This article is from the September/October issue of Outreach magazine. Subscribe today!
On Kingdom Fellowship AME’s first anniversary, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic.
Without a doubt, Senior Pastor Matthew Watley expected his church’s momentum to come crashing to an end. With more than 5,000 members, church leadership had a big vision to better serve the community. They also were in the middle of one construction project with dreams for another two locations.
“When COVID-19 hit,” he says, “we assumed everything would come to a screeching halt. During a pandemic, when you call your bank [for a loan], it says no. But for some reason, we got the green light to keep building. Then, we expected the contractors to step out, but they were also ready to go. Then, we thought [our people] would stop giving, but they gave even more.”
Over the next couple of years, Kingdom Fellowship AME managed to do more than just survive—it thrived through outreach. The new buildings were all built at a cost of nearly $70 million, allowing for church ministries to evolve. Through collaborations with other organizations, the church provided 1.8 million pounds of food assistance and raised $60,000 in global partnerships.
In this interview with Outreach, Watley reveals why no one is more surprised than he is that Kingdom Fellowship AME is an Outreach 100 Fastest-Growing Church.
Growing up, did you want to be a pastor?
Absolutely not. While I’m a third-generation preacher, because I moved eight times before I went to college, I decided I would prefer stability and a nice income. So, I was headed off to a more lucrative career.
Why did you move so much?
My dad was in the AME, and in a Methodist church you are promoted through moving. It was difficult to move so frequently, but in a lot of ways the reality served me well. I had to learn to be an extrovert to navigate new environments. It also exposed me to a diversity of people and perspectives. I think it has also given me a better sense of what it means to be in the family of Christ because I have so many adopted parents and grandparents who love me in so many different places.
What led you into ministry?
I was pursuing a science major at Howard University. With my fraternity, I went to Mabopane, a rural community in South Africa. A very poor area. We were there teaching “stepping,” a dance form. When I went to church one Sunday, I can actually say, just like in a movie, I heard from God.
There’s a saying that goes “In America, you believe in God; in Africa, you depend on God.” I have never seen that kind of faith before. I experienced the power of an active church; I even met Desmond Tutu. The experience broadened my perspective of how the world works and how we can impact society, and it called me into ministry, the very thing I thought I would never do.
Where did responding to God’s call take you?
After seminary, my first church was in Liberia, in West Africa. Shortly after I landed for my welcome service, fighting broke out. We were trapped in the church all night and had to step over two bodies to escape the next morning. After those first few hours in my first church, I thought, Maybe I had better get back on home. As civil war spread, I remember thinking what a tragedy it was that I had the luxury to leave when others in the church could not. And just because I was born in another place
When did you become senior pastor at Kingdom Fellowship AME Church?
In March 2019. Kingdom Fellowship is comprised of the former Reid-Temple North and Reid Temple D.C. congregations, about 5,000 people total. Up until then I had served as an executive pastor, leading construction projects, fund drives, collaborative projects and entrepreneurial efforts. At the time we opened doors at Kingdom Fellowship in my new role as senior pastor, we had an office tower under renovation and more than 12 acres of land, on which we dreamed of building a new state-of-the-art worship center.
Tell me about the community you serve.
We are in Calverton, Maryland, which is adjacent to Silver Spring in Prince George’s County, historically the richest African American county in the nation with a higher-than-normal income, educational background and percentage of white-collar vocations. The immediate locale of the church, however, is in a very disparate community with a huge diversity of immigrants. Folks come from all over, which makes it a really fun place to be. Our church culture is that we really don’t care about your background, or how much you make or don’t make. We are just interested in what God is bringing.
From the start, your church has built a reputation of serving through working with others. How did those partnerships evolve during the pandemic?
The pandemic hit hard because there was a good deal of food insecurity in the area already. We knew COVID-19 would put that [under further strain], so we made a commitment immediately to start feeding folks. We didn’t have any plan, infrastructure, experience in or clue how to do that, so we just started sending folks to Costco to get some food for us to give away. We were simply responding to a need we saw.
