'I can’t make them love Jesus': Matt Chandler shares struggles with wayward daughter
For Pastor Matt Chandler, the parable of the Prodigal Son is more than just another Bible study