How three people around a Bible in a friend's living room became Matheteuo Ministries, and why the name changed along the way.
Pastor Jim was serving at another church when a friend from the gym pulled him aside with a question about the Bible. That conversation led to an invitation: come teach me and my cousins, at my house. Jim asked what they wanted to study. "Whatever is on your heart," the friend said. So they picked a week, opened the Bible, and started.
The response was overwhelming. Are we doing this every week? they asked. If you're free, Jim said, we're available. What started as a single Bible study became a weekly one, in the same living room, with the same handful of people asking to come back.
Within a few months, that three-person study had packed out the living room and dining room, with people sitting on the stairs. Jim asked his pastor what to do with it. "Sounds like you have a church on your hands," came the answer. He never set out to be a pastor, but the only place left to go was his own kung fu school. Every Friday night, the study continued there.
As it grew into a healthy church size, families started arriving with kids, and it was time to make it official. The name Jim chose was Redeemed and Restored Fellowship, built on a simple conviction: every person needs to be redeemed, saved by Christ, and every person needs ongoing restoration in the parts of life that are still broken.
About a year and a half into Redeemed and Restored Fellowship, that conviction landed on Jim: Sunday teaching alone wasn't enough. People needed to be walked with daily, not just taught weekly. The way the church approached Bible study shifted, from general preaching to one-on-one and small-group discipleship, with real accountability built into people's lives.
That shift is where the name Matheteuo comes from, a Greek word from Matthew's gospel, where Jesus tells His followers to "go and make disciples." Not just believers who show up. Disciples who are known, who are growing, and who go on to help someone else grow too.
When the church outgrew the kung fu school, the next building's rent looked like far more than a small, young church community could realistically carry. Jim describes stepping into it anyway on faith, trusting it would work out. It's been about three years since, and the doors have stayed open through real financial challenges that come with planting a church.
The emphasis hasn't changed. It was never enough for a pastor to simply teach the Bible. People need to be shown how to study it for themselves, so what happens on a Sunday keeps happening Monday through Saturday too, in their own homes, with their own families.
The convictions that have shaped Matheteuo from a living room to today.
Our vision was never a building full of hundreds of people we don't know. It's making you the strongest disciple of Christ you can become, in a community small enough that you're actually known.
A Sunday message isn't the finish line. We measure growth by whether people are actually applying scripture, being discipled one-on-one, and discipling someone else in turn.
We don't pass a plate or set a required weekly amount. Giving here is meant to be cheerful, not obligated, and you'll always know where it goes.
Jim never set out to be a pastor. He was serving quietly at another church when a friend's question about the Bible turned into a living-room study, then a church, then a conviction that changed its name. Today he still teaches verse by verse, still meets with people one-on-one, and still believes the measure of a church isn't how many walk in on Sunday, but how many are actually becoming disciples.
Whatever brought you here, there's a seat for you this Sunday at 10 AM.