Collaboration became like the lifeblood of our outreach ministry. Kendra Smith leads all of our Kingdom Cares efforts as executive director of Kingdom Global Community Development Corporation. She started organizing our volunteers and reaching out to some relationships we have within the community—people like Will Jawanda, a councilman-at-large for Montgomery County who is also a member of our church. He got us our first investment from the county. That was huge because it allowed us to build an infrastructure to expand the work we were doing. As you might imagine, it’s a full-scale operation—bringing the food in, unpacking and repacking it, and getting it back out. Because of the county’s investment, we were able to bring on full-time staff, purchase a huge freezer unit, purchase trucks and equip a warehouse space. Soon, we were able to manage, advertise and scale, which gave us more opportunities to serve.
Give us an example of someone you were able to help during this time.
A Latino family started coming for food. We got to know them. Their daughter had a baby. We supported this new family, and now we have been able to hook them up with some job opportunities. That wasn’t a part of the original plan. But when you work and walk with people, it opens doors for ministry. The food distribution thing became a real game changer for the life and the trajectory of this family. Seeing that kind of change, we began to more purposely expand our ministry where the needs led us.
What are some of the church’s other outreach ministries?
In May 2023, we began construction on the Kingdom Cares Center, which will be finished in March 2024. We built it by developing partnerships with the private sector through grants. The first floor will support our food services; a client choice grocery store, where people can come in and pick what they need; and a delivery portal for those who can’t make it to our campus. The second floor will be for clothing and a safe child care space. The third floor will be for health care. On the fourth floor, we’re looking to provide job training. The fifth floor will be a business incubator.
We are working with our residential partners, including Holy Cross Hospital, Prince George’s Community College and Volunteers of America, to do what they are good at. They provide the expertise. They all know how underserved our community is, and want to come alongside us to provide space and services in one location. We are all excited.
Did you have any hesitation asking church members to serve during the lockdowns?
As you may know, the African American community was disproportionately impacted and affected by COVID-19 because we suffer several comorbidities. Black Americans are more susceptible to die or get very sick from COVID-19. We are also very hesitant to take the vaccine because of our experience in this country, as I’m sure you’re familiar with the Tuskegee experiment.
We worked to develop a press kit to help pastors across the country help congregations, particularly Black ones, understand the science behind the vaccine. We partnered with doctors, including a central figure in developing the mRNA vaccine as well as the president of the National Medical Association, to explain why vaccines are safe and the best means of preventing death or serious disease. I participated in one of the clinical trials for one of the vaccines to demonstrate that belief.
We started from a point that people have a right to choose to serve or not. We did not want people to feel burdened that they had to do some kind of test about their faith, that if they didn’t serve somehow, they didn’t trust God. The second thing I wanted to do was to communicate that we were doing everything within our means to try to keep them safe. At the same time, we issued a call to sacrifice. People in the fields of defense, law and medicine were putting their lives on the line to serve others. We envisioned ourselves as first responders, acting on a call from God to serve. The funny thing is, when we stopped having church in person, we became the church.
Tell me about someone whose service really inspired you.
One of our seniors was the first to volunteer. I basically had banned her from serving because I knew seniors were far more vulnerable to COVID-19. After I thanked her for her willingness to serve [but declined her offer], she started a concerted lobbying campaign to make her own choice. She told me that at her age she had already laid out funeral plans. She knew that serving would give her life. She was a frontline soldier, more vulnerable and less fearful. For me, it was inspirational and allowed me to teach younger generations what faith and love look like.
Another person who inspires me is Lincoln Tyson, who owns a construction firm. He was one of the first guys to show up to help. He was so inspired by the work and meeting needs that he started using his own employees to help serve. He would bring his own trucks in and pay some of his guys who were not volunteers just to make sure that every Saturday we could do the work that we were committed to do. Even though his business has grown through the years, to this day, he and his guys are still out there because they now see service to their community as part of who they are as a company.
