When Matthew Barnett was a child he suffered from a bad stuttering problem; so the vision he received from God at a youth camp when he was 16 of himself ministering in Los Angeles seemed very far off.

“I never thought that I would be in the ministry,” Barnett told Eternity’s Paul Hutchinson. “God had to start healing (my stutter). So I began speaking to the trees at my Grandma’s house, in Kansas, just in the backyard. God literally taught me how to minister by speaking to trees as a congregation.”

Barnett, from The Dream Centre in LA, was special guest at the recent Revive Baptist Conference in Sydney, where Eternity’s own Paul Hutchinson managed to catch up with him.

Barnett’s passion and zeal for Gods work, “the cause” as he calls it, was immediately noticeable. It oozes out of him when he speaks, whether he is talking about his family or his ministry or his church; he is married to Caroline and they have two young children.

Barnett is the son of Tommy Barnett, and he grew up in his dad’s mega church of over 10,000 people in Phoenix, Arizona. At the age of 20 he was asked to be the pastor of a small church of only twenty people in Los Angeles, which ten pastors had declined already, aware that the area was a tough gangland and that churches rarely survived. Barnett accepted the call, yet says, “I came from a mega church to a very small church. (The congregation) halved in the first week.”

“I am a person who God brought to an adventure at a very young age for a reason,” reflects Barnett. He began as a pastor at 20, and had to relearn everything he thought he knew about ministry. He went from being raised in a mega church, to having nothing but a little building on a street corner, a place nobody could find. Within six months the church was empty. Barnett turned up at church and there was literally nobody there. He left and went to Echo Park where he cried for over three hours. “I am a product of my first failure, which turned out to be my ultimate success”.

Barnett learned many lessons about ministry from this experience. He says, “I had to realise it (ministry) had nothing to do with success. But it had everything to do with finding exactly what God tells you to do in your life, and finding the joy that comes from doing exactly that.

“I think as long as you’re raised under the pressure of ministry and see it as a career, you’re going to fail every single time. God sent me on a journey to LA to break my heart.  Because my heart never would have been broken if I didn’t have to come to LA and take a job that really was almost impossible to resurrect, and learn the lessons needed to reshape me”.

Today, the church Barnett leads has over 9000 members on the weekend, plus the Dream Centre which operates 24/7, where more than 700 people live every day. The Dream Centre reaches out to those who need help the most. Barnett says passionately, “People get saved, we take them to rehab. For years (I am not saying there is anything wrong with this) but for years a lot of churches … contracted their social services out. …But I believe that social and spiritual go so hand in hand.

“I believe that if every church in the world just took in a few homeless people we can solve the problem. If everybody just did something, a home, a house or two, I mean there are so many churches … and if everybody just did a tiny bit, then we could make the greatest impact, a noticeable impact on the world, unlike anything they have ever seen before, and that’s our goal.”

Recently, God has been teaching Barnett about endurance and commitment. “I think there is just so much to do, God is teaching me to enjoy where I’m at on the way to where I’m going. I am learning to just look back and see the miracle God has already done on the way to where we are going.

I’ve been going so fast, trying to solve the next thing, I never really took a chance to thank God or even look back and say: ‘God you’ve done so many great things that we need to just stop and appreciate what you’ve done’. Because if you appreciate what God has done, he gives you the potential to do so much more”.

“Four months ago I was really in a desperate situation. While I was in hospital God did his greatest work. I think God was trying to tell me, ‘You know what this is a supernatural work; I appreciate your trying to do your best’. He taught me some very important lessons in there, that he was going to take care of it. Commit yourself to the things that matter, that will carry you to the place that you want to be in the finish line.”

Barnett explained that when you begin to realise that ministry isn’t about you – if for some reason you weren’t there – God would continue his ministry. “I think that’s a good revelation to get”.

Barnett also reflects on dependence on God in his ministry, “God’s done so much for so long. He’s always done just enough to keep us dependent upon him. I think God has seen every meal that’s ever been fed, he has seen every drug addict that’s graduated from rehab. There is a pipeline of miracles that he has in store that’s ready to be unleashed.”

When Barnett had been ministering for 15 years in Los Angeles, he marked the anniversary by going back to the area he started it, where he lived amongst the homeless. Of the 48 people who first came to his church, 40 were homeless. Barnett says, “God took me back to skid row, the worst place you can imagine under the sun, to live amongst the people for a couple of days.

“That was a life changing experience in my life as a pastor, actually going there and living among the people and rats the size of softballs and living amongst people laying on you, cursing and swearing and just screaming in the middle of the night.

“A lot of times pastors can get caught in just doing ministry stuff and they miss those transforming moments. They are landmarks in the development of you as a leader and that was one of those.”

Of his visit to Australia, Barnett says that he was “excited to be here and excited to be around a culture in Australia that has a desire to make a difference. They’re so open … to want to help people. It’s refreshing to be in a place where people want to think about how they can use their resources to serve their community and really change the dynamic of a confident church, that’s great, book of Acts kind of stuff.”

Barnett says that one of the largest obstacles to outreach ministry work is getting started. “I think the church needs to understand that they just need to start it. A lot of people feel like they have to have the perfect plan in place, they’ve got to have the building, got to have this.  And so I think a lot of time the enemy of outreach can always be the feeling like you have to figure it all out. I just tell people start using what’s in your hand.

“If you are meeting a need, God will give you the formula and the wherewithal, the knowledge and the wisdom required.”