Friends, many of you have already been getting to know Cabe Matthews.  In September, he telephoned me to inquire whether our church might consider taking him on as a volunteer Student Pastor Intern.  From this first conversation, I had a sense that Cabe and Olympic View made a good fit for each other.  Cabe started attending worship and Men’s Breakfast, even before the Executive Committee could meet to discuss the possibility.  Once the committee affirmed its support of the relationship, I began to meet regularly with him.

Those who have attended worship in the last three weeks have found Cabe up front, leading the service.  Young Adults have found him in Sunday School.  And last Sunday, Cabe taught the youth class in Roger Edmark’s absence.

At its last meeting, the Board of Administration leant its approval to the relationship and will invite the congregation to ‘call’ Cabe officially into service as our Student Pastor at our General Assembly, November 16.

But with official notification out of the way, I wanted you to get to know a bit more about Cabe.  I had lunch and coffee with him this week and pumped him with questions.

Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas, Cabe has a passion for the spicy foods of Cajun and Tex-Mex culture.  Cabe was proud to graduate from the University of Texas in 2005, the same year the Longhorns won the College Football National Title.  Sitting across the table In his Longhorn jersey, Cabe made sure that I knew U-Texas just happened to be ranked #1 again this year.

His degree?  Physics.

“From a very young age, I had two dreams: I saw myself as a scientist or a pastor.”

The link?

“I guess I’ve always been interested in the ultimate questions.  Physics underlies all other forms of science.  It’s how you get under the hood, to the heart of what makes the whole thing run.”

Cabe grew up United Methodist and loved going to church.  He recalled his first pastor, Harold Dunham as a great story teller.  He loved Bible Study, and conversations about faith.  At the same time, Cabe found the evangelical flavor of Christianity back home a bit sour.  So when it came time to look for a seminary, he decided to leave Texas and come to Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle.

“That’s Mars Hill Grad School, not the mega-church,” Cabe points out.  He’s not the only student at Mars Hill to lift up the distinction.

“I came to Seattle looking for something radically different.  I could have gone to Dallas Theological Seminary, but they want you to sign faith statements and rule covenants, and always wear a tie…I couldn’t see myself at a school where everyone was convinced that they were right and everyone else was wrong.  I wanted exposure to eclectic perspectives.”

Something about Cabe can’t rest with conventional thinking.  Cabe likes to poke at tightly held convictions, turn them over, look at them from the other side.  Though it can come off as playing the devil’s advocate, there is an intellectual honesty in his approach that resists black and white thinking.  Cabe finds deeper truth in  the shades and textures that emerge only when one can live, for a time, in the complexities of a question or idea.  Fortunately, he also has the intellectual capacity to keep from getting lost in the complex.

Now in his third year at Mars Hill, Cabe has found, in his exposure to Anabaptism, a practical faith that resonates with his own.  How?

“I like the radicality of it.  It is neither Catholic nor Protestant, yet is somehow still true to the best of both of those traditions…It thinks outside the box, it seeks a third way…I like its view of the state.  Even hundreds of years ago, Anabaptists were among the first folks to see faith beyond Christendom, beyond the way Christianity had become an empire.”

Listening to Cabe, I re-discover my own passion for thinking about God and the way we practice our faith.  In conversation with him, I find a spiritual brother, one whose interests range wide, but who lives for the deepest of questions and who shares my curiosity and desire to stretch and grow as a follower of Jesus.

Cabe has come to us looking for a spiritual home in which to explore his call to ministry.  I hope you’ll look for ways to be a part of Cabe’s learning.  He’s ready to learn.  And while he’s with us, I suspect we’ll learn some good things too.