Getting to know .... Matthew Long

Matthew Long has recently joined our chaplaincy council, succeeding Bob Tonkiss as secretary of our Association. Gerard Jordan spoke with fellow Aston Villa fan Matthew, not about our favourite football club but instead about Matthew’s life as a Christian and what led him to join our community!

Matthew’s early experience and discovery of Christianity

Matthew grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a Roman Catholic family that was part of a long established Irish / Italian community and “where going to church was just what you did”.  He attended the local catholic school but remembers how even at a young age he found it hard to accept the religious teaching that he received. So, at the age of eighteen, he told his father that he didn’t want to attend church regularly anymore and for the next ten years he only went with his family at Christmas and Easter. Matthew explains, “I never lost my faith in God, but I lost my faith in man’s manifestation in the Church.”

It was only once Matthew met his future wife Claire that he started going to church again, and to a very different type of worship from what he had known as a child.  “Claire’s parents attended a

Matthew and Claire

Congregational Church in Stamford, Connecticut, and when we started visiting them at weekends I would initially stay back at their house while they went to church; however, on Palm Sunday I decided to go along with them as they wanted to introduce me to their friends. I was really surprised because it was not like any service I had been to before; I was really taken with both the traditional simplicity of the service and with the preaching which was both simple and applicable to everyday life, while also being intellectually inspiring. I can still remember it clearly to this day.” Matthew and Claire then started to go to churches in New York from time to time, and in advance of their marriage they looked together for somewhere that could be ‘a church home’ for them both.

Christian communities in Matthew’s life

Nearby to Matthew and Claire’s first house in Brooklyn, New York, there was a Dutch Reformed church.  Matthew remembers that when they first visited it, although there were under forty people

there, they found that “everyone was so welcoming and there was such a feeling of spirit and enthusiasm” that they decided to go back. The pastor explained that to be part of the congregation they should attend the weekly bible group for new members. Matthew had never been part of such a group with people exploring their faith together, “so the group became like a family to me and I recall it as one of the most memorable experiences of my life”. A church group soon developed that reached out to take action in the local community in a range of ways; Matthew remembers for example, helping prepare and deliver 250 meals a month for a local shelter. During their four years there the congregation tripled in size.

In 1996 Matthew and Claire moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. The local Presbyterian church which they

Matthew with his daughters

joined was an established suburban community and again was very welcoming both to them and to their baby daughters Cecilia and Deirdre. They become involved  in community action at that church too, funding and building a house for the homeless. From 1999 Matthew attended a three year course run by the Presbytery of Cincinnati which led to him becoming a lay pastor. Alongside his day-job in Cincinnati Matthew then served for four years as the part-time pastor of a small rural church fifty miles away in Georgetown, Ohio.

Following this, Matthew took a post as Headmaster of a multi-denominational Christian Academy in Cincinnati which his daughters attended, because the school needed someone with experience both of Christian ministry and of business. The post was a significant change of career for Matthew

and the work also meant he could no longer continue as a lay pastor. Matthew then subsequently worked at the City Gospel Mission in Cincinnati, which is a large local Christian charity that was founded in the 1920’s to ‘help people who are homeless and hurting and to break the cycle of poverty and despair’. There he helped set up a recycling company to support the rehabilitation and reemployment of people in recovery from addiction.  Matthew explains that during this time “the mission itself was our ministry”.

In more recent years Matthew and Claire attended several non-denominational churches in Cincinnati and then finally an episcopal church because it was nearby and where there was a more informal midday service that suited them. They also cared full time for both sets of their parents until sadly all of their parents passed away within four months of each other.  

Coming to Holy Trinity

Claire spent several years living in France during her late teens and her sister has now lived in

Normandy for many years. In 2023 she and Matthew travelled to France to attend their niece’s wedding. Matthew describes how during their stay they made a trip one day to visit Mont Saint-Michel. "Claire was painting and we were talking and Claire said to me that she had been thinking about how she had always dreamt of living in Europe again one day. So we agreed there and then that we would make it happen; early the following year we took a four month trip around various places in Europe including one month in Nice and decided that we would live here.”

They came along to Holy Trinity one Sunday during that first stay in Nice, so I asked Matthew about his initial impressions. He explains “What will get me in the church door generally speaking is going to be those we find around us”; however, the first few times they came along to coffee following the service nobody said hello to them. Nevertheless, when they subsequently moved here the following autumn and returned to Holy Trinity they gradually got to know people better; and then in particular, helping at the barbecue this summer made them feel a closer part of our community. Matthew says that in his experience asking as many people as possible to help out, even in small ways, really helps them feel a part of a church.

In conclusion I ask Matthew why he has agreed to take on the role of Secretary at our church and I am struck by his reply: “If someone asks you to serve in a church community then you have an obligation to pray about it, and if you don’t hear a 'No' then you should go ahead and do it”. I am left with a strong sense of how being a churchgoer and serving as an active member of a Christian community has been a fundamental part of Matthew’s life, and will continue to be so here in Nice.