basics class where they went, my goodness.
I've been saved from the penalty of my sin. I'm being saved from its power and I will be saved from its presence one day when Jesus returns. Am I living a life that invites other people to also have that as their experience? And how am I intentionally living my life? Not adding things to my life, but how can I more intentionally live my life as a disciple of Jesus Christ, inviting others to become disciples of Jesus?
And when we would just provide our training around that and invite people to think about their lives, areas they could be more intentional. We just saw light bulbs go off. You know, it was like, it was like an animated light bulb above someone's head that would just blink on when they suddenly were like, I can see myself as a nurse and that I'm on mission in the hospital. Yes, absolutely. Let's celebrate that. You mean you're not trying to steal me from.
all of these other environments, but you're actually seeing what I do as commissioning me. We would do a thing on Sunday morning, Rob, and to anyone listening, I'd highly encourage you to do this, where we would have a rhythm where one Sunday we'd have communion, another Sunday we would have a longer corporate prayer time in our service, and then the third week we would do a testimony or a commissioning Sunday. And a commissioning, an average commissioning Sunday was an invitation from the leader at the front to say, if you work in the healthcare profession, would you please stand up?
and everyone in healthcare would stand up. Okay, church family, if you are standing around this individual, would you extend your hand? If you're close to them and they're comfortable, put your hand on their shoulder and let's pray for them as they are on mission this week in the healthcare field. Because typically when you have commissioning, it's, and I think you still should do this, like someone's going on a mission strip or someone's going away to college university or someone, you know, is being commissioned into vocational or full -time ministry. What does that tell people that are sitting there and,
Rob Chartrand (30:02.284)
Ahem.
Matt (30:10.51)
And I actually rarely use the term full -time ministry. Now I call it pastoral work because ministry means serving and every single one of us is in full -time serving. Whether you're in the healthcare field, whether you're in the educational field, we started these groups and they were called vocational groups. And so we would, we, people still were in the context and still lived out life in a missional community, but they would also could.
once a month get together with other people in our church who were also educators. And so we invited all of our teachers or anyone within education to get together once a month and just talk about what it looked like to follow Jesus faithfully in the public school environment. And they became a support group to one another. We did the same thing in the healthcare field and in the private and public sectors. We just felt it was so essential that people came to believe and to know.
Rob Chartrand (30:55.02)
Yeah, that's great.
Matt (31:06.798)
that they were invited to be Christians in those environments. They already were, but how could they come alive to see that as their mission?
Rob Chartrand (31:14.796)
Yeah, I love that. So it's mission that's not just based on geography, which typically missional communities are. They're geographical, they're neighborhood based, but it's a, it's mission based on affinity, you know? And so Mike Britain uses the terms maps and cracks, right? So your missional communities are your maps, but then you've got all of these spaces where people are that are the cracks and, and that could be vocation, it could be workplace, right? And so how do you get them together and think through how can I be on mission where I work, not just where I live?
Matt (31:21.614)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (31:26.35)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (31:36.654)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (31:42.19)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Chartrand (31:43.116)
Right. And because they spend so much of their time every single day in your place of employment. So, yeah, that's brilliant. I love that.
Matt (31:49.294)
Yeah, the sum of vocabulary is in the places where you live, work, learn and play that you're on mission in the places where you live, work, learn and play. And I love that again, because I think it gives people an imagination, you know, whether or not they have the big E evangelist gift or not for them to be affirmed in their position, their vocational position, to see that as being one of the primary ways in which God extends his kingdom, his rule and his reign.
I think is just so significant in the life of a believer.
Rob Chartrand (32:20.364)
So I want to go back to something. You said your church merged with another church. Let's talk about that quick. So your church grew, critical mass starts happening. It becomes, you know, there's this tendency for more attractiveness. But then another church came along and you came together. Why did you do that? How did that come about?
Matt (32:39.502)
Yeah, you know, it's, it's interesting because I think our, the two stories of these two churches were, were just a beautiful compliment. So this other church was also planted by our denomination. So there was theological symmetry. It was also in our city, the city of Guelph, also in a low income neighborhood. One of the other three, I talked earlier that there were about three neighborhoods that were identified by the city as low income. So this was planted in one of the other neighborhoods and they were a site church. So by site.
they lived out having preaching broadcasted majority preaching was broadcasted into their site and they had been planted about a year longer than we had. And they had a local site campus pastor. Essentially they had all of the portable church gear, you know, when their mother church did the planting, they planted two at the same time and had all the portable church gear. We, on the other hand, were meeting in a downtown bar. Our kids ministry was in the atrium of this downtown bar.
