Getting to know our Lead Pastor - Matt Harmon
Though I’ve lived my entire adult life in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I grew up in Maine and still think of myself as a New Englander. This is my excuse for being (my apologies in advance) an avid Boston sports fan. Like most of my friends and family, I rarely attended church and was mostly unimpressed when I did. But I was always curious about God and the meaning of life, if any. In 7th grade, friends from school invited me to their church where I first started following Jesus. During high school, my questions about God drove me into to the apologetic writings of the author C.S. Lewis. At the time, my grandmother became convinced, to my horror, that I should become a minister.
Student life at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire revealed that (unfortunately) I wasn’t actually smarter than everyone else. But I found community and beauty, truth and grace, through both the Navigators on campus, and a nearby church in Woodstock, VT.
My freshmen year I met my future wife, Rebecca, who swooned over my dance moves at an early 80’s frat party. Rebecca and I married six days after graduation and moved to Philadelphia so that I could study at Westminster Theological Seminary and she could study at the University of Pennsylvania. Through college and seminary, Jim and Emily Angehr, now of Liberti Church Collingswood, became two of our closest lifelong friends.
While at Westminster, we served at a small multiracial church in West Philadelphia, until our move in 2004 to Princeton, New Jersey, so that Rebecca could complete her Ph.D at Princeton University. While there, our daughter, Anastasia, joined us and I joined the pastoral staff team of Hope Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Our son, Ransom, was born at the very end of our time in Princeton.
In 2011, the four of us moved to Grove City, PA, where Rebecca taught French as a Professor at Grove City College and I joined the staff team of a new church plant. In 2014, after the founding pastor departed, I began serving as our senior pastor. During this time I had the priviledge of publishing a book with the founding pastor based on a sermon series called Living in the Light of Inextinguishable Hope: The Gospel According to Joseph and Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi (Reformed Expository Commentary).
Our family is thrilled to be back in the Philadelphia area. Our own family is profoundly transcultural: I am from the North, Rebecca is from the South (making Philadelphia neutral territory). Our daughter (13) is African American, and our son (10) is Peruvian (both adopted). We enjoy walking, running, reading, movies, sports, puzzles, travel, food, and dancing together in the kitchen.