Web Consultant, Pastor, Theology Geek, Musician, Husband, and Father of 4
But not in that order.
Personal World
Matt is passionate about Jesus, his wife Nancy, and their four beautiful daughters.
His hobbies include birdwatching, martial arts, TTRPG games, painting, football (Go Cyclones and Niners!) and reading (theology, leadership/business/tech, sci-fi, and fantasy).
Matt came to Christ at a young age through the Awana program at an E-Free church. After a period of wandering in high school and early college, he became serious about his faith in college in 1999 at age 20. The call to ministry came shortly after.
Web Consultant
Matt has been creating websites professionally since 1999, playing nearly every role on a web team. He has spent most of this time leading teams of experts as founder and CEO of Mere Agency, a leading ministry-facing Web agency who serve ministries and churches such as Keith and Kristen Getty, Shane & Shane’s Worship Initiative, The Village Church, The Southern Baptist Convention, Reformed Theological Seminary, The White Horse Inn.
Prior to this Matt worked on other high-profile projects, most notably in his role at AOL for Weblogs, Inc. as Principal Designer, working on such sites as Engadget.com, Joystiq.com, Fanhouse.com (the teams on these sites went on to found Vox Media, The Verge, Polygon, and SBNation.) Later Matt served as the Sr. Web Manager for DesiringGod.org.
Through these avenues and his other work in small agencies, higher education institutions, and freelance for small business and non-profit organizations, Matt has gained broad field expertise is in the areas of Web strategy, information architecture, usability, front-end development, project management, leadership, and remote team management.
Pastor
Matt currently spends most of his time serving as lead pastor at Stonebrook Community Church focusing on preaching, vision, and strategic leadership. He is a musician and led in Stonebrook’s music ministry for 15 years before putting the guitar down.
Though Matt has been studying God’s word and the great theologians and scholars since that time, he is only just now pursuing a formal degree through Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
His theological influences come from several sources (all founded in The Bible). First, the historic creeds and confessions of the protestant faith, the great Doctrines of Grace, the Five Solas. Second, great books and sermons by authors such as J.I. Packer, John Piper, John Frame, Don Carson, R.C. Sproul, Timothy Keller, Jerry Bridges, Michael Horton, Tom Schreiner, Martin Lloyd Jones, Charles Spurgeon, John Owen, John Calvin, and others. Third, while not agreeing with everything, he is helped by theological “conversation partners” that stretch him like G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Eugene Peterson, The Bible Project Podcast and N.T. Wright. (What is it with two-initial names?). Fourth, he has been shaped by attending great conferences such as Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, 9Marks, For The Church, Sing!, and others. Finally great music by Rich Mullins, Andrew Peterson, Beautiful Eulogy, and the David Crowder Band / Crowder help keep his heart warm.
Matt highly recommends these books: Desiring God (Piper), The Holiness of God (Sproul), Core Christianity (Horton), Trusting God (Bridges), Concise Theology (Packer), Counterfeit Gods (Keller), Worship by the Book (Carson), and Frame’s Systematic Theology. He fancies himself a walking card catalogue and is happy to recommend a book on virtually any subject.