Some of you may have heard or heard of Pastor Matt Chandler and/or The Village Church, Texas USA. Matt is a faithful preacher of God’s word and his sermons are very popular worldwide (especially amongst fans of Mark Driscoll et al) because he too seeks to be biblically faithful and culturally relevant.

So you may also know that Matt had a seizure on Nov 26 and tests revealed a tumour in his frontal lobe.  He underwent surgery soon after to have it removed and pathology results in the past week have shown that the tumour was malignant (cancerous).  Also, the surgeon was unable to remove it all given its nature. The Chandler family now face decisions about what treatment course/s to take.

As you can imagine this is a huge trial for Matt, his wife Lauren and their 3 young kids, as well as The Village Church family (which is several thousand strong). I’ve been so impressed and encouraged by Matt’s personal response as well as that of the VC’s Elders. As far as I can read from their blog updates, they’ve lead the church with enormous grace and wisdom at a very hard time.

You might like to read the Elders’ blog updates here, as well as the prayer points the Elders suggest (and do pray!).

I’ll close with a reflection point from Pastor Matt himself; be impacted and grown by his perspective -

I am grateful for the men of God in my life, namely John Piper who taught me to hold my life cheap and to join with Paul in saying “I don’t count my life of any value or as precious to myself if only I might finish my course and complete the work that He gave me to do to testify to the Gospel of the grace of God. I’m nothing, I just have a job. God keep me faithful on the job and then let me drop and go to the reward.” [...]