Matt Chandler has returned to the pulpit of The Village Church, Flower Mound, Texas.
He was suspended in August 2022 after exchanging a series of Instagram messages with a woman who was not his wife. The Southern Baptist Convention church hired law firm Castaneda and Heidelman to conduct an investigation but declined to publish its report, wanting ‘to honour the request of the woman Matt was messaging with not to be in the spotlight’. Chandler called the exchanges ‘unguarded and unwise’, although the church stressed that they ‘were not sexual or romantic’.
Chandler said at the time that the exchange was neither sexual nor secret – his wife knew about it – but the church’s elders were nonetheless concerned ‘about frequency and familiarity’, and specifically ‘a familiarity that played itself out in coarse and foolish joking’.
