This week, we’re talking with Mission campus pastor Matt Nault. Matt has been on staff at City Church for the last seven years and lives in the Bernal/Mission area with his wife, Florence, and three sons, Benjamin, Levi, and Joshua.

What exactly is your role at City Church?
As pastor of the Mission campus, I wake up in the morning thinking about what it looks like for the people who live in the Mission and surrounding neighborhoods to know God’s grace and love in their lives and reflect that into the city.

Tell us about how you started attending City Church?
I started as a regular attender back in 2004, when I was working on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as a team leader at the University of San Francisco. I moved to San Francisco from San Diego for a three-year commitment with InterVarsity. Florence and I thought we would be in San Francisco for three years total, but we fell in love with the city and City Church. Our Community Group became family away from family, and we were drawn to the idea of a church that had impact and purpose and meaning in the way it lived and ministered in the city. I came on board as an intern at the end of my time with InterVarsity, and at the end of that internship, City Church had started to ask questions about a multi-site strategy. I had the training and gifting to do what City Church needed to start a campus in the Mission district, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Favorite places to eat in San Francisco?
Best California-style burrito: Taqueria Los Coyotes on 16th Street
Favorite date spot: Limon Rotisserie on South Van Ness
Family dinner: We love Ricky Bobby’s BBQ on Haight
Fancy date spot: Jardiniere on Grove

What are some of the best books you’ve read, both spiritual and just for fun?
Here’s a quick list:
NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope
Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God
Thomas Oden’s Systematic Theology 1 & 2
CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity was first time I had an example of using your brain to worship, and thinking through faith.
The Barbary Coast by Herbert Asbury - a great history of San Francisco’s seedier sides
The Bourne Trilogy, by Robert Ludlum
I read a Winston Churchill book every January - he is an interesting leader who I feel a kinship with in terms of personality and temperament. I like to watch what he did as a leader, how he related to the people he spent time with.
I try to read The Great Divorce by CS Lewis every year.

Tell us a little bit about your upbringing in the church and in your family of origin.
I grew up in a beach community of San Diego called Ocean Beach. I was either on a surfboard, a bike, or a basketball court most of my waking hours when I was not in school. I grew up in the Catholic Church, and most of my family are still devout Catholics. There was a disconnect for me between theology in my mind and my actual life. Through high school, I would show up at church on Sunday still hungover from the night before, having snuck out of the house. I made a pretty good amount of money as a 16 year-old selling drugs to my friends.

Around the end of high school and beginning of college there was a big renewal. I got involved in a group of people who loved and accepted me with all of my questions - there didn’t need to be hiding or pretending anymore. I was in a community of committed Christians and I was accepted. That communal element of faith has been one of the most formative pieces of my life.

There were multiple steps that go me to a closer relationship with God. Easter of my senior year of high school, a friend took me to an evangelical church, and I prayed the prayer and accepted Jesus and told my friends who had bought drugs from me that they had to go buy drugs from someone else. I lost all my friends, and had this newfound renewal of faith without any community to hold me in. It only lasted about a month before all my friends came back, before I was back in the business. I wanted to follow Jesus, but I didn’t have any community or means to do it, so I was in limbo the rest of that year.

I got to college at University of San Diego and a girl invited me to an InterVarsity meeting, and I remember thinking how different it was. People were praying in a way that showed they thought God was actually listening and might answer. There were people like me there, people whose parents didn’t make them attend and who seemed like we might have something in common. It was from there that three guys became good friends of mine and asked me to hang out with them. We started something called Brothers in Christ, that ended up turning into a good-sized group of people sharing life together.

In InterVarsity, I found acceptance but also could identify and grow in my gifts. Someone would say, “Hey, I noticed you have insightful comments in small group. Why don’t you lead one?” Or someone else would notice when I lead a group, my non-Christian friends would come and ask questions, and they would call out my giftedness at talking about faith. “We notice when people share at the large group level, people seem to listen--why don’t you speak at our next gathering?” That was huge for my development.

Who are some of the most influential people in your life outside of your family?
There are three guys who hold that position for me:

Chris Nichols was the first older man in my life to be a father figure in the faith for me. He was my InterVarsity staff worker.

Matt Hammett is the pastor of a church in San Diego called Flood. He was the first one to open bigger doors for me to use my gifts. He let me preach, debriefed with me, taught me about church leadership.

Fred Harrell was the reason I came on staff. He was mentoring me, and I thought I not only want to grow my gifts like he’s grown his, but I respect the person he is and I want to be a person of integrity and substance like he is.

What is your favorite place to go on vacation?
We’ve had a couple of really amazing trips. A tropical beach - like learning to scuba dive in the South China Sea, in Malaysia, with Florence. The other one is being on safari in Zambia. We also spend a lot of time in San Diego with family - I love to be around water.

Tell us about your family
Benjamin is six, in first grade. Levi is four and in preschool. Joshua is ten months old, working on teething--so we’re not sleeping so much right now. Every day when I come home, I have to put my bag down outside the front door and get ready to catch them as they come flying at me. We wrestle a lot, and we play baseball at the park across the street from our house.

Florence and I met when my little sister went to a camp, and Florence was her counselor. My sister Sara begged us to meet each other - Sara was 12 - and eventually she lured Florence to come to an InterVarsity event I was speaking at. I took her out at first for a burrito and coffee and we each paid separately, I told her we couldn’t date because I was too busy and not looking for a relationship, and she said her too. That lasted all of 45 days or so. Florence heads up children’s ministry at the Mission campus. She’s a credentialed teacher with 15 years of children’s ministry experience who taught at San Francisco Day School for a couple of years--shes’ incredible.

What are some of your favorite movies?
The Bourne trilogy
The Matrix
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Goonies
Mission: Impossible 3

What are you excited about most at this stage of life, both in terms of the Mission campus of City Church and in your own life?
One of the things I’m so excited right now in the Mission is ministering at such an important crossroads in the community’s life - a city of such extremes. There is extreme wealth and poverty, connectedness and loneliness.People can talk past each other or protest each other, and I get to minister in a way that tries to bring unity among all people and serve all people. I can throw every ounce of my energy at, and I have a lot of energy, so I get really fired up and pray really urgent prayers.

At this stage in our life, Florence and I have to be really intentional to make sure we have time for each other. Ministry pulls one way, parenting pulls one way, and we have to work to be very intentional to put our relationship first. We work on saving time and energy to check in with each other.

I’m also really excited about Dadurday - a bunch of Dads who meet up with each other and our kids each Saturday morning. One guy brings donuts, the kids make friends, we get to hang out and catch up, and we return to spouses who have been refreshed and had some time to themselves.