Rob Chartrand (33:28.172)
Nice. Yeah.
Matt (33:37.582)
A few weeks prior to us engaging in some initial conversations with the other pastor, you know, someone had walked in off the street and just grabbed somebody's purse and took off with it. There were, there was a number of very logistical challenges that we were facing, yet we were a growing community. We had seen a number of people come to Christ and we also needed believers to disciple those who had come to Christ. We were fairly non -traditional model. Again, meeting in a bar.
your kid's ministry is in the atrium of this bar. And so I was just having a regular checkup conversation with the other pastor of this other church. And I said to him, as he was talking about some of the things they were facing, they for about a year had kind of plateaued at a particular part. And he was asking the question, what are we going to do? And I just said, well, what if we worked more closely together? And he said, I don't think that would ever happen.
So we left it at that. Anyways, within the next couple of weeks, he was having a conversation with his senior pastor and that pastor said, what if one of, what if one way to solve some of these challenges we're facing is for you to work more closely with Matt Naismith and church of the ward. And he just could not believe that that was even a consideration. So then we began those conversations and the, the, the lead pastor of that other church gave us some documents to work through. He wanted us to talk about.
cultural assimilation, staff assimilation, communication. And then there was also that that church needed to vote to release that church that they had planted. So it was a fellowship Baptist church and so congregationally led on financial matters. And so they needed to release that church to merge with us. They didn't actually vote on the merged. They were voting on releasing that church from its mother, which would then ultimately result in
the merging with us. But myself and the other leader had very complimentary gifts. We had sort of a model of ministry and mission, mission, mission communities. This was also where we began a more structured process to assimilation because we were trying to assimilate the people that were part of that other church to what it was like to live life in a missional community, you know, made lots of mistakes along the way there. And then I was kind of the more of the visionary leadership preacher. And so their people also had to assimilate to.
Matt (35:57.998)
to hearing me preach more often. In the early days of that, we were shared preaching responsibility, but as time went on, that came more under my responsibility. And it was an amazing thing. But as I said, it then created a bit more of a critical mass, a new thing. And so then that created some really wonderful things as far as challenges, but then also increased some also areas of difficulty, as you can imagine the life of trying to assimilate two groups of people.
Rob Chartrand (36:26.668)
Yeah.
Matt (36:26.99)
two churches, two cultures and everything that was involved in that.
Rob Chartrand (36:31.34)
Well, when I hear that they had portable church equipment, I mean, that stuff's not cheap and it's high quality. They likely had a Sunday morning expression church planting model, like start with the Sunday morning and then build out from there. Is that correct?
Matt (36:35.534)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (36:42.318)
Mm hmm. Yes, yes, they were very incarnational in the neighborhood, I think in part because that pastor still to this day, incredibly community oriented, high pastoral gifts, very administrative. And so they, they put together a really beautiful portable church in a school environment, which was amazing. And so we did not have that, as I said, we had people walking in off the street stealing purses. So we had suddenly a
we introduce like front lines teams and facilities teams to our people. And some of our people are like, whoa, this feels a little bit too much like traditional church and like we're getting on volunteer schedules and things like that. And so there was adjustments for everybody.
Rob Chartrand (37:13.872)
Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (37:26.796)
Yeah. So you changed the name too, right? It was no longer called Church of the Word.
Matt (37:30.606)
Yeah, so we changed the name to Church of the City. And we made that change. In some ways, Church of the Ward, as I said before, Guelph, like many municipalities and many cities, is made up of different wards. But we really felt that in order for this church to feel like it was a true merge of two communities coming together, that we should change our name to better reflect who this new community would be. And so Church of the City was born.
Rob Chartrand (37:55.756)
Okay. Well, eventually out of that, you made another transition into your role with the Send Network. Talk to us about that transition. Was it around the time of COVID or after COVID or when did that change happen? And then tell us what's your role now with Send Network?
