From Pastor to Pioneer

What My Story Can Teach Us about the Revival We Seek

The story below of my journey since coming to faith in Jesus might help us understand what is needed for the revival many of us desire in America. Since giving my life to Jesus, I have served as a traditional pastor and eventually left that ministry altogether to pursue pioneering a movement of God.

Although I tried for years, I no longer believe revival will primarily come through our conventional church structures. Even if we saw the revival many of us are praying for, the church as we know it in America couldn't handle such a movement. I also don't believe prayer and worship alone are enough. We need the people who pray to also go into the harvest to make disciples.

In Luke 10, Jesus told His disciples to pray for laborers. Then He sent them, the ones who prayed. We need that same convergence now. Hunger for God's presence must lead us into the harvest. And we don't need complicated approaches to ministry to reach and disciple the lost. We need something radically ordinary. These lessons have been difficult for me to learn over the past decade. This is my story of moving from pastor to pioneer.

Seeking Truth in a Secular World

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the only child of divorced parents in a secular home. My family and friends weren't passionate atheists. They were just indifferent. Religion was irrelevant. The focus was on the here and now: success, self-expression, and entertainment. There was the occasional nod to horoscopes or Mother Earth, but even these weren't taken seriously. It was surface-level spirituality. I was the kind of person the church says it wants to reach: a thoroughly secular product of a post-Christian world.

I occasionally met Christians growing up, but none of them talked to me about Jesus or invited me to read the Bible. Instead, I heard about religion (catechesis, confirmation, youth group, etc.), but it all sounded like a club I didn't belong to. I wasn't interested in their events. Church felt no more relevant to me than the Elks Lodge.

When I was 19, I met a girl named Hawley who would later become my wife. She was the first Christian I met who talked to me about Jesus and the Bible. She didn't invite me to church or try to convert me to religion. She simply spoke about Jesus. She told me Bible stories like they mattered, asked what I thought, and treated me like someone capable of discovering the truth for myself.

That conversation lasted seven years. Jesus kept pulling me back, even when I resisted. Religion didn't win me. Jesus did. Eventually, I saw my own sin, my deep need for the cross, and the beauty of a Savior who came not to recruit me for religion but to rescue me into life. That's when I reached a point of no return and gave my life to Jesus.

And then came a calling. Shortly after coming to the Lord, I sensed God saying I was to be a missionary to Americans. I didn't fully understand this call, nor did the people around me.

The Burden of the System

A few months after I came to faith, I started attending a church. I was hungry to grow, eager to serve, and still carrying that call I sensed to become a missionary to Americans. I didn't fully know what it meant, but I told the pastor I felt called to reach people like me: secular and skeptical Americans. So I asked for his help.

In retrospect, he didn't know what to do with my request. Instead of helping me discern what that calling might look like outside of the box, he steered me into the box. I was put on the traditional path of seminary and ordination. Several years later, I was a full-time pastor in a denominational church. I did everything I was trained to do—preparing sermons and talks, visiting people in hospitals, attending many meetings, and organizing programs. Outwardly, it looked like success because people showed up and told me I was doing a good job. But very few people came to faith and gave their lives to Jesus like I had. Inwardly, there was tension because I wasn't doing what I was called to do.

In 2015, it all caught up with me. I was preaching one Sunday when I had a full-on panic attack in the pulpit. I couldn't breathe and had to sit down and let someone else finish the service. At first, I thought it was a fluke—a moment of weakness. But it turned out to be a merciful wake-up call. God used it to pull back the curtain.

In the wake of this experience, I began to realize that the church system I was in didn't align with both the vision to equip the saints in Ephesians 4 and the Great Commission to make disciples in Matthew 28. Although I had been a paid professional Christian, I didn't know how to make disciples or equip others to do so. As a result, I realized that a few church leaders like me were doing most of the ministry work while everyone else consumed it. This system led to the crippling burnout and panic I had experienced.

So, I went on a mission to change the status quo from within the church structures. We were going to make disciples, and not just me! I was going to equip the saints for the work of ministry. For a few years, I read all the right books and even got solid coaching. I brought teams together and cast a vision to try to shift the culture. But every time we tried to emphasize disciple-making, we ran into the same barriers: the programs, the traditions, the unspoken rules, and the inertia of the institution.

There was some fruit. But mostly, I was watching God's call on my life get slowly buried under expectations He never asked me to carry.

A Dying Seed

In the first few years after my wake-up call, I was learning about discipleship and church renewal from Western sources. But in 2019, I began asking a radically different question: What does church look like where it's hardest to follow Jesus? I started learning from persecuted believers around the world, like Muslim-background Christians being martyred, and underground churches in Asia multiplying even under intense government pressure.

Their stories stirred something deep within me. These ordinary people lived with an extraordinary faith full of radical, simple obedience to Jesus, no matter the cost. They weren't caught up in buildings, budgets, and programs. They read the Bible and did what it said. And they were seeing the fruit of disciples being made. I found myself longing for that.

During this season of learning from the church overseas, I considered John 12:24, which says, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." I prayed and asked God, "I want to see a lot of fruit. What do I need to die to?" I sensed God say, "Die to being a pastor."

This word wasn't about quitting ministry and forsaking my calling. It was about letting go of the identity, the title, the salary—everything I had come to associate with following my call. These were the very things that were holding back the harvest I desired. It shook me. But deep down, I knew it was the same voice that had called me years earlier. I needed to finally and fully live into God's call for my life.

