Matt Hastings
Class of 1998, MA ’07
From embarrassment . . . to transformation
"I grew up well aware of Trevecca. Many of the professors and administration went to school with my parents, and I had heard their stories—their memories. College sounded good, but I didn’t think college was a possibility. I did not think that I was smart enough. I always heard the cutting words of a guidance counselor: 'You’re really never going to do anything with your life.'
"Believing her, I went another direction and dropped out of high school midway through my senior year. I left home and tried my hand at “writing my own story,” sabotaging all my dreams in the process. After I returned home, my father asked me try Trevecca for just one year. I was able to enroll at Trevecca on “academic probation” (a description with which I was all too familiar).
"Then something happened. The Trevecca community changed me. Professors cared, and I met authentic friends—not like the ones I’d had before. I made the leap. No more embarrassment at the pictures of my GED ceremony. No more looking at the ground when people talked to me. The nobody, the loner, the rebel everyone warns you about now holds his head high. God can transform. He’s still doing it."
Matt, senior pastor of Grace Church of the Nazarene in Chattanooga, Tennesse, earned two degrees from Trevecca. He and his wife, Keri ’95, have four children—Bailee, Emily, Matthew Jr., and William Wondu.