Matt (38:05.294)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (38:15.822)
Yeah. So it happened after, after COVID, following once, you know, different public health orders started dropping around, you know, people gathering again, really sense that there was a need for, you know, stable leadership. So leaned in and, helped the church continue to come out of COVID and, eventually came to a place where I was just sensing some restlessness.
And really more of an invitation, like God had released my wife and I from the ministry of the church that we planted. You know, some people found and are intended to be there for a long period of time. We felt like our story was help something get established and then transition it. And a couple of markers that I would encourage people to think about if they're thinking about that is, do you have local elders? Is there a staff team around you? Where are things at financially?
For us, another check mark in my own mind was we were still portable. So what would it look like for us to have more consistency as far as a building? And in my last six months, we signed a lease on a downtown church building for a period of three years. Like we signed a three year lease. So for me, that was another little check mark in my own mind to go, hmm, this is another sort of, practical reality around stability that I think is a benefit. And if there is a time to transition,
out of this church, this may be it for the church to discover who it is apart from me and for me to discover who I am and who God's made me to be outside the context of this church that I'd planted. And so we, we,
Rob Chartrand (39:53.196)
Yeah, I mean, you were young when you planted that church, too. So, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of connection between your own identity and the identity of that local body.
Matt (40:02.67)
Absolutely, absolutely. And, and I mean, I really faced the music on that one probably after I left, you know, the first four to six months was quite discombobulating. but in periods where we are challenged, you know, mentally in our own relationships with God, I mean, those, those are opportunities either to lean in or lean away and God invited us to, to lean into that transition.
And so, yeah, you're right. I now work with an organization called Send Network.
Rob Chartrand (40:33.644)
Yeah, I mean, that's very similar to my story with planting crosspoint. When I planted crosspoint, my goal was ultimately to raise up the church, we've already even planted, where it would be able to be healthy and vibrant and growing and survive without me. And that included exactly what you said, staff team, elders, a location that was more permanent.
And then just church health, general church health maturity there. So now I thought maybe I'd be planting and then pastoring cross point into our retired, but the Lord had other plans and I felt the stirring as well. But yeah, so very, very similar stories. And I appreciate that because a lot of planters maybe leave a little too soon and the church plant doesn't survive because it doesn't have that stability in place.
But we see that model from the apostle Paul in the in the Gospels. He would go from city to city and he'd plant churches, but he would always raise up a group of elders or leaders or else he would send leaders there to care for the place so that it could lead into maturity. So yeah, good on you. Hey, sorry. Tell me about tell me what do you do ascend? Like what do you do in your day job? Do you sit around playing Rubik's Cube or what do you do?
Matt (41:48.11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I probably got, charged with that more when I was a pastor. I remember our, one of our elders daughters, she would have been like eight at the time. And she came up to me after a Sunday. She's like, so what do you do the rest of the week? You just like work on Sundays, right? And so I went to my brother and I was like, you should maybe, you know, help your daughter understand what I do. no. So now my, my work, you know, I primarily work Monday to Friday. I mean, it's a very.
different. I would just say, what do I do now? I do something very different in many ways than in congregational work in ministry, but supporting the life of a local church. Someone in the last 18 months helped me with this analogy. They said, you know, the farmer is not the cook and the midwife is not the mother. And I think the role that I play now is more like a farmer than the cook and the midwife than the mother that.
You know, a church planning catalyst is looking for new ground, looking for areas or fields that we can till and hopefully see churches that can come to being. A midwife is working with lots of different mothers, so working with other local churches and helping them create discipleship pathways and pipelines and helping to develop leaders and then to help.
local churches deploy their local leaders. So it's a support role to the life of local churches is what I'm doing now. And so I'm a church planning catalyst. That's the work that I do now in the greater Toronto, Southwestern Ontario region. But then I have a national role with SEND Network as the collegiate strategist. And so that's a big title, but what it essentially means is I'm working with local churches who have a vision to reach college and university students, or I'm trying to work with local churches who...
are maybe within what I would call the gospel geographical responsibility of a local college and university campus and invite them to consider how they could answer that responsibility with the campus being so close to them. And then at other times it's planting altogether new things. And so that ministry is now called the Canadian Campus Collective. We call it C3 for short, not C3, the Australian megachurch, C3, this new entity, the Canadian Campus Collective.
Rob Chartrand (44:14.028)
So just for some of our listeners, we've had SEND Network folks from your group on here before, but tell everybody what is SEND Network and what's your denominational affiliation and maybe even its connection with Merica, our brother just there south of us.
