Two Mites Ministries - Matt Gray - Piano and Vocal Ministry

About

Born in 1972 to two Greenville College students, I was destined to grow up in the church. My mother was a pastor’s daughter and my father was preparing to be a pastor himself. Through the years of moving from church to church and town to town while growing up, I developed my own faith in God and desire to live for Him. But the frequent moving also brought a quality of isolation to my life. Through middle school and high school, we served at a small church in Missouri with no other youth; this deepened the isolation I felt in my Christian walk, and this sense of isolation brought struggles.

I started piano lessons in second grade and often had opportunities to play and sing in church, but in college I found the chance to move to a different level of music ministry as I received training and experience serving as a worship leader and member of worship teams in chapel and for other student worship services. I loved doing any kind of music ministry, but felt unsure of what career direction God was calling me in. After a summer of working as a camp counselor, I decided on becoming a public school teacher. So I continued college and received my degree in secondary education, with a major in math and minors in music and Spanish.

After two years of teaching middle school in Houston TX, I decided teaching was not the right lifetime career for me. I still had no idea what career I did want to pursue, though. A year later, my parents were living in Wichita KS, and I moved there to spend a couple months with them while I finished raising support for a two-year missions assignment in Puerto Rico for which my denomination had accepted me. Unfortunately, after a few months in Wichita, my assignment in Puerto Rico was canceled, so again I was left pretty much directionless as I faced the big decision of what I was going to do with my future.

A couple of years later, after completing an intense year-long discipleship program at my church, I wrote my first song, “The New Road.” That year had been a very difficult one, but also a year of great spiritual growth. I had struggled all my life with knowing God’s will and doubting my ability to hear His voice, but during that year, I knew for the first time that He was speaking directly to me in ways that I could understand. “The New Road” was actually the result of weaving together some of the messages I felt God had been sending me that year through a variety of sources.

Since that time, I have written a few more songs, drawing from the struggles I have faced and still face in life, the blessings I have received, and the truths I have learned as I have sought to follow God. I have become convinced that God wants to use this gift of music He gave me for some purpose. I still do not know exactly how He wants to do that, but I feel I should pursue as many opportunities as possible to minister through my own music and as a worship leader, so that is what I am striving to do.