CHRISTOPHER GILBERT talks to Matt Garvin about his journey into pastoral ministry, the challenges facing Christians in Australia today and his hopes for the churches…

Matt Garvin didn’t set out to become a pastor. He started out as a radio announcer and journalist in Broken Hill before joining Fusion Australia, a missionary organization founded by his father Mel Garvin, in 1992.

When Fusion suffered a crisis of confidence in its founder, Garvin left the company in 2012 while writing 6 Radical Solutions: How Small Groups of Christ Followers Can Change the World Through Kingdom Cells.

The book became the cornerstone of his pastoral approach, first at St. Albert’s Alliance Church in Alberta, Canada, and now at the four congregations of Citywide Baptist Church in Hobart, Tasmania, where Sight caught up with him. He is also part of the leadership of Frank W. Boreham College, a new seminary in Tasmania.

PHOTO: Courtesy of Citywide Baptist Church, Hobart.

Tell us a few steps on the path to pastoral ministry in Canada.
“Two years into Fusion’s leadership crisis, it became abundantly clear that the founder’s son was failing to help the organization move forward. So Leanne, myself and our four children felt a little lost, asking what now?

“A friend in Canada offered to pay for my Master of Divinity degree at Taylor Seminary in Alberta. It’s hard to describe how painful leaving Fusion was, but I was so grateful for how God directed it all. Moving on, I wrote a book, 6 Radical Solutions, trying to define what I was talking about. The more I read church history, the more I realized that the church was best when six things were true:

“1. Jesus is the center of everything. 2. By loving Jesus, people quickly realize that they are called to a mission. 3. You also need help with this so that you find communication. 4. Whenever service is useful to others, it comes from hospitality. It invites people into your heart and I get to know their hearts. 5. It was about empowering other people. 6. What I learned from Fusion, as well as church history, is that when everything inside you screams to give up, you hold on. It’s a commitment.”

What was the transition to pastoral ministry like?
“The St. Albert Alliance Church (Christian Missionary Alliance) felt they needed to take mission more seriously. So they opened a position for Pastor of Missions and Community Development, which took two years to fill. It was a gift for me. I gave them my book and said I wanted to see if we could get the church in line with these six things, and they agreed.

“This SMA church was one of the smallest in Alberta, about 1,200 people. With seven pastors and 20 staff, it was just a different world. I learned how to be a pastor from a senior pastor. While I was there, I was influenced by the church growth movement and dispensational premillennialism, influences that I believe have become something of a cancer in the church. But it’s helped me deal with what I’m trying to do in church and it’s been helpful for me, it’s a great journey.

“After four and a half years, Leanne and I became more and more insecure in this environment, and when a friend invited us to pastor again in Australia for the second time, this time we said yes! We love Canada and our Canadian friends and how these experiences have shaped us. We returned as different people. When I arrived at Citywide in Hobart, I gave everyone copies of the book and said this is what we would be working on. And I’ve been working on the same six things ever since.”

How have you defined your gifts and how do you see them serving your people?
“One day, a senior Fusion teacher saw me relaxing while teaching and came up to me in tears and said, ‘That’s wonderful Matt, you know you’re a gifted teacher.’ I later heard him defend me to my father, who then asked me to hold a plenary session. That’s when it started for me as a teacher.

“And I think in the community my gifts have become clearer to me. I enjoyed arguing with others about how the Bible explained the real world. During my journey, it was in the community that I became established in my ability to teach, think and lead.”

IN BRIEF – MATT GARVIN

Books on my nightstand?…Burning in my bones
(Biography of Eugene Peterson) by Winn Collier, Revive us again Leslie Newton Public Christians in a Secular Age Neil Johnston and Boots that fit Ruth Amos

The verse I come back to?… “And (my wife) Lyanna and I, Matthew 6:33.”

The best and worst leadership advice I’ve ever received…” When I took an early leadership role at Fusion, a friend who ran Medibank Private told me: “Your position gives you 100 days when people will decide whether they will follow you or not. So be intentional about how you use those 100 days so that they feel safe and valued and you let them know how things are going.” Money may allow you to buy people’s work, but they will only want to follow you if they feel respected and think you know where we are going. Most useless advice? I needed a mission statement. The process of getting a mission statement to hang on the wall resulted in the loss of five team members.”

As you write and direct, what contemporary issues do Christians face in the Australian context?
“The church growth model promotes the pastor as the CEO, and that is simply not biblical. I have weaknesses. So we’ve created a structure at Citywide where we have trustees and elders, and I have comrades who I meet with every week and we puzzle out how to share the leadership load. I have deeply learned that no one can be completely trusted, including me. Ephesians 4 is my model of what the church should be. You need different gifts working in harmony. And when they work in harmony, everyone finds their own thing.”

Matt Garvin speaking. PHOTO: Courtesy of Citywide Baptist Church, Hobart.

What hopes do you have for churches in Australia – especially the congregations you lead in Hobart?
“I love this moment in Australia, I think people are looking for hope. And if we respond to this with ideology, it simply won’t work. People still like Jesus, so if we just take Jesus seriously and focus on the Sermon on the Mount, try that, we’ll feel like that’s what’s needed. The central question now is where is the hope, where is the life? Righteous dinkum faith is integrated by simply being a witness to what Jesus has done for us. This is what people crave.”