Matt Matulia solutions his telephone from his porch overlooking Lake Joanna. In-built 1967, the home initially belonged to his spouse Lindsey’s grandparents. A few years and reminiscences have handed on this lakefront, together with two years of prayer conferences which led as much as the launch of Lakeside Covenant PCA in February 2024.
“This lake and this home are part of our church planting story,” Matulia says.
Born and Bred in Baseball
Raised in Eustis, Florida, the place the lake home sits, Matulia has at all times discovered a secure haven in Central Florida. Florida, and baseball.
Matulia’s dad was a baseball coach within the Nationwide Junior Faculty Athletic Affiliation, and Matulia grew up each sitting within the bleachers and hitting the ball together with his dadvert and brother.
“All of my reminiscences had been baseball,” he says.
Rising up, Matulia solely noticed two choices for his future: play baseball or coach baseball. Like his dad, he performed baseball at The Citadel; he was drafted by the Chicago Cubs’ farm system proper after commencement in 2006.
As a minor league participant, Matulia bounced from one Cubs affiliate staff to a different all throughout the U.S.—together with stays in Mesa, Arizona; Boise, Idaho; Daytona Seashore, Florida; and Knoxville, Tennessee. He at all times returned to Eustis within the offseason. He married Lindsey, his highschool sweetheart, in 2007.
A 12 months of Breaking
As he continued to maneuver from staff to staff, metropolis to metropolis, Matulia at all times had an underlying nervousness about his future as a participant.
“Once you’re within the minor leagues, they type of personal you. The worry is that they may name you in and launch you,” he says.
After a lackluster efficiency through the 2008 season, Matulia entered 2009 spring coaching with a sense he could be launched. He was, however not with out getting a proposal to hitch the Cubs as a coach.
“As a result of my dad was a coach and that’s all I knew, all I wished to do was play or coach,” he says. “As laborious because it was to listen to they didn’t need me as a participant anymore, I used to be very excited they wished me as a coach.”
At age 25, as Matulia was settling into his new function as a coach, nonetheless touring everywhere in the nation, one other uneasiness started to stir inside him. For the primary time in his life, he felt overwhelmed by the load of his sin. Having grown up in a Roman Catholic household and custom, Matulia says he noticed himself, on the entire, as a reasonably good individual.
However in 2009, he broke.
“I noticed for the primary time that I wasn’t good, and I couldn’t be ok. On the within, I used to be in a really, very darkish place,” he says. “A part of the baseball life is de facto darkish—alcohol, women. I used to be wrapped up in all of that. The Lord was actually displaying me all of that.”
He remembers dragging his suitcase by an airport on the best way from one baseball dedication to a different, crying out to the Lord, when he acquired a telephone name from his brother, John, who wished to ship him a ebook. The ebook, “One Heartbeat Away,” arrived at Matulia’s lodge room, and it laid out the gospel.
“The Lord simply got here to me in that second,” he says. “I learn that ebook in a lodge in Iowa, and it was the primary time in my life once I actually heard the gospel clearly: You’re a sinner, and God has despatched his Son to avoid wasting you.”
The Final Two Mites
Matulia returned house to Lindsey and shared how he had encountered God in that lodge room.
He started studying his Bible and shortly realized that a part of being a Christian was studying to be husband and father. He realized that life on the highway was not conducive to household life. Lindsey was quickly to have their first youngster, Emma, and he determined to discover a teaching job nearer to house. He began making telephone calls, leaving voicemails for head coaches at Division 1 schools within the South.
One of many coaches who known as him again was Mike Martin of Florida State College. Martin was on his technique to turning into the “winningest coach in college baseball history.” He was additionally a dedicated believer. Martin supplied Matulia a place as a volunteer coach for the 2011 season.
“Mike Martin was the primary Christian coach I’d ever been round. The way in which this system operated was with Christian ideas. The fellows, for probably the most half, didn’t use unhealthy language. [Martin] was the mannequin of that … He wasn’t excessive together with his religion; he simply lived it. It was simply good for me to be round him,” Matulia says.
Round this time, Lindsey’s religion got here to life as effectively.
“I grew up in church and might keep in mind a VBS once I was youthful asking Jesus into my coronary heart, however I didn’t absolutely grasp the gospel and my want for a savior till we had been in Tallahassee,” she says. “God clearly spoke his gospel to me whereas I used to be there. I began attending Bible research for the primary time and actually dug deep into God’s Phrase.”
For the Matulias, rising of their religion meant rising of their understanding of a wholesome, godly marriage and the sacrifices it includes. As a husband, Matulia had sinful habits that he wanted to admit and switch from.
