Meet Your Church Planters: Matt Rogers

Renewal Church in Greenville, SC

Matt Rogers is a church planter in the growing area of Greenville, SC. When Matt became a Christian he began leading in the church he attended and fell in love with it, so he learned over time that he was supposed to devote his life to church planting. He was affirmed by the elders of North Wake Church in Wake Forest, NC to plant a church, and then moved to spend two years training at Crosspoint Church in Clemson, SC. Then he moved to Greenville and planted Renewal in March of 2010.

Renewal’s philosophy of ministry is very relational and discipleship-based, rooted in the Great Commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28. The motto on their website is “Multiplying disciples to the glory of God.” Obviously, disciple multiplication is a challenging way to build a church in some ways – the progress can seem slow and the frustrations can seem immense.  However, God’s promise in Matthew 28 of His presence and protection for those that make disciples is the sustaining grace that God provides.  And that is enough.   Along with church planting and discipleship, Matt highly values expository preaching, biblical church discipline, and plural elder leadership for the local church. He sees these things as central biblical practices that unfortunately are not practiced by many churches in our culture.

Matt loves what he gets to do with Renewal and cannot imagine doing anything else. He gets to serve Jesus and use his gifts every single day to lead the church in making disciples. However, that does not mean church planting has not had its struggles. He has had to learn to balance the fast pace of ministry life with pastoring his family. Having a wife and three kids under the age of four, combined with pastoring a six-month old church, is quite a strain.  Church planting is very hard, he says, and the mental and physical toll is much harder than he imagined. They have faced the struggle of finding a space to meet in, but God has been faithful in providing for their church family. In the midst of all the struggles and trials, God has been so good to them. The staff and leadership in their church is off the charts, disciples are being made, financial provision has been sufficient, and they have had great prayer support and existing church partnerships.

One of Matt’s favorite stories from God’s work at Renewal is about a woman named Sarah. Sarah is the wife of Matt’s college roommate, and she was not a believer at the time of Renewal’s launch. Matt approached his roommate about supporting him and his family in the process of planting Renewal, and they decided to move to Greenville site unseen to be a part of what God was doing. Through this, Sarah became a believer in Jesus, joined a small group, and was baptized in a neighbor’s swimming pool!

Matt is learning and growing as a pastor and says he has never lived more consistently in faith in the provision of God. He has to rely on Him daily, he says, and that is not something that was true of his life before he was a church planter. During his first year of pastoring Matt has learned a lot, but three things rise to the top: 1) the gospel shapes, informs, and guides everything the church does, 2)that the health of the church and the health of marriages in the church go hand in hand, and 3) that people’s view of the authority of the Word and their willingness to submit to it affects everything. His biggest joy in ministry is seeing disciples made by the grace of God, and he is passionate about raising up more leadership quality men in his church, and also to send them out to plant more churches.

Your prayers for Matt Rogers and the ministry of Renewal Church are coveted.