330-867-1055 | 2750 West Market St, Fairlawn OH 44333

Matthew Schechter

St Hilary Parish is blessed to welcome Matthew Schechter, our new Director of Faith Formation for Teens and Young Adults!

Before coming to St Hilary and Akron for his first time to adopt on this position, he lived at Damascus Catholic Mission Campus for two years as a full-time missionary. While Matthew was a student at The Ohio State University with a Bachelors Degree in Neuroscience, he encountered Jesus in a powerful way and it set him on a trajectory to be a missionary set aside by the Lord. In college, he lived in households owned by Saint Paul’s Outreach, and there he grew in deeper trust with God that his life was to be a monument to the zeal of the Lord. He formed a missionary core that would cover the campus loving students and fulfill the Great Commission: preaching the Gospel and teaching all that Jesus commanded.

His hunger for the Gospel to be seen as the greatest love story ever told led him to become a missionary at Damascus. There he annually encountered 10,000 youth along with their families, and through bold acts of faith, led groups of kids and adults to surrendering their lives to the Lord, declaring Jesus to be the Savior of their lives, and assisting them in receiving Baptism of the Holy Spirit. The result was through the two years he was there that 30 kids decided to enter into the embrace of the Catholic Church.

Matthew got married this May and followed the Holy Spirit here to St Hilary! He is excited to see a family of young worshippers “in spirit and in truth” be birthed here, and who are ready to reach the lost, the addicted, and the forgotten with the healing power of the Gospel.