Honest Thoughts from a Pastor

I have never had a job with the postal service, but I’ve been a mail carrier all my life. So have you! You might say, “Matthew, I don’t get it!” Let me explain😀. We all deliver a message. The content of the message varies. You might be the bearer of good news, bad news, facts,…

If you’re like me, you love hitting the “easy button.” You like simplicity. You hate drama. You want things to move quickly and be out of the way so you can relax. If you are a follower of Christ, you may want the easy version of Christianity. I hate to break it to you, but…

In my message leading up to my resignation announcement as pastor of Oasis Church, I preached from Ecclesiastes 3 – to everything there is a season. One of my points was that nothing lasts forever. As I was sitting at my stepdaughter’s chorus concert tonight, that was the theme in my mind. As I write…

I am starting a series on Sundays called “Sunday Sermons.” Each Sunday, I will be sharing sermons I have preached over the last few years. I may occasionally share ones from others that I believe will be helpful to you. This week’s previously preached sermon was delivered on January 22 of this year. It was…

I’ll never forget my 9th grade Bible teacher. He will probably read this, but I think he realizes his long-term impact on my life but how his guidelines drove us crazy back then. On the first day of class, he gave us rules no other teacher had given. We were told we could only use…

When I started blogging in 2015, I had no idea what I was doing. Little did I know I was blinded by the true state of where I was as a person. I would impulsively blog whatever came to my mind and hit “publish”. My original blog was a hit with a lot of people.…

May 4th will be a day that forever changed my life next to salvation. It was the day I surrendered to the call to ministry. I was ambitious like all young guys are when they start. Although ministry looks a lot different than what I imagined, I celebrate this day every year. I never imagined…

I will never forget the painful sadness I felt as a child. It made no sense to me. While a lot of kids I knew were care-free, I was struggling to find joy or happiness at times. The feeling never left through middle school or high school. It lingered and lurked. Even as I began…

In my younger days of ministry, I would accept or reject the idea of going to a particular church because of how “together” or how dysfunctional it seemed. Here is what I have discovered after 26 years in church ministry – every church will have some dysfunction because it has people. People and drama have…