Matt (44:32.27)
Yes. Yes. Yes. So there's two major denominations that have a church planning ministry and send network falls within that. So the America connection is the Southern Baptist convention. The Canadian arm is called the Canadian national Baptist convention. Our head office is in Cochrane, Alberta. We have a seminary there. And so Canadian national Baptist convention at the Southern Baptist convention.
cooperatively, those churches cooperatively give to a centralized ministry called the North American Mission Board. And the mandate of the North American Mission Board is to plant churches across North America and to do relief ministry across North America. So the North American Mission Board once again is the not -for -profit centralized ministry of Canadian National Baptist Convention churches and Southern Baptist Convention churches for those particular ministry efforts.
Rob Chartrand (45:12.588)
Love it.
Matt (45:29.07)
and deployments. And so I work for SEND Network, which is part of the North American Mission Board, specifically SEND Network Canada, in seeing our local churches plant churches and working with new church planters to see new churches planted. And as I said, my national role is to see churches planted where college and university students will be reached.
Rob Chartrand (45:51.34)
Yeah, well, I love that the Southern Baptists have a heart to reach Canada and they're willing to send some money across the border to help our nation. So love it. Love that collaborative work.
Matt (45:55.342)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (46:02.542)
Yeah, yeah, the generosity. I mean, I have learned a lot because prior to working with SEND, I was part of the Fellowship Baptist. So I've spent time in the Christian Missionary Alliance, the Brethren Church, vision ministries and the fellowship. And now I'm with the Canadian National Baptist Convention. And I've just been blown away, honestly, with the generosity that is part of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Canadian National Baptist Convention. I mean, there is a heart of collaboration and cooperation.
of interdependent churches. And that's, that's been a huge, huge blessing. And it's a pretty cool thing that we get to be part of in Canada.
Rob Chartrand (46:35.884)
So what is missional engagement look like in your neighborhood? I mean you you can't just turn that off. What's that look like now that you're not pastoring?
Matt (46:42.221)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. So we recently just joined a local church in our neighborhood. So it's a five minute walk away. I'd known of this pastor for a period of time. And we recently started attending their gathering is actually on Saturday afternoons because they're renting this local church. And so we attend on Saturday afternoons and once a month we do a ministry where we make a big breakfast, a big hot meal breakfast for a local.
Rob Chartrand (47:00.46)
Okay.
Matt (47:11.182)
low income apartment building. And this is actually a building that all those years ago, when we first planted, we were serving pretty intentionally. And so it kind of feels a bit like a full circle moment that we're back in that building, you know, making breakfast and serving those folks. And it's amazing too, cause Rob, when I was back in there for the first time, a couple months ago, half the room knew who I was and it was like, pastor Matt, how are you? It's so good to see you. And so it was amazing to have the opportunity to.
Rob Chartrand (47:33.1)
Okay. Right. Yeah.
Matt (47:40.398)
to be ministering to these folks again. My wife and I have discovered more and more how as your family ages, as your kids grow, you have the opportunity as a parent that your family, your nuclear family becomes a missional community. So we're trying to connect as much as we can with our kids, friends, parents, seeing where there's openness to spiritual conversations in the gospel.
My wife does CrossFit. When I work out, I like to work out on my own, but my wife loves to work out in community with other people. And so her CrossFit gym and the people that she's met there has become quite a number of, if we think about who are non -Christian friends, many of them we've met through my wife's CrossFit gym. And so we just love being in relationship with people that don't know and love Jesus. And we feel like we're in a season of real sweetness in which God has given us a really strong.
number of people in our lives that don't know and love Jesus and giving us the opportunity to love these people and just pray into it and see what comes of it. We've been praying about what would it look like to do Alpha out of our house and invite some of these folks. So, you know, as your listeners are listening, we'd love for them just to be praying about that. And we're excited and just open to what God wants to do and how he wants to use us here.
Rob Chartrand (48:54.572)
Yeah, love it. Sideline ministry. You spend so many hours sitting on the sideline with other parents having conversations. It's a beautiful opportunity to just demonstrate and declare the gospel. So yeah, we loved it. And we still have lifelong friends who aren't, you know, aren't church people or have a faith background, but because of all that time we spent in kids' sports with them, we just continue on. So yeah, it's an amazing opportunity. So.
