Matt Rawlings is a member of the founding Leadership Team and Teaching Pastor of Revolution, a missional church plant located at 315 Chillicothe Street in Portsmouth, OH. It is a church committed to reaching “the least among us” (Matt. 25:31-46).
Matt has been married since 1998 to Emily Bennington and they have a son, Jackson who was born in 2003.
Matt is a prodigal preacher’s kid who ran away from home at 15, ended up in Hollywood at 17 where, among other things, he directed music videos for Latin MTV. He returned to his home town of Portsmouth, OH in 1991 and after a wasted year of college, he entered politics (which is just Hollywood for ugly people). Matt worked for 2 Congressional campaigns and spent 2 years working on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide during the “Gingrich Years” of 1995-1997.
It was during this time that Matt was diagnosed with cancer and was saved. After graduating from Shawnee State University in 1998 with a B.A. in History, Matt attended Kentucky Christian University and then the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University where he earned a Master of Divinity.
Matt then graduated from Cornell Law School in 2004 while pastoring a small church in Ithaca, New York. After a few years working in a large corporate law firm in West Virginia while serving as an interim pastor for small churches, Matt became an associate pastor at Christ’s Community Church in 2006. He then helped plant Revolution in 2008.
Matt recently launched Revolution Church’s Free Seminary and is currently writing a book on theology and zombies. When Matt isn’t preaching or teaching, he is hanging out with his family or reading theology or detective novels, watching sci-fi or horror movies or listening to loud music.
Matt can be reached at pastormattr@yahoo.com or matt@therevolutiononline.org or at (740) 876-8501 or via Revolution Church, P.O. Box 158, Portsmouth, OH 45662.
