Fort Richmond Baptist Church<\/a>, located at 10 Ratcliffe Road in Winnipeg. The journey to become a pastor in Winnipeg, Manitoba, took a winding journey for Mathew, who was born and raised in Bombay, India. Growing up, he always knew about God, as his father was a pastor.\u00a0<\/p>\nAfter graduating from high school, Mathew went to college. It was at this time that he says he put God in the backseat of his life and focused on friends and having fun over everything else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I became extremely sick with severe bronchitis,” says Mathew. “I was completely dependent on my parents, and medically speaking, doctors had reached their limit, and I was on my deathbed. My parents prayed every single day.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
While he was very sick one night, Mathew’s whole life changed after an encounter with God.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“One night, I heard a voice call my name. I woke up, looked around, and no one was there. I heard it again, and the third time, I knew it was the voice of God. I hear an audible voice asking, ‘Do you want to be healed? Accept me as your Lord and Saviour.’ We had a bit of back and forth, but that night, I surrendered my life fully to Jesus. The next morning, everything was different.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mathew got better, and after college, he went on to YWAM, where he met his wife, Tara.<\/p>\n
“We got married, had our first daughter, Natasha, in India. During that season, we sensed the Lord calling us into pastoral ministry. I’m going to be honest, that was the one thing I didn’t want to do. Missionary? Yes. Pastor? No. I didn’t want the drama, but when God speaks clearly, you either run or you eventually surrender.”<\/p>\n
The two got married and went to England after Tara was signed as a Christian recording artist. The Mathews lived there for five years before they felt God calling them to move to Canada in 2014. After a succession of ‘God-led’ events, Mathew became the pastor of a church in Winnipeg.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The Lord told us, ‘Trust me with my plans.'”<\/p>\n
Pastoring a Multicultural Church in Winnipeg<\/p>\n
From England, while Tara was 34 weeks pregnant and doing well in her musical career, the couple felt led to come to Manitoba. They moved before their second child was born, first to Tara’s hometown in Oak Lake. Then they moved to Winnipeg when Mathew got a job as a pastor at Fort Richmond Baptist Church.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We came in 2015, and the church was primarily German, Baptist background, with a few African families. Today, if you walk in on a Sunday, you will see people from nations all over the world. For me, it’s like a glimpse of heaven.”<\/p>\n
The church’s theme this year is ‘Move Forward’ to follow Jesus where he leads, according to Mathew.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We are moving forward in prayer, moving forward in evangelism, we are moving forward in radical hospitality, generosity, and discipleship. Most of the churches, you’ve heard of the term ‘Next Gen.’ At FRBC, the now generation, they are here, right here, so we’re going to invest in them now, not later.”<\/p>\n
Fort Richmond is beginning a two-week time of prayer and fasting this Friday, leading up to Easter weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A near-death experience in India changed the course of a Winnipeg pastor’s life\u2014and ultimately led him across continents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-546668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}