Throughout a baseball chapel service in 2012, the speaker shared concerning the widow in Mark 12 who gave all that she had. Matulia was minimize to the guts. He prayed, ”I perceive, Jesus. You need all of me.”
He admitted his failings to Lindsey and his pastor.
“I felt like my world was shattered but on the similar time I felt fully cared for and held by God,” explains Lindsey. “It was positively a supernatural feeling that may solely be defined by the consolation of the Holy Spirit. It was like Jesus was saying, ‘I’ve acquired you, and I’m sufficient.’”
With steerage from their pastor, he and Lindsey had an opportunity to start out over, with the Lord now really on the coronary heart of their marriage. Matulia started making an attempt to know methods to apply Paul’s exhortation for husbands to “love their wives like Christ cherished the church” (Ephesians 5:25).
“For us and for her—what she wished was a husband who went to work common hours and didn’t journey. I knew God was calling me out of baseball. It was laborious, however I knew it,” Matulia says.
Lindsey provides her perspective: “As soon as Matt performed for some time and we realized he wasn’t going to make it within the huge leagues, there have been instances once I was prepared for him to be house and for us to be a traditional household collectively however I might not ever inform him to give up. I used to be nervous that he would remorse it, and I wished it to be his resolution.”
Matulia lastly determined it was time to be house extra usually. So, for the primary time since he started enjoying ball as a child, Matulia put aside his bat, and went to work full-time off the diamond. He took a job managing one of many Ace {Hardware} shops owned by Lindsey’s father.
A shock present on the finish of his baseball profession was that Florida State made it to the Faculty World Collection in Omaha, Nebraska.
“I felt prefer it was a present from God in permitting me to expertise that earlier than shifting into a very new and completely different season of life,” he says.
Reforming
Again in Lake County at Ace {Hardware}, Matulia was on hearth for God. He needed to inform everybody what Jesus had finished for him, in eradicating his condemnation and setting him free from his sin. He began a Bible research known as 5:25 Males, primarily based on Ephesians 5:25. The group met weekly at 5:25 a.m., and mentioned methods to be godly males.
He began educating the highschool and college-aged college students at his church and volunteering on the native highschool with Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Ultimately, he left Ace and got here on employees with FCA full time.
“Throughout that point, the Lord was bringing me to Reformed convictions in my non secular journey,” Matulia says, because of insights from his brother John and thru educating from Ligonier Ministries. He determined he wanted a mentor who would assist him higher perceive Reformed theology.
He started assembly with David Kelly, the affiliate pastor at New Hope PCA in Eustis, who had simply graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando, to debate theology and to bat round all of the questions Matulia was entertaining.
“In some ways, he helped me perceive grace,” he says.
Over the course of their two years of assembly each week, Matulia turned satisfied that he wished to enter full-time pastoral ministry. In the meantime, he discovered that the management at New Hope wished to plant a PCA church in one of many close by communities. They requested Matulia if he could be prepared to attend RTS and are available on employees at New Hope as a church planting intern. Matulia was thrilled and enrolled in RTS within the fall of 2019.
A Completely different Sort of Ballgame
On a Sunday after church in the summertime of 2022, a number of households gathered to hope within the Matulias’ yard on Lake Joanna. After that first gathering, the group slowly grew and continued to assemble each Sunday to hope about the opportunity of planting a church.
Over time, the Lord answered these prayers by guiding them to discover a future location within the Mt. Dora and Sorrento communities, simply east of Eustis. These cities had been starting to expertise new progress as improvement from Orlando crept into their communities.
“Our children go to high school that approach. One in every of our core households lives there. Every thing we did in life was occurring on the market,” Matulia explains.
It made sense to start wanting there for a possible church location.
On February 4, 2024, Lakeside Covenant PCA launched its first public worship service within the health club of Spherical Lake Constitution Faculty. A yr later, the church plant averages round 90 common attendees.
“The most important pleasure has been seeing the expansion in a few of the guys, and women, that I’ve been discipling,” says Matulia. “It has been a pleasure to look at them deepen of their religion and step up into management roles inside our younger church.”
Whereas baseball appears very similar to a factor of Matulia’s previous (two of his three daughters play volleyball), he nonetheless sees himself as a coach.
“I imagine the Lord wired me that approach and has allowed me to educate another way than I imagined … I generally make the analogy of the church being my staff. God has known as me to guide this staff in following his will and fulfilling his kingdom mission.”
Zoe S. Erler is a byFaith contributing author.
