Matt Walkley has become such a huge part of what God is doing through The Gathering and Frontline these days.  We all know him as an amazingly gifted worship leader and musician but those gifts draw their strength from his very real love for Christ and desire to see the church truly worship and not just sing.  Leading with Matt means a lot to me personally and I’m really grateful he took a risk and got involved with The Gathering.

Recently, Matt has been having some trouble with his voice.  I want to share what’s going on so that you can join me in prayer for him.  This past Thursday, Matt’s doctor confirmed that he has a hemorrhaging polyp on his vocal cords.  While things could have been much worse, it’s still a pretty serious thing, especially for a vocalist.  It’s basically a growth that’s started to bleed in his throat – no way to sing with that!  The doctors are doing a great job of treating Matt and we’re confident he’ll make a full recovery.  But he won’t be able to sing until October 15th at the earliest.  You’ll still see Matt around – he wants to keep leading by playing guitar and pouring into our bands.  But when you don’t hear him singing, you’ll know why – he’s on vocal rest!

Matt leads all of us in worship and serves with all of his strength.  It’s time for us to serve him for a while by praying for him.  My prayer is that God would use this time to heal Matt’s voice completely and return him to full strength as soon as possible.  I know your prayers mean a lot to Matt, so I hope you’ll take seriously the privilege we have of being able to pray for one of our leaders as he walks through a difficult time.

By the way, Matt being on vocal rest makes the office much quieter!!

See you at The Gathering this week,

John