Welcome to Lifestyle Worship. I am Jerry Heinold, and whenever I was younger, I thought I was the best worship leader in the world. And as I got older, I realized how much I didn't know about leading worship, about walking with Jesus, about what actually worship was. And I learned a lot from people in my life, mentors in my life, and I am so pumped today to have one of my most favorite mentors, Rob Matchett. He has been in my life since college and has had an amazing impact in my life, learning about marriage and ministry and just doing life. He's literally one of the people that has helped shape me over the years. Funny stories I could tell. I won't embarrass him today like that. But Rob, thanks for being with us.

I'm excited to hear about your idea of lifestyle worship, because as I've seen your life and the challenges and things, you have stood the test of time and you have such an amazing legacy. And so I'm pumped to hear your perspective on things. In my past podcast, I've interviewed a bunch of young people. And so I would love to hear what living a lifestyle looks like in the long term. And so first of all, let's hear a little bit about you. Let our listeners know who Israel Matchett. What do you do?

Well, I feel honored to be on here because one of the things I do at the church that I'm at now is that we have a school of ministry. And when we wanted someone to come teach on worship, we asked Jerry Heinle to come teach on worship. So, I mean, I just don't know what you're going to learn from me, but I love to share about worship and as a lifestyle. I'm at a church right now that's a cowboy church. It's called Star Cowboy Church. Love it. We wear boots and jeans. Yeehaw. And it's just casual. We have an arena on campus. We've got like 50 acres and a rodeo arena. And we have team roping and bull riding and mutton busting and all kinds of fun stuff. Barrel races regularly. Everybody rides their horses to church? No, there's been a few. I've been there 12 and my wife also works there. years, She's a licensed professional counselor, so we get to work there together. That's one thing we've loved. And I think that's one of the things that's given us longevity is that we work ministry, together. too, We have three adult kids now. We're just barely empty nesters. Awesome.

Tell us a little bit about what you do at Lone Star probably my favorite thing is the school of ministry that we do okay because I got to help start it and I just love I love what it's doing for our church because we have 28 students that are all just people in our church and they are doing our leadership school or our ministry school or they can continue on online and where their study group to get ordained through our denomination.

That's awesome.

They can go all the way through to ordination. We even have one who's gone on to become a world missionary. That's been awesome.

So basically you're doing practical, on the job, like they're getting ministry experience while they're also learning. Right. Combining those two things. Because they have to serve. That's unique and amazing. Yes.

Because they have to serve. That's unique and amazing. Yes. That's just one thing I do. I work at the school ministry and then I work with basically most of the adult ministries of the church. And then I'm on the executive team for the church as well. And then I get to lead trips to Israel and to Greece. And I just got back from a Cuba mission trip that was not a biblical study. We just went and did missions in Cuba. Okay. went and did missions in Cuba. Our church was founded by a rodeo cowboy, a professional rodeo cowboy who lived on the circuit and preached. And then he started a Bible study in Montgomery, and Texas, now it became a church. So he says he doesn't know how to be a pastor. He's just a missionary. Yeah. And his wife is an ordained pastor, and she's a missionary. And so now they just pastor this large church that's like 2,200 people on the weekends. And they still just are like missionary mindset. So we do missions around the world just because it's who we are. That's so important. Yeah, that's so cool.

Well, on this podcast, we really focus a lot on what is a lifestyle of worship. It's obviously way beyond just music and whatnot. And I had a wrong perspective when I was really young, thinking it was just about music and whatnot. And as I've gotten older, I've realized, man, it's way, way bigger than that. And I would love to hear your perspective whenever I say lifestyle worship. Like, what does that mean to you? How have you tried to live that out?

Well, when we planned a worship course for our ministry school, first book we looked at was The Air I Breathe by Louis Giglio. And that's what that book is about. It's The Air I Breathe, lifestyle worship. It's about everything that we do. But recently we've revamped that course and now we're calling it Worship in the Word. And we're doing it intentionally because similar to what you're saying that we want to make sure it's not just about music. I'm trying to put an emphasis on the word within it. And I guess if there's one thing I wanted to come through this interview was how important the word is. And for me personally, I'm using the word more in my worship. Like right now, I'm using the last five psalms. Aren't they called the Hallelujah Psalms or something like that? I think they all start with Hallelujah. I've been doing it a couple of weeks. I've really been focusing on Psalm 146 because it just talks so much about, it talks about generations. It talks about not putting your trust in man. It talks about so many things. But using the word like that, it's a conversation, but you can get in your own head with your thoughts and your conversation, even with your own prayers and all. So if it's not corrected by God's word.