Matt (49:00.526)
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Matt (49:06.51)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (49:19.406)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Rob Chartrand (49:22.7)
Let me talk about, let's change gears a little bit. You also this last year launched a podcast and it's very connected to your work and it's called The Sewers. Talk to us about that. What's the heart of the podcast?
Matt (49:29.87)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (49:36.91)
Yeah. So the heart of the podcast is to inspire, encourage, and equip people to become sewers of the gospel in the places where they live, work, learn, and play. I mean, I just can't get away from those, those four realms, the places where we live, work, learn, and play. And so I feature Canadian practitioners. Now, some of these folks are not Canadians, but they're ministering in a Canadian context. So everybody that I'm interviewing is ministering in Canada.
Rob Chartrand (49:50.412)
Hmm. Yeah.
Rob Chartrand (50:00.588)
Okay.
Matt (50:04.526)
And they're sharing their stories of how the gospel was sown to them and then how God has been using them in the context of whatever their ministry might be. Sometimes like the episode that was released this week, we talked a bit about sexual addiction and sexual sin connected to my guest who has a background in counseling. And so he was talking about his ministry to men in the counseling and therapy environment and helping them work on some of those things. And so the podcast I would say is listened to by...
a number of different people. It probably has a church planting flavor because I'm, my life is, you know, all about church planting for the most part and working with church planters. But I know that we have listeners of large established churches, folks that are church members in a church, a large portion of the church growing in Canada is ethnic churches. And so I know we have a number of ethnic leaders that are consistently listening to the podcast. And so I hope that in that sense, it's also a help to those that are new to the country to also.
Rob Chartrand (50:41.74)
Yeah, totally.
Matt (51:04.11)
again, get some assimilation to the context of ministry within Canada.
Rob Chartrand (51:09.716)
So what are you learning? I mean, as an interviewer, I mean, I'm an interviewer and I just get to have this window where I get to gaze into so many different ministries, you know, across the country. It's amazing. I love this role. What are you learning about others or maybe what are you learning about yourself in doing this? Yours is about the same number of episodes as ours too, somewhere around the 30 mark or just over 30, right?
Matt (51:35.534)
Yeah. Yeah. This week was, I believe episode 38. So I'm, I'm staying right now at a consistent, you know, week release, format the summer. I'll probably go down to every other week and then ramp back up for the fall. a couple of things that I'm learning one, oftentimes the way someone was reached with the gospel or their story influences what they're most passionate about as a real, and, and becomes for some of them, their model of ministry.
Rob Chartrand (51:38.892)
Okay.
Matt (52:03.246)
So interviewed one brother in particular, and he was, comes from a non -Christian background. And he was walking by every day for school. He'd walk by this church and he didn't even know it was there. And then one day he was walking by and someone was standing outside inviting people to come in and play basketball. And so he went in and started playing basketball. They then organized a youth trip down to a Toronto Raptors game when it was in the sky dome.
Rob Chartrand (52:22.22)
night.
Matt (52:27.886)
After that Sky Dome game, they went over to church on the Queens way, which is a church known here in Toronto. And a couple of the NBA players came over and shared their testimonies of coming into Christ. And this guy responds in that moment to the gospel and comes forward and then has gone on to plant a church. And, and he's also coaching basketball. Like he's coached all these recreational basketball teams and his heart and passion has lost people probably more so than someone that comes from.
Rob Chartrand (52:36.812)
Hmm. Wow.
Matt (52:56.718)
more of a Christian background whose orientation was primarily in the context of the church, their model of ministry looks a little bit more traditional. So I think that's been one really interesting thing that the way somebody received the gospel and how the gospel was sown in their life and how they came to know Christ is oftentimes fairly connected to then their model of ministry. Another thing that's standing out to me is that,
Local churches or any ministry of the kingdom of God should be deeply connected to the gifts of a particular leader. What I mean by that is one of my concerns for, I think, church planters and sometimes pastors is that they try to plant or start or re -energize a church with a model of ministry that is not, doesn't match their personality, their gifts or their skills very well.
