DALLAS — Matt Chandler doesn't feel anything when the radiation penetrates his brain. It could start to burn later in treatment. But it hasn't been bad this time. Not yet, anyway.
Chandler's lanky 6-foot-5-inch frame rests on a table at Baylor University Medical Center. He wears the same kind of jeans he wears preaching to 6,000 people at The Village Church in suburban Flower Mound, where the 35-year-old pastor is a rising star of evangelical Christianity.
Another cancer patient Chandler has gotten to know spends his time in radiation imagining that he's playing a round of golf. Chandler on this first Monday in January is reflecting on Colossians 1:15-23, about the pre-eminence of Christ and making peace through the blood of his cross.
Chandler wears a mask with white webbing that keeps his head still as the radiation machine delivers the highest possible dose to what is considered to be fatal and incurable brain cancer.
This is Matt Chandler's new normal. Each weekday, he spends two hours in the car — driven from his suburban home to downtown Dallas — for eight minutes of radiation and Scripture.
Chandler is trying to suffer well. He would never ask for such a trial, but in some ways he welcomes this cancer. He says he feels grateful that God has counted him worthy to endure it. He has always preached that God will bring both joy and suffering but is only recently learning to experience the latter.
Since all this began on Thanksgiving morning, Chandler says he has asked "Why me?" just once, in a moment of weakness.
He is praying that God will heal him. He wants to grow old, to walk his two daughters down the aisle and see his son become a better athlete than he ever was.
Whatever happens, he says, is God's will, and God has his reasons. For Chandler, that does not mean waiting for his fate. It means fighting for his life.
Chandler can be sober and silly, charming and tough. He'll call men "bro" and women "mama."
One of Chandler's sayings is, "It's OK to not be OK — just don't stay there."
Chandler's long, meaty messages untangle large chunks of Scripture. His challenging approach appeals, he believes, to a generation looking for transcendence and power.
His theology teaches that all humans are wicked, that human beings have offended a loving and sovereign God, and that God saves through Jesus' death, burial and resurrection — not because people do good deeds.
Congregation explodes
After college Chandler became a fiery evangelist who led a college Bible study and traveled the Christian speaking circuit. He was hired from another church in 2002 at age 28 to lead what is now The Village Church, a Southern Baptist congregation that claimed 160 members at the time.
The church now meets in a renovated former grocery store with a 1,430-seat auditorium; two satellite campuses are flourishing in Denton and Dallas, and Chandler speaks to large conferences.
Matt prays that his friends and family, especially his children — Audrey, 7, Reid, 4, and the baby — do not grow resentful.
Chandler says learning he had brain cancer was "kind of like getting punched in the gut. You take the shot, you try not to vomit, then you get back to doing what you do, believing what you believe.
"We never felt, still have not felt, betrayed by the Lord or abandoned by the Lord," Chandler said.
Chandler never thought such a trial would shake his faith. But until now, that was just hope.
"This has not surprised God," Chandler says on the drive home. "He is not in a panic right now trying to figure out what to do with me or this disease. Those things have been warm blankets, man."
Chandler has, however, wrestled with the tension between belief in an all-powerful God and what he can do about his situation. He believes he has responsibilities: to use his brain, to take advantage of technology, to walk in faith and hope, to pray for healing and then "see what God wants to do."
"If he suffers well, that might be the most important sermon he's ever preached," said Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church and a friend of Chandler's.
Chandler has preached the last two weekends and is planning trips to South Africa and England. He lost his hair to radiation but got a positive lab report last week and feels strong.
The average life expectancy for a patient with the type of malignant tumor Chandler has is two to three years. But his doctors say Chandler will live longer because of the aggressive surgery, treatment and Chandler's otherwise good health. There's also a chance the cancer goes into remission for years.
Chandler is drinking life in, watching his son build sand castles at the park, preaching each sermon as if eternity is at stake, and feeling a heightened sense of reality.
"It's carpe diem on steroids," he says.
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