When Kingdom Fellowship couldn’t meet in person, how did you maintain momentum?
We realized our existing broadcast was bad. Before the pandemic, we basically turned the cameras on wide angle, and that’s what we called our online. Our first move was to hire a producer, who was a member of our church, to reformat to a high-quality online experience. Through the broadcast, we have now started attracting people from all over the country who are tuning in because they want to have the best worship experience possible online.
Was the online service the primary way people came to join the church during that time?
Interestingly, no. Most people came to join our church through our outreaches—not just the people we served, but also those people we partnered with to meet needs. When we worked with people to acquire the food or to help us organize, we got to know one another. They got to see the gospel lived out through us. And a lot of those people are the ones who eventually joined our church, plus those we helped.
Would your church be the same if the pandemic hadn’t happened?
I think we are a better church because of the pandemic, without a doubt. But that has come with great cost. There has been so much loss. One of my classmates, an undergrad at Howard University, kept his pharmacy open in the early days of the pandemic. After contracting COVID-19, he was taken by his wife and two daughters to the hospital, and it was the last time they saw him. For many in our congregation, the pandemic came at great expense. At the same time, I believe it made us better people, a more impactful church.
Kingdom Fellowship also has had an impact dealing with systemic issues like poverty and racism.
When I read the gospel of Jesus, I see him feeding thousands and preaching to thousands. It’s good news both spiritually and physically. You have to look at systems that support a community being impoverished or oppressed. You have to recognize how those things happen and address them. Because at some point, you have to ask, “How come in this one ZIP code, a child is much more likely to die than in another one? Is there a unique disease in the ZIP code? Or is that disease called poverty, or the lack of quality health care, or access to quality food?”
I think that we are finding our voice in terms of engaging in policy advocacy. For instance, we had a law on the books that said basically if a [trafficked] child was picked up [by the police], they could be charged for prostitution, which, of course, is absolutely insane. So, our congregation weighed in. We went to the state house and had a couple of meetings and got organized. We’re very grateful that the governor just recently was able to sign changes into law.
Do you believe God often turns tragedy into redemption?
Winston Churchill made famous the phrase, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” I think COVID-19 created a crisis, and the faithful responded. It gave us real and specific ways to put feet to our faith and move out by loving and engaging people who are mostly unfamiliar to us. I think when you’re faithful, God presents new opportunities, and then you just try to do the best where you are, then God shows you more, and things evolve.
What has that experience taught you as a pastor?
It’s helped me find my voice. I realized I needed to stop looking at the people in my church as my members. I needed to look beyond the walls and recognize our higher calling to love and serve our community. I think as an organization, as a church, we feel more connected than ever before to the place we live. We’re people who are using our gifts throughout the week to be a blessing to the community.
I think it’s forced us to look up, look out and see what was happening around us, and to actually find our voice and see the kind of influence we can have. We see the power of love.
It’s really not that complicated, right? Love God, love others.
For me, love is an action. It’s a verb, moving and making an impact. We’ve never really cared about numbers. It would keep me up at night counting people who come to our church. A former mentor of mine named it “narcissistic insularity,” meaning into ourselves and off to ourselves. It’s not the number of people who come to church, but [the number] who go out to serve, that defines real growth.
My favorite verse for outreach is Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” I love this verse because it embodies the full kingdom witness at the institutional and societal level. It speaks to our individual relationship with God from a position of humility, and it speaks to our responsibility to love others with whom we share the planet.
Yep, that is exactly right. It’s not that complicated: Love God and love others.
KINGDOM FELLOWSHIP AME CHURCH
Calverton, Maryland
Website: Kingdom.global
Denomination: African Methodist Episcopal
Founded: 2019
Fastest-Growing: 1