And so, you know, I'll talk to church planters and they'll say, I want to plant. And this is what I want. This is the model that I want to plant with. And so then I'll just start asking them questions because I love asking questions. I think when I was a youth pastor, it allowed me, you know, when you take grade six and seven boys out for lunch, you know, you have to ask a lot of really absurd questions just to keep conversation going. So developed a gift of being able to ask. No, no, no. So you got to be able to develop and ask, have the gift of asking questions. So I'll ask them questions like, okay.
Rob Chartrand (54:12.364)
Yes, because they don't ask questions. They just yeah.
Matt (54:22.19)
You want to plant microchurch. Great. Tell me about that. How many people have you led to Christ evangelistically, like relationally? How often are you out, you know, doing initiative evangelism or starting spiritual conversation or in the campus environment? Have you done any spiritual surveys on campus? Because the microchurch movement in my perspective, it's great. We need healthy churches everywhere for everyone, but the type of leader who's going to lead that type of church is going to look different.
than the person that's going to be focused on like a Sunday launch, let's say, or even, or even other models of ministry, like compassion, relief, emphasis, or around justice, for example. And so I think it's so critically important that a leader has been shaped in an environment where they've been able to explore their gifts, have some leadership experience.
So that then when they go to start something, if they're starting something or planting a church in collaboration with other churches around them, that they have a really strong grasp of who they are, of their strengths and their weaknesses, and also know how to build a team up around them that can be a compliment to their gifts and to their weaknesses. And so those are some of the things I think are standing out. As I said, the one thing, how someone's reached connects to their ministry model, but then two,
helping people see that their gifts should match the type of church they're being called the plant and the type of people that they believe God's invited them to reach.
Rob Chartrand (55:52.3)
Wow, yeah, so good, so good. Okay, speaking of learning, like I also wanna pick your brain about this. So you are in the GTA, right? So you're in a unique geographic region. I mean, I lived in Markham for four years, pastored in Unionville. It's a different world there than say, Midwest Saskatchewan or even Edmonton or Calgary or even Vancouver. So you're in the GTA, Southern Ontario, neck of the woods.
In your role, what are you seeing as some of the challenges that the church itself is facing in that particular region? And particularly how the church lives out mission and thinks about mission.
Matt (56:34.734)
Yeah. So I'd say a couple of things. One, I mean, affordability is, is a challenge wherever you have lots of population, right? When you have an increase of population, you run into housing issues because where is everyone going to live? And because there's not enough housing, then we have to increase the prices of the things that are available. So affordability in the greater Toronto area is, is always going to be a challenge as, as people have experienced over in Vancouver, as, as people experience in different urban.
centers. As a result, the average church planter in Toronto has a full -time job that is not ministry in their church or is not the planting of their church.
Rob Chartrand (57:15.948)
right. So they're co -vocational or not even that full vocational in something else.
Matt (57:19.982)
Yes, yes, yes. So we use the language of, co -vocational and then bivocational. Bivocational I would define as you're doing this other job so that you can plant your church. Co -vocational I would say is you are plant, you are working this other job and it is an extension of your planting. Or you see this other thing as a ministry and you also plant or pastor your church. I think.
Rob Chartrand (57:47.884)
And you could stay in it for life. You could stay in that other career for life. Yeah. Yeah.
Matt (57:49.646)
Yes. Yes. So I would say affordability and because of that economic reality, I would suggest then that the church over the long haul is just going to look a little bit differently because I would say, unless you have a person that's exceptionally gifted at developing people around them while also working full time, it's very hard to have the amount of time to develop and disciple.
and invest in, let's say a neighborhood or an area on minimal hours, right? And that, that probably makes sense to everybody listening and to you and to me is if you have more hours to give to something, the potential outcome of that thing that you're investing in has, has some opportunity for greater capacity unless you have minimal hours, but with your minimal hours, you're exceptionally gifted.
at developing other people so that the ministry is expanded through local lay leaders, which also includes yourself in that sort of context. So I would say that, that probably, and I would say this is fairly accurately the church planting across Toronto is much smaller than what we would maybe have historically said. In some ways, the church is getting smaller and larger in other ways. Like it's getting smaller in the confines of the city. I mean, you have your outliers like,
You know, a grace Toronto or some churches that like there's a, there's a C three, which is, as I was mentioning earlier, Australian mega church movement. You have a few churches in downtown that are a little bit larger numbers wise, but a lot of them are smaller, but then your churches that are growing are, would be some of your churches in the suburbs that are more established churches. And then again, you still have also a combination of smaller churches. So.
