For 13 or 14 years I attended Sardis Lake Christian Camp in Mississippi as both a camper and a counselor. I remember the Paschall family from very early on in my time there. Matt was still a camper there when we moved to Texas and after making a trip back to SLCC in 2010 (we may have returned in 2011, I can’t remember). I was finally able to return to SLCC in 2024 as a counselor. Outside of a few new faces and more than a few of the kids I was once in charge of now being counselors, it was as if I never left! Matt was one of those young men that had grown from camper to now being a counselor when I returned.
For as long as I’ve known Matt, he has always been one that has been ready to help. It didn’t matter what the task was, Matt was a ready and willing volunteer. When it was time to clean the campus at camp, it was Matt that led the charge. He was in the middle of helping someone when he fell and hit his head. If I could think of one word to describe this young man it would be SERVANT!
As I’ve watched my social media feeds fill up with pictures of Matt and folks sharing memories, a couple of themes are recurring…his smile (my favorites have been pictures of him playing with his nephews) and his servant’s heart. That servant’s heart is what everybody saw. I heard about a man who has been a gospel preacher for years (decades) say of Matt, “He made me a better servant.”
Friends, one of our greatest missions as Christians is to be a servant…to have a servant’s heart. James 1:27 – “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” The idea of “visiting” orphans and widows is that we serve them, help them, in any way that we can. Those men chosen by the church in Jerusalem in Acts 6 were all men that had a servant’s hearts. Barnabas (whose actual name was Joseph) earned the nickname of Barnabas because of his penchant for helping the brethren. We read in Galatians that we are to do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10).
May we all, whether we knew him or not, use the example that Matt Paschall left for us and work to have a servant’s heart! Please pray for his family; for his father and mother, his sisters and their husbands, and especially those little guys that are going to be missing their uncle Matt.
-Josh Romo