Matt Watson
I grew up in a Christian home and trusted Christ for my salvation at an early age. I first started sensing God’s unique call on my life as early as high school. At that time I felt compelled to do something in my school to encourage believers and to reach those who didn’t yet know Jesus, so I started and led a Christian club in my public high school.
God’s call on my life was an iterative process. That sense of calling kept coming up over and over again, and I would always try to find ways to make it fit with the plans that I already had for my life. In college, I contemplated getting a minor in religion. In graduate business school I thought about how I might use my new skills to help out a ministry on the side. Early in my career I contemplated seminary as a way to learn and grow, and maybe even prepare for something that God might be planning for later in my life. It was always there, but I was never sure enough to move forward.
I met Kara, my beautiful bride of 25 years, while at Baylor. We got married right after college and moved to Houston where I attended Rice University for my MBA. After Rice I began my career in corporate finance and business planning working for Solvay, a Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical group and later with McKesson, a U.S. based healthcare software company.
Through it all I could never quite shake that recurring sense of calling on my life. I prayed that God would be clear to me if he was calling me to vocational Christian ministry. I had such a high view of that call that I wanted to make sure I didn’t move forward if God wasn’t in it, and I knew I didn’t want a job at a church for the sake of working for a church.
God was patient, and my sense of calling grew. I finally began to share this internal struggle with a wise older couple in my life. I remember being told that my problem was not with clarity of calling, but with surrender to calling…and it made sense! At that point I decided to move forward with what I knew to do, and pursued a Master’s of Divinity. The path wasn’t always easy and it certainly took longer than I thought it should, but in December of 2013 I resigned from the Fortune 5 company I worked for, and became one of the pastors of Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, Georgia. During my time at Mountain Lake I provided leadership to small groups, local and global missions, benevolence, facilities, and finance. It has been an incredible experience and I’ve learned a lot over the years.
God continued to refine his call on my life through this experience. During my years at Mountain Lake I developed a friendship with a man named Joe Wilson, who started a ministry planting churches in hard to reach parts of the world. I was always drawn to the stories of what God was doing through his ministry. In 2017 my conversations with Joe began to change direction. We started to talk about what it might look like for me to begin working with him, planting churches around the world. Kara and I began praying and seeking clarity and counsel on this, and as the year progressed so did our confidence that this desire was from God. In January, 2018 we shared this with the team at Mountain Lake and were encouraged by their enthusiastic support. Beginning March 1st, I begin full time with Taking New Ground.
Going forward, we would love to have your support as we strive to Take New Ground for the Kingdom of God by catalyzing movements of multiplying churches around the world!
Matt Watson