I see what you're saying. Yeah. That's true. If it's not brought back to the truth like that, like one of the lines in Psalm 146 talks about not putting your trust in a man because when they die, everything they've done blows away. Yeah. I get what

I get what you're saying. I think that's such a good point because especially this, not just the younger generation, but culturally these days, it is a lot about, well, what do you think about that? The truth is, it doesn't matter what I think about that. What does God think about that? Let's go to His Word. That's right. And so that should be how we inform our worship as well. Exactly. And our thoughts and how we worship God and the truth behind what we're thinking of God and how we're thinking about ourselves, how we're thinking about life, should be informed by the Word. And we cherry pick God's Word.

Yeah.

Because we have these digital Bibles on our phones, and we have the verse of the day. Yeah. And we just like read the verse of the day.

Yeah.

You know, and pray about that. Sure, yeah. And we started it. And it's good we're starting with God's Word. It's good we're starting in prayer. It's good we're starting that conversation. But I think I've been guilty of just picking out certain verses out of context and certain I've things. tried to Lately, of just picking out certain verses out of context and certain things. Lately, I've tried to start carrying my paper Bible again. And I know that probably sounds weird to other people. And I'm trying to take notes again in church in a paper journal, just trying to take myself back to that. And I think it comes from also I'm teaching a Bible study right now, and we're teaching just chapter by chapter through the Bible. And just being in a chapter and teaching a whole book and looking at it like that is really changing me. And so I'm wanting that to come across and not just pick out your favorite verses and you build your theology on the five favorite verses or something. That's good.

Our student ministry, which is where I am most of the time, is the students are sharing a lot of scriptures during worship and whatnot. And I think that's helping to ground our worship. Spontaneously? No, not spontaneously, but as they're leading worship before a song or something. It's like, hey, here's scripture. Why are we singing this song? Why are these the lyrics of a song? Oh, that's great. And as we're even training our student worship bands, we'll say, here's a new song we're going to teach you guys. Let's first go and let's dive into scripture. Why are we singing these words? Right. It's just something that sounds good. Is it because this rhymes? Right. Is this from the word of God? Because if there's a song that we're doing that is not from the word of God, then it's not grounding us to what does God have to say? I love that. That's so good. But yeah, so we try to do that. I feel like we probably all could do a better job of making sure we're grounded in that for our worship. That's good. It's real good. As you have been walking through life, I know personally you've had lots of challenges and lots of things that have happened in life. And I would love to hear what has been like one of the most challenging parts of walking with Jesus daily. And how have you kind of sought to overcome those things?

I'll give you something current. It's really helping me to do a daily Bible plan with a friend of mine. We live in different cities, but we've been best friends since we were four. So we do this daily Bible plan together, and we just did this like two weeks ago. We did a Craig Rochelle Bible plan called Words to Live By. And I think it's from a few years ago. It basically asks you a question, are you happy with where your life's going? And it says your life is going in the direction of your strongest thoughts. So whatever you're putting in your thought life, and that's lifestyle of worship is, what are my thoughts doing? And I'm trying to tie it to the Word of God. And now I'm like, I need to be real specific with my thoughts. In that, Craig Rochelle has a declaration, and he encourages everybody to create their own declaration, but he gives you his declaration. And it's, you know, Jesus is first in my life. I'm going to love my wife. I'm going to love my kids and pray that they love God with all their hearts. All these declaration statements. So my friend took his declaration, and there's an app called Sunno, or S-U-N-N-O. It's an AI app that makes songs. It creates lyrics and songs or whatever. So he typed the words into the Suno app, and he picked the genre of song, and it could do praise and worship. So it created a praise and worship song to this declaration. Wow. And he sent it to me, and I started crying. Wow. So now I'm listening to it sometimes like six times a day. I'm just like, listen to it. My wife's a counselor, and she started sharing it with her clients, and they're declaring their thoughts, what God says about them. Wow. That's cool. So I was like, this is good. Because music does cause you to remember things. Question is, you know, what gets me through some hard times? And sometimes it's the song. It's the lyrics of the song. It's in my thoughts and through music and through God's Word is how I'm memorizing Scripture. My wife and I memorize Scripture when we're dating. That's awesome. And it's still what we used to get through. People don't often remember or realize that that is worship, don't often remember or realize that that is worship, like scripture, memorizing that, quoting that, saying it out loud, praying it in your prayers, all those things. That is worship. That is helping to get through as the enemy's throwing junk at you and in your brain, your own thoughts sometimes. Like, man, so many times it's like, okay, shut up, Satan. You're a liar. Here's the truth. These are the things that I've memorized. And you're right. Songs have helped me. Like a lot of scripture that I was like, oh, I know that. Where is that? I don't know, but I know that it's the scripture and I remember I memorized it because it's in a song. Yeah. It's like the songs have definitely been so powerful to So help. because then, mainly I'm it because it's in a song. it's Yeah, like the songs have definitely been so powerful to help. So then, because mainly I'm a Bible teacher, not a worship leader. But then when I'm teaching the Word, other passages He can bring to my mind. And I've gotten to where now, this is another thing that really helps me, is that when I go to sleep on Saturday night, and I'm going to be teaching Sunday morning Bible study, I go to sleep and I pray before I go to sleep. The God would speak to me in my sleep and then he would give me a word. And it's like a prophetic word or like just a verse or something. And I have literally woken up and thought of Isaiah something, something. And I didn't know what that was. It wasn't because I had memorized Isaiah 40:31. And I looked it up and it was what he would say to me. That's only happened a couple of times. That's cool. More often than not, it's a phrase or it's a verse I already know and it's because I remember my scripture. And that's why it was important. But now I get excited about going to sleep on Saturday night because I'm expecting the Lord to speak to me in my sleep, expecting to give me that last piece of what I'm going to teach or whatever else that's going to make it happen. And then sometimes God I'm not as prepared as I want to be. So sometimes my prayer is because I need help or whatever. And then my tendency is to, I want to skip the first service. We have three services on Sunday morning. So I want to skip the first service because I teach at 930. And there's one at 11. And then we have Monday night church also because we need four services. So it's like if I'm faithful to go to 8 o'clock service, whether I'm ready or not to teach at 930, it's like God will give me something because I'm obedient to go to church and I'm obedient to sit there and worship. And there's something about sitting through a worship service that causes you to grow because you have to submit to somebody else. You have to submit to that person speaking to you. You should analyze what they're saying and not take everything they're saying. But being under authority, there's a blessing in that. And you have to submit to community. Because there's a guy that's in one of our services, I won't say which one, who claps at the wrong time and who stands out and is a little bit annoying. It's just a little too something, if I'm honest. And so, but I have to submit to that. And there's something about being in community that I think is healthy for me. That I have to, I don't get it the way I want it to be. One thing my pastor has taught me is it's good for people to not always get what they want. There's something about that that causes growth.

So if you don't get what you want in church, there may be a reason for that, that God is trying to work on you in, you know? And if I go to 8 it's uncanny that it's like the pastor preaching and myself got together and coordinated something to go together and coordinated something. And so then I'm excited when I teach and I if you haven't been to church get ready because Pastor Randy is on the same page with the Holy Spirit's at work say, in hey, this and it ties together.

That's awesome. Which is good. It's cool because when we're not relying on sometimes ourselves, I know I just rely on my own my own skill self, or whatever. And then in my I give myself the glory for that. brain, Like, I oh, came wow, up with that great whatever. idea, But it's like whenever you're instead, a little bit I've got desperate, what? like, nothing, God, Or I don't feel like I really am there yet with whatever this is. I need to show up. you, God, And He does. It's really cool. And it just bolsters my trust and my faith and just you I need I like, need to okay, do this God, all the know, time. to, honestly, maybe I need to just trust Like, God more and not laying on my own abilities. Exactly. Because He gave them to us. He should give the glory for even my creativity. 

Has there been a highlight moment in your life when God's like, real something that either just revived refocused you, or just you, absolutely wrecked you?

The recent Well, one was in Cuba a couple of weeks ago. We're sitting there in Cuba and Hurricane Oscar just came through the eastern end of the island. We're on the eastern end of the island. wow. Oh, And it didn't hit the church that we were at, but about an hour from there. And these people live on $12 a month. That's their government salaries. They're communists. Wow. And so we're sitting in this church. We're helping add on to the church. There's about 300 people there or so. And we'd been there since Tuesday, and this is Sunday. And so we've been around them all week, and we know they don't have anything. And we're looking at the poverty on the street, and we know that their grocery prices has tripled.

Wow.

So we're sitting there, and they call for an offering and they didn't know the pastor was going to call for an offering for the hurricane because they were having power outages. I mean, they didn't have power in their homes much less. And they showed up dressed, the hilt and everything. And I'm sitting there on the front row because I'm preaching. This is their local church.

This is their local church. This is their local church. Their local pastor. Yeah. Okay. And this is not a tourist area. We're not on the beach. We're not in Havana. We're just in this city. Okay. That is a big city and we're just in the middle of the city. And they called for the offering for the hurricane people an hour away. And they had already passed the plate and done an offering. And now this come if you can give and put your was, offering in the plates at the front. So there's two baskets at the front. And I pulled out my phone about 15 seconds into it because I couldn't believe how many people were coming. And I think every person in the church gave I it because, was like it mean, just came. People came and came and and that came, just broke sitting there me, they don't going, have anything. But they still and they gave, didn't even know to give. And that also taught me that they have discipled those people to give or else they wouldn't have been ready to give on that day. People came and came and and that came, just broke sitting there me. 

Yeah. So that wrecked me in the way they were so joyful about giving. We had lots of worship with a band and everything. And the kids and the kids are jumping up and down and worshiping, you know. That was a recent experience. It really broke me. That's amazing.

We have so much and we just don and we just don't realize it. The scripture talks about how difficult it is for rich men to enter the kingdom of heaven. And we think that that's talking about somebody else.

Right. Exactly.

We worship with our time and with our dollars. Right. And if we looked at what we worship, I know in my bank account, I would say I worship food. Right. Yes. Probably. Right. And if we looked at what we worship, I know in my bank account would say I worship food. Right, yes. Probably. Right. And probably, you know, thinking about these people who get $12, wow. Like, they wouldn't complain about having to eat a sandwich at home. 

They eat once a day. They all have to live together in a different world. And they all have to work and try to pull their money together just to get. 

Wow. It's ridiculous. It is definitely a perspective shift to go over there.

Well I've said it a thousand times. I've told a lot of people just how important your influence has been in my life since honestly living in your house for the first two months of my marriage while you guys were doing rec team and out during the week literally first two months of my marriage while you guys were doing rec team and out during the week, literally first two months of my marriage. And even before that, just like being a mentor and person that's spoken to my life in college. And then even since then, after marriage, you know, first many years of marriage and even to this day, just being somebody that I can always count on through the rough, rough times. And also you're just always super encouraging. You've been one of those solid people. There have been so many stories of people that I respect and whatnot that have just fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, and you've just been somebody that's solid and somebody I could look to. I know even in the, I'm just thinking through back the years when you've had some hard challenges, how you have your perspective through those challenges of just trusting God has helped me as I've gone through some hard things to be like, I know this looks like this, but I know I can trust God. And you've been one of those people that I've been able to look to and say, Rob has been through way worse stuff than I have been through. And he's trusted God through that. I just love what God's done in your life, in the years that we haven't been as close together, physically speaking, just seeing God work through you and just do some amazing things. It's just so awesome. I definitely feel like you're a spiritual father to me, and I just appreciate your influence in my life and the life of my wife and I and my family, my kids and everything. So thanks so much for coming today and sharing with us some good wisdom that you've always been able to pour into me and stuff. 

Well, I've never found another church that has four youth bands and does all the stuff that y'all do, the way y'all train up worship leaders and all. So, man, I feel the same way about you as far as faithfulness and teaching the next generation. So I'm glad this is happening through the podcast. This is so cool.

Well, thanks again for coming and chatting with me. And pray blessings over your ministry and your family and your marriage and everything. I receive it. All right. Well, everybody, thanks for listening in. Check us out next time. We'll have another interesting guest. So I'll see you next time on Lifestyle Worship Podcast.