It's said that ministers oftentimes wear a lot of hats, in terms of what they do. (One hat = one role.) That's certainly true. However, as Rooftop matures and as people step forward into various roles, I find myself wearing fewer hats, and enjoying more the ones I get to wear, and hats stylized to my particular gifts and the shape of my head. Well, enough with the hat metaphor. Here's what I do: 1) Elder 2) Lead Teacher 3) Staff Leader / Manager 4) Small Group leader 6) Pastoral Caregiver 7) Other Stuff Guy (at time I've filled in as the Rooftots Kids' Director, Benevolence Director, and Missions Director).

 

Goal(s) for your ministry:

As Rooftop's Lead Teacher, my goal as a preacher is to help people discover and learn about the God who has been active throughout Biblical history, saving us from our sin and forming a group of perfected saints & servants called to live in fellowship with Him forever.  Put more simply, by talking about the Bible I want to help people encounter the God they read about in Scripture, in such a way that their lives are changed forever.  Maybe that wasn't "put more simply," but it's still what I want to see happen. 

Family Stats:

Rejecting the oft- and ill-defended practice of polygamy, I am the husband of one beautiful and godly woman named Michele. She's a graduate of Webster Groves ('93), and we met at Truman State. She's the very gifted mother of two boys and one girl: Mitchell, Maxwell, and Miranda. (Matt, Michele, Mitchell, Maxwell, Miranda...get it?) Mitchell and Maxwell were given to us biologically from God, while Miranda was given us adoption-ally from Guatemala.  Michele is also a part-time nurse at the Children's Hospital, where she does things with blood and body parts that I'd prefer not to know about, let alone describe.

 

An "interesting" fact about you that most people don't know:

Sometimes I feel like I talk about myself for a living, so I've already shared most interesting things about myself for anybody to hear in the sermon archives.  But here's one I don't think I've shared: I was Prom King at Parkway North in 1992.  Pretty cool, huh?  (If you're into shallow popularity contests like that.  To this day, I still don't know what exactly I was elected to and whether or not my term as prom king was a good one.)