Letting go of being a pastor wasn't easy. My identity, livelihood, and community were all wrapped up in my role. But Hawley stood by me again. She heard God's voice with me and was ready to walk in radical obedience. We prayed, fasted, sought wise counsel, and even saw God confirm our steps.

By early 2020, we decided to move toward resigning from my position as a pastor without a clear vocational path moving forward. Just weeks after this resolution, COVID hit. I suddenly thought it was a terrible time to step out. But one of my mentors said plainly, "If this is what God is telling you to do, I think you need to do it. It might be harder now, but you need to do it." So we said yes. On December 31, 2020, we left full-time pastoral ministry behind. We became a full-time missionary family to Americans, resettling in a new region with many spiritual and social needs.

Detoxing from Religion

Even though I didn't grow up in church, after we made this ministry transition, I realized that years of traditional ministry had left me with ingrained habits that had to die. It wasn't until I fully stepped out of highly centralized ministry settings that I recognized how much detoxing I needed. I was used to being the center of attention, managing the room, preparing to teach, measuring success by how many people showed up, and carrying a weight that had already broken me once before. I didn't realize how often I depended on my strength instead of trusting God, and how frequently I left my family on the sidelines.

Letting go of the performance and the platform was hard. I had to learn to sit on my hands, bite my tongue, and let others (including brand-new believers and kids) step up and lead. I had to embrace obscurity. The most significant shift was learning that prayer is real work. In those early days, when we hardly knew anyone in the new town we moved to, I'd spend hours praying and fasting, just asking God to move. And He did, often in ways I never could've orchestrated.

Now, I spend my time with people in homes, coffee shops, workplaces, and hiking trails, simply listening, sharing, and equipping. I've seen more transformation in barefoot conversations on living room sofas than I ever did from behind a pulpit. Now that my family is free from religious pressure, we notice that people are more open to each other and to God. And I've learned that when we create space for the Spirit to move, He does more than we ever could through our efforts.

Life on Mission

Disciple-making used to be top-down for me, dependent on programs and systems. Now, it's personal and relational. Ordinary people are empowered to make disciples in the everyday rhythms of their lives. We don't tell people to invite their friends to church. We invite people to follow Jesus, and we invite them into our homes and our lives.

Ministry is also no longer something I do while my family watches. Hawley is more involved in the work than ever, and even our kids are discovering they have a role to play. Our oldest teenage daughter was recently baptized and now asks to go prayer walking with me. On those walks, we share the gospel with strangers. She has even invited friends to read Scripture with her.

We gather in homes, baptize in rivers, pools, and bathtubs, and raise up leaders from the harvest. Our friend Nick is a beautiful example of this. We met him and his family four years ago through our local homeschooling community. Now he helps facilitate a house church in our network with extended family and friends. Nick and I led a man named Carlos to Jesus, and Nick baptized Carlos in his swimming pool. Today, Nick is training others just as I equipped him. He's become a strong leader in our network, even though he isn't seminary-trained and has no official credentials or title.

Anyone who follows Jesus can live this lifestyle. Our family's role is simply to model it, cast vision, and equip others to do the same. The people of God shouldn't be spectators of ministry but players on the field. Every disciple is a disciple-maker. Every church ought to consider itself a missions team. Every home can be a training center. And fruitfulness shouldn't be measured in numbers but by faithfulness to God.

An Invitation to the Prayer Movement

This isn't my normal audience. I'm writing here because a friend who is connected to Presence Pioneers and the broader prayer movement asked me to tell my story. While our ministry worlds may differ slightly, I want you to know that I deeply value your passion for God's presence and your commitment to intercession.

As I mentioned, over the past few years, one of the most significant shifts in my life has been learning to see prayer not as preparation for the work but as part of it. Hours in prayer and fasting, often when no one was watching, have produced more fruit than any platform ever did. But I've also noticed a temptation in prayer-focused spaces that mirrors a danger I see in the missions world. In missions, a threat can be over-relying on methods while underemphasizing prayer. In prayer movements, it can be over-relying on prayer alone without stepping into the harvest.

What if God wants to send you—not just to a worship gathering but into people's lives? What if your hunger for God's presence is meant to overflow into gospel conversations and disciple-making relationships?

This isn't either/or. Prayer fuels mission, and mission deepens our need for God. Let's collaborate humbly and obey whatever God speaks to us in this effort! God is doing something fresh. Your prayer life may be the launchpad for a movement. Don't just contend for revival. Step into it.

I left the platform to enter the harvest, and I've never seen more fruit. Not because I figured something out, but because I finally let go of the pressure to perform and embraced a radically simple way of doing ministry that is relational, ordinary, and deeply dependent on God.

Maybe you feel that same tug. You're hungry for more than polished worship sets and well-crafted sermons. You want to see the gospel transform lives, not just fill rooms. You're drawn to the secret place and the house of prayer because God births new things there. Don't wait for permission to then go. You already have a commission to do what Hawley did for me: to share Jesus and the Bible with the people you know. Don't invite them to your church or into religion. Invite them into a deeper relationship with you and a relationship with God.

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Matt helps lead Lampstands and Pastor to Pioneer, two training and coaching platforms for Christians hungering for a church that looks more like the Book of Acts. If you are stirred by Matt's story, go to lampstands.com or pastortopioneer.com to connect.