BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Telegraph Staff Writer
Matt Weaver believed he would return to Starke and be a part of the leadership team at LifeSpring Church. He just didn’t know when.
Therefore, Weaver wasn’t surprised when he received a telephone call from his father, Ken, last summer about moving back home to become the church’s new lead pastor. He told his father, who is the founding pastor of LifeSpring, “I’ve been waiting on this phone call for a long time, honestly.”
Being the lead pastor, however, was a surprise.
“I didn’t know I’d be the next lead pastor,” Weaver said. “I really thought I’d kind of play a different role.”
Weaver, a 2008 Bradford High School graduate, shared lead-pastor duties with his father from the beginning of January until his father’s retirement in August.
“He’s still working and helping to do stuff,” Weaver said of his father.
Weaver and his family — wife, Victoria, and their three sons (ranging in age from 3 to 7) — were happy at their home in Virginia, where Weaver worked in student ministry at Lynchburg’s Waymaker.Church. Yet Weaver felt like God had told him he would become a part of LifeSpring Church at some point in his future. That was approximately eight years ago.
“I didn’t know what God’s timing would be with that,” Weaver said.
He shared what he thought God had revealed to him with his wife, Victoria, and with friends, but never talked to his father about it until he received that phone call in the summer of 2021. Weaver said he didn’t want to put that thought in his father’s head and put the process in motion.
In some instances, God’s calling requires immediate action, but Weaver said this wasn’t one of those times.
“Sometimes, maybe God wants us to take that step out and be that way, but I didn’t feel like that was what He wanted me to do. He just kind of planted that seed in my heart: ‘Get ready. You’ll be down there one day.’”
Embracing ministry, benefitting from residency program
Growing up, Weaver said he always kind of knew he’d end up in ministry, but it wasn’t an idea he embraced or set out to make happen. He remembers when a friend of his in high school told him, “You know, God’s going to use you in ministry for Him one day.”
“I kind of had already known that, but hadn’t admitted to that and said yes to that,” Weaver said. “I didn’t run from it, but I also didn’t run to it.”
He began to run to it while attending Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. It was while he was a student that he found a home at Waymaker.Church, where he was taking advantage of opportunities to serve. One day, he received a phone call about that church’s new residency program and if he was interested in being a part of it.
“The purpose of that program — and a big part of that church’s heart — is to help young leaders grow,” Weaver said.
Weaver likened the program to a medical residency for doctors. Basically, it was to help train someone for work in ministry by supplementing what they were learning in school.
“A lot of people will go to school — specifically there at Liberty — wanting to be in ministry. You need education, but you also need to learn how that functions with people — how to work on a staff,” Weaver said, adding, “Whether you’re a big church, and you have a staff, or you’re a small church, and you have all volunteers, you’re still leading people and coordinating things and projects and having tough conversations.”
Weaver said the residency program, helped him understand ministry and grow as a leader and in his relationship to God.
“That year and a half that I was a resident was life-changing in so many ways,” he said.
Weaver’s move to Starke brought to an end an 8.5-year span in which he was part of the Waymaker.Church staff. It also meant saying goodbye to a group of people he and his family were close to — friends who had helped them through the good times and bad times and who supported them during the process of having three children, buying houses and through other life changes.
“It was a special moment in our life,” Weaver said. “My wife isn’t from (Lynchburg), so we didn’t have family in town, but we had friends who became family and journeyed with us.”
Homecoming
Weaver, of course, is familiar with Starke. He knows a lot of people there; a lot of people know him.
“People knew me when I was 12 and 15 and 18,” he said. “For some people, they still have that memory of me in their head, which is understandable. I get it. You saw me for 18 years almost in that window. Then I disappeared for 13 years.”
Weaver changed like all of us do. He got married, had children and simply grew up and matured.
“I come back very different as a person,” he said.
He described people accepting who he is today rather than who he was all those years ago as a small hurdle to overcome, but that’s OK. Being a pastor in a community you grew up in has plenty of benefits.
“It allows me to build connections a lot quicker, and it’s easier to relate (to people) and to go back to them,” he said.
Weaver’s wife of 10 years is no stranger to small towns, having grown up in one herself. However, Coeburn, Virginia, which sits at an elevation of 1,995 feet, is different from Starke.
“She grew up with a white Christmas,” Weaver said. “We will not have a white Christmas here.”
What Weaver and his wife have been used to is living in Lynchburg, which has a population of more than 80,000, and being part of a larger church. Being in Starke and at LifeSpring will be quite a change, but one that has an upside.
“One of the beautiful things about a small community and a small church is knowing people a little bit more intimately,” Weaver said.
Moving forward
Weaver has been presenting a series at LifeSpring entitled “Moving Forward.” In a sense, it relates to the transition from his father to him, but it also relates to an individual and his or her relationship with God.
“We should always be moving forward,” Weaver said. “We should always be growing closer to God and following Jesus.”
As a collective, LifeSpring Church moves forward by having a compassion for others and being a part of the community.
“That’s one thing I would love to see — our church really be people who are for each other and who live with each other and for our community,” Weaver said, adding, “Not be a church that’s divided or disunified with other churches or with other people. Yeah, we can disagree, but it doesn’t mean we have to be divided.”
“Moving forward” can also refer to being obedient to God and allowing Him to do something in your life, which is what one of Weaver’s favorite verses is all about. Isaiah 43:19 (New International Version) says, “See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
“I think God always wants to do something new in someone’s life,” Weaver said. “I think He’s always looking for somebody to just take that first step of obedience. It doesn’t matter where you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re a ‘great Christian,’ or you’re living in the valleys of life because of your choices or whatever’s happened to you.
“God’s always doing new things. He’s always wanting to do new things with people.”
Even though he didn’t know when it would happen, Weaver was obedient in allowing God to bring about a new thing in his life — becoming the pastor at LifeSpring Church.
