BEFUDDLED IN MACON!

St. Teresa of Avila Church in Grovetown (Augusta) is hosting on Monday night a concert with Matt Maher. He is a Catholic contemporary Christian music composer and singer.

I just found out, too, that Matt Maher is doing the exact same concert tonight here in Macon! But not at a Catholic Church, but one of Macon's largest Southern Baptist Churches, Inglside Baptist Church.

Ingleside Baptist Church is not your father's Southern Baptist Church. It is very contemporary and charismatic in style. But it is not very friendly to the theology and teachings of the Catholic Church and in fact I've heard that in some of the sermons there the Catholic Church is not spoken of in endearing ways.

So I am befuddled that this particular Baptist Church in Macon is hosting a well known Catholic artist and we Catholics weren't invited to it directly. You would have thunk that whoever organized it at Inglside would have invited St. Joseph parishioners or our Catholic high school to go.

Am I missing something?

Here is an article on Matt Maher that makes quite explicit his Catholic Faith and devotion:

Matt Maher

Unity comes through dialog through relationships

By Kim Jones

Christian Music/Gospel Expert 

 

Matt Maher is a contemporary worship leader in the Catholic faith. Since most people outside of the Catholic faith find “contemporary worship” and “Catholic” to be two things they would never associate as going together, I asked Matt to describe himself and what he does for me. Here is what he had to say:

 I am a worship leader out of Mesa Arizona. Primarily I work full time at a church. I’ve done some touring and traveling over the years, but I work 20 hours a week as a worship leader and 20 hours a week as young adult minister.…

I lead a college Bible study. It’s a Catholic Church, which kind of surprises a lot of people. The joy that I really feel, as part of my ministry, is that I'’ve been kind of going out more and traveling and working with different people breaking down those stereotypes because people have a lot of Catholic stereotypes. I a’m just letting them know that there is a generation, now rising, of Catholics who recognize the gift of Salvation that’s been given to them and that see the need for a daily relationship with Jesus and pursue it. And pursue Him actively in His Word, and also pursue it in the Sacrament. 

Primarily, I think the way that God has been using me to reach out to people is through worship. I think there’s kind of a format that’s developed. I lead worship every week. I do a Mass every Sunday night at 6 PM at my church, Saint Tims, and on Tuesday nights we do a thing called XLT. Basically what it is is a gathering for high school and college students. It’s consistent with about 40 minutes of worship, 20 to 25 minutes of teaching and about 25 to 30 minutes of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

It’s been really powerful to see that happen and to see these different elements kind of from post-modern culture and Christianity, not clashing, but colliding with something as ancient and ritualistic as the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. And it’s been phenomenal to see the fruit come from that.

I just got off the phone this morning and found out that I was asked this fall to Atlanta to the NCYC, which is the National Catholic Youth Conference. It’s the largest single Catholic youth conference in the world, or maybe it’s just North America. I mean, there’s World Youth Day, but a straight-up conference for high school students, I think this is the largest one in the world.

We’re going to do a XLT worship night in an auditorium that seats 15000 people. It will be sometime in November or December. So I’m already excited. I'’ve done a lot of work throughout the country with a ministry called Life Teen, which is a parish based youth ministry program that’s designed to help provide and develop resources for youth ministers to reach their teens and lead them to Christ.

I’'ve mostly just done music with them. I’'ve also worked with the Franciscan University of Steubenville at the summer youth conferences. I'’ve led worship at a couple of those. So that’s kind of what I do. It’s kind of a big myriad or a smattering of things.

What I'’ve realized too is that the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. The reality is that because of the denominational barriers that exist, there are so few laborers in the Catholic Church. You know, I think it’s a move that God is doing. It’s not about me, it’s about unity and not just playing at unity by basically saying, “Well, we’ll let Catholics come here and hang out with us.” There’s a guy that I'’ve been developing a friendship with whose name is J. D. Walt. He’'s the Dean of Chapel at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. He'’s just a phenomenal preacher, a great man, a great husband and loving father. He and I have just been dialoging and he said something really profound. He said that unity comes through dialog through relationships. I was like that. It is really true.