Affordability, I think, impacts things more than we realize. But it's not a kingdom barrier broadly, like as a kingdom principle. I think the invitation of God is still to come and die, right? Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me. And so I think we also need to develop more leaders in the context of the city and people that are already in the city to minister in the city.
Rob Chartrand (01:00:11.116)
Yeah. So do you think that's true across Canada? You know, are there models that are working more than others or, you know, do we some of our former church planting assumptions, do we need to jettison those or or is everything working? You know, what are you seeing from the 50 ,000 foot view?
Matt (01:00:28.91)
Yeah.
Matt (01:00:32.846)
Yeah, I think it's a great question. And I think through all the conversations I've had on the podcast, like I've probably had about 43 conversations now, as well as the conversations that I'm having with church planters, as well as the church planters that we're assessing, I would say I'm more model agnostic than I've ever been. and I think it connects with what I said earlier, which is the spiritual gifts, the skill and the experience of a particular leader.
Rob Chartrand (01:00:51.628)
Hmm. Hmm.
Matt (01:01:02.35)
And, and how, and their faith, like I'm, and I'm not talking about like prosperity gospel, like declare your faith and God will bring it all to fruition. But I genuinely mean like faith, like when Jesus tells the parable of the, of the, of the various talents that were given to the various servants and two of them go out and invested in one goes and buries it. When the master returns, they're judged on what they did with what they were given.
And the two that invested were blessed. And I think that there will be the day when Jesus returns and invites us to reflect on what we did with the measure of faith that we were given. And so when I think about leadership and the context of, of, of the local church of planting of revitalization of all these things, I think the question to ask is, are you being faithful with the measure of faith and with the spiritual gifts that God has given you?
in your time, in your context and with the people that are surrounding you. And so that's the thing I'm focusing on more, I would say these days and really trying to ask good questions about and invite leaders to embody is what are the unique spiritual gifts that God has given you and how can you live by faith with those gifts in your in your neighborhood, in your section of the city.
And what would it look like for you to live that out in the context of engaging your city, making disciples, and then the result being a church planted.
Rob Chartrand (01:02:37.1)
Yeah, yeah, and I agree with you. I would say I'm model agnostic as well. However, I also think that more, every model that's out there has to be much more attentive to gospel contextualization being missional. Whatever that looks like in their context, whether it's the Sunday morning expression model or your house church model or whatever it is, we're in a post -Christian, post -Christendom context now. And the low -hanging fruit's almost all gone.
Matt (01:02:50.574)
Mm -hmm.
Rob Chartrand (01:03:06.444)
Right, so you can't just simply, if you build it, they will come. We really have to be attentive to mission more and more than ever. And I think that's true for established churches as well. Yeah. Well, hey, our time is almost gone. I wondered if you might give a final word of encouragement to our ministry leaders who are listening today, coming from so many different backgrounds and so many experiences. Fire away, Matt. Give us your final stump speech.
Matt (01:03:06.51)
Mm.
Matt (01:03:13.87)
Mm -hmm.
Matt (01:03:18.094)
Yep. Yeah.
Matt (01:03:38.542)
You know what? I would just want them to know.
that if they are in Christ, if they are a follower of Jesus, that Jesus is madly in love with them.
that there is nothing that they can do today or tomorrow.
would make Jesus love them less than he does right now.
and that they have full approval of God the Father through Jesus the Son, and that the love of God has been given to them through the Holy Spirit. And so I would just simply want them to know that they are so deeply loved and that the Spirit of God is inside of them and will direct them in the path that they should take and the way that they are to go.
Matt (01:04:31.182)
And we need certainly community around us to encourage, to affirm our gifts. But more than ever before, I just want in my own life to be more sensitive to what the spirit of God is doing and what the spirit of God is saying. And to be faithful and say, yes, I will do that. And so my prayer and my encouragement would be the same to those that are listening to the podcast.
Rob Chartrand (01:04:58.22)
Amen. Good word. Thank you for gospeling us. So good to have you on the podcast, Matt. We'll have to get you on here again in the future and appreciate your words.
Matt (01:05:09.198)
I appreciate you, Rob. Thanks for doing this.
Rob Chartrand (01:05:11.372)
All right, talk soon.