MATT AND MICHELLE MUNN ARE GOOD FRIENDS AND COMMITTED MEMBERS OF FPC. I HOPE YOU ENJOY THEIR STORY AS EXPRESSED IN MATT’S OWN WORDS.
I was raised in a church going family and at an early age I discovered how important the church was to me. Growing up, it seemed we attended every time the doors were open. My mother worked at the church as a cook and my father taught Sunday school and Sunday night and Wednesday night bible studies. As I watched my parents get so involved in the church, I too wanted to be a part at a young age. After attending every Vacation Bible School, Summer Camp, Mission Trip and youth event, I became as involved as possible and the church was there for me. 
As I grew up in the youth group, I had a youth minister that I began to idolize and I wanted to pattern my life around him. As I graduated from High School and planned for college, I was part of a commissioning service, which recognized and ordained young men to become servants into the ministry. As the Church helped me develop my talents, I chose to pursue the ministry of working with youth. I jumped into bible classes immediately, began an associate degree, worked full time and then jumped into a marriage by 21.
As a young married couple in Oklahoma that is pursuing the ministry, I was directed to a small church to become their full time youth minister. As I worked full time at the local telephone company, attended school full time, led the youth department and worked on being a good husband, I thought my life was on track and in gear to pursue all of my dreams.
At the age of 25, my life was shattered. With all the time that I was spending at work, school or church, my wife felt I was not giving her enough attention and went looking for affection from someone else. As a young man in the ministry and working his butt off, I was reluctant to the fact that such a thing could happen. At 25 I found out my wife was cheating on me and was interested in pursuing a life with that person. I was devastated, I went immediately to my church and my friends that I had and was more shocked to find out that I was forced to leave the church because I wanted a divorce. My life as I had planned it was over….
I will never forget standing in front of a mirror one morning and knowing that “man” had let me down but not my “God”. The people that I served with, prayed with and traveled with had let me down but not the “Church”. I stood in front of that mirror and told myself that from that point on, I would be pursuing a different direction for my life and “people” were not going to be able to affect or control me like they once had. I never gave up on the church; I just knew it was going to be a long time before I was to get as involved as I once did.
In 1999, I was working for a national company, finishing up my bachelor’s degree and met the woman of my dreams. My wife Michelle and I met a wedding in a church and ever since that moment, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Michelle grew up Methodist and I southern Baptist, so we attended a few churches along the way while we lived in Tulsa, Chicago, Kansas City and now Belmont. When we first got married, we were called the celebrity couple of Ken & Barbie speaking for myself, I think we believed it. As we moved from Oklahoma to Illinois and Kansas, I felt like again we had our life planned out and were living the dream. As we lived in Kansas we had great jobs, I finished my Masters Degree, built our fist house and started to pursue building a family.
Once again, my world was shattered. Within a 3 year window of trying Michelle had 3 miscarriages and despite everyone telling us to keep trying, look at adoption, try everything possible, we decided to forego the family equation due to too much pain and anguish. As we sat and looked at the life we had built to have a family, I chose to take a position with my company in the southeast and we moved to Charlotte. Michelle says she came kicking and screaming but in her heart she believed it was a good thing.
The last five years of living here in the Charlotte area have not been the easiest… we are a thousand miles from our families, it has been hard to meet new people here and we have travelled a ton. We have been going on and off to Forest Pointe over the last 3 years and this past March it just hit us both that we were a part of something special here at Forest Pointe and did not even realize it. With all of the pain that we have personally experienced within our lives, it almost felt natural for us both to get involved at FP. Michelle jumped into volunteering in the nursery which is one of the most amazing decisions she has ever made with the pain she felt trying to start a family. I jumped in to get involved with setting up & tearing down the stage, we attended the Engage class, Michelle was baptized, we are jumping into the First Impressions team and we are both committed in supporting financially and physically the renovation of our church building on Wilkinson Boulevard.
I say all of this to get the following point across…. at no point in our lives did Michelle and I ever doubt God, our Faith or the Church. We might have questioned God’s direction many times or became angry at the results but in our hearts we never gave up. With the direction that we received at such a young age, we may never have spoken about it together but we knew that we would be involved again in a church. I can tell you that as involved as we recently have been at FP, we both chose to do so out of love for this church. We don’t know many people here but we want to be a part of something special and we both feel that there is something special going on at FP and it is being directed by our Heavenly father and in unison, our church body is reacting to his direction.
I look forward to meeting many of you here at FP and as we grow together might we always remember…
God is control, we are not, and that is OK.
Matt Munn