Pastor Matt's Report for 2024

They say that hindsight is 20/20, but with 2024 in the rearview mirror, I would have to disagree. 2024 moved so fast, it is one big blur. I had to sit down with Sarah and ask “What happened this year!?” Granted, that may just be what happens when you parent a 2-year-old and welcome another baby into the world. However, if you take out those two factors, 2024 was still a full, fast-paced year. 

There were a lot of highs and lows in 2024. As Sarah and I reflected on 2024, we described it with the phrase, “growing pains.” So much good growth happened this year, yet not without some discomfort and even pain. Confirmation ministry grew, activity in denominational affiliations grew, my leadership grew, and our family grew. This year also included 2 first amendment auditors harassing Christ Lutheran, parenting a two-year-old, and being very busy. To say 2024 was busy, is an understatement. Most weeks, I led Sunday morning student ministries, Sunday evening high school group, Monday evening young adults, Tuesday meetings, Wednesday morning men’s prayer, 2 sections of Wednesday evening confirmation, and for 28% of the weeks, get ready to preach Sunday morning, and then do all this all over again. This is all on top of the different things I was involved in this year: leading 4th-6th grade retreat, leading our high school Hume Lake trip, co-leading small group leader training, beginning to organize our spiritual care ministry, and other regular pastoral duties. It has been a busy year. 

Our efforts this year have yielded fruit. Three big wins in my areas of ministry are a increase in confirmation attendance, increase in young adult engagement, and organizing Spiritual Care. Confirmation in early 2024 was on Sunday mornings and attendance would dip down to 3. We switched to Wednesday evenings and offered 2 sections at different times. Our attendance went from an average of 5 to an average of 16. In early 2024 young adults met together once a month. In the fall we doubled our frequency and maintained a bi-weekly attendance of 5-12. Throughout 2024 I have been working on organizing Spiritual Care, which is a 1:1 support ministry, where Spiritual Care givers are trained to listen deeply and guide a conversation to care for someone going through some kind of stress. We currently have about 8 people going to in-person training for Spiritual Care and 1-2 attending the training online. 

What are my plans for 2025?

Shifting role
Zoë Watts joined our staff on January 6th, Epiphany day, 2025. She has taken over leadership and the majority of teaching responsibilities for student ministries which includes high school, Jr high, and confirmation. While she grows into her role here, I’ll be helping out in high school and Jr high ministries where needed. For confirmation we’ll share teaching responsibilities and Zoë will take over the administrative and communication responsibilities. I’m excited she is on our team and she has already been making an impact in these ministries.

Use complementary gifts
Zoë has now taken over a number of my responsibilities, so what am I going to do with all of my free-time? I took a look at my roles at CLC and compared it to Pastor Garrett’s roles. In my estimation we were doing the same things, just in different areas. While in one sense we do work together, I think we can more fully embody the biblical principle of the church being a body, where the members of the body work in complementary ways. In 2025, my role will have more of an administrative emphasis, while maintaining teaching and preaching responsibilities. Pastor Garrett will cast vision and give direction and I can come in to organize and execute his vision. This worked really well for our first monthly Men’s Breakfast of 2025 and I’m looking forward to how our roles will develop throughout this year.

Spiritual Care
Spiritual Care is a ministry that will fall under this administrative role. Many people at CLC are hurting or dealing with stress of some kind and could use somebody to come along side of them for a period of time. Spiritual Care will be a benefit to us as trained care givers will fill this need. However, I see this also as an outreach ministry. My dream is that we would use this ministry to minister to parents of our preschool and as an outreach to CalArts. I’m not exactly sure what the outreach component of this ministry will look like, but I’m dreaming and praying for its potential.

Seminary
With all that I have going on, I also decided to go back to school. I am currently pursuing a Masters of Arts in Theology through the American Lutheran Theological Seminary. Over the last couple years, I’ve noticed a couple gaps in my theological knowledge that I have not been able to fill through self-study. This particular track of study meets the specific things I’m looking for. Though this is an academic degree, my goal is not to use this as a stepping stone into academia. My hope for this degree is that it will give me a better theological framework to work from, which will help me expand my biblical knowledge, so that I can be a better pastor. I intend to utilize my class assignments in the life of the congregation in areas of ministry I already have a hand in such as men’s breakfast, confirmation, and Sunday morning preaching so that you can benefit from the fruit of this labor.

Conclusion
Thinking forward to 2025, 1 Timothy 4:12 comes to mind, “but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” All of these changes and updates to my role at CLC are oriented in this direction. I am your pastor. My desire is to point you to Christ as your Lord and Savior at all times. Pastors share in similar work, like preaching and teaching, but God has made all pastors a little bit different. He has gifted each pastor in different ways. My hope in 2025 is that as I grow into this role and into the gifts that God has given me, that I would use these to guide you into growing upon with Christ.

Jesus’ peace to you all.