Thank you, Dr. Matt Brown! A Farewell Tribute

We were blessed to have local freelance writer, Ken Garfield, pen a farewell tribute to Dr. Matt Brown and his wife, Donna. Ken has a special connection to SMPC: his son, Matt, is our former communications director!

The article was distributed on Matt and Donna’s last Sunday at SMPC. You can download and print it here!

Thank you to Ken for his love and support of SMPC and his beautiful words that perfectly capture how grateful we are for Matt and Donna’s ministry and legacy they leave at SMPC.

We are grateful for the 21-plus years that Matt Brown gave us his heart and soul, wisdom and grace, tenderness and playfulness. That last one, were you here the Sunday morning he sang Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” from the pulpit?

Matt invited us, as the song says, to “clap along if you know what happiness is to you.” That was his way of encouraging the family of South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church to go deep in search of joy. “Happiness is fleeting and superficial,” Matt says, “while joy is possible even in the difficult and cloudy passages of life.”

Charter member and retired church administrator Freda Smith remembers how Matt whistled as he walked down the halls of the church. Sharing God’s love with us as we journey through life, how could he not whistle while he worked?

“Matt celebrated with us and he mourned with us,” Freda says. “When he asked ‘How are you doing?’ he waited for our answer. He was never in a rush. He was our pastor in the truest sense of the word, and we were his family. Still are.”

Each member of our church family holds tight to a memory.

Church member Terry Gaines remembers the Sunday that Matt quoted the opening scene from the 2003 romcom “Love Actually” to remind us we are not alone. “General opinion makes out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that,” says the film’s narrator, Hugh Grant.

“Seems to me that love is everywhere.”

Matt searched high and low for expressions of love and hope and devoted his life to the common good.

Church member Nancy Metzler served as our Director of Hospitality and Connection. Sunday mornings in the bustling narthex, she’d watch folks share a word and a smile. There Matt would be, seeking out those who were standing alone, perhaps shy, struggling, waiting for someone to approach them and say, “Good morning, I am glad you are here.”

Matt was that someone.

Nancy was chair of the Pastor Nominating Committee that brought Matt to us. The first time the committee met him, she says, they were 95 percent certain he was the one. When they met Donna, they were 100 percent certain.

Freda, who is grateful for the 17 years she worked with Matt, put it another way. With a hint of mischief, she wonders, “Matt can resign. But can Donna stay?”

The love that the church family has for Matt and Donna? The feeling is mutual.

“This church saw us through raising two teenagers (Noah, now 34, and Seth, 31) and burying four parents,” says Donna, who found her ministry as a special education teacher. “We have been well loved.”

Well loved?

We love Matt for helping grow the church in membership and ministry, and for helping make SMPC – congregation and staff – a happy place.

We love Matt for his steadfast leadership that resulted in the building of the chapel and sanctuary, both free from debt.

We love Matt for how carefully he chose his words, whether speaking or writing, because you never knew what word might change a person’s outlook on life.

We love Matt for his friendship. He says that to share in a long-term relationship – baptizing a child then watching him or her graduate from high school – was a blessing beyond measure. It was a blessing for us, too.

We love Matt for his gentle spirit and humor. A 10-year-old on his way to church with his grandmother once asked, “Do you think Matt could have been a standup comedian?”

Maybe we should have started a pool – “How many Mountain Dews can Matt drink in a week?” Yes, we even love Matt for his taste in soft drinks.

Most of all, we love Matt for the moments that add up to 21-plus years.

The baptisms. The weddings. The bedside visits. The church suppers. The lessons he taught that brought the Bible to life. The funerals, those he led and the ones he and Donna attended because they knew that’s where they should be, with us, mourning a loss, celebrating a life well lived.

And then came Sunday morning.

Matt is up there preaching his heart out about life, death and everything in between.

We are in our seats, hanging on every word, commenting to one another on the way to lunch, “He was preaching to me. He knows what I’m going through.”

This, from the Celtic tradition, is the thin place, where heaven comes close to earth.

“These are the moments that stick out,” Matt says, “when you are preaching and a silence comes over and you realize, ‘We are in the presence of something holy.’”

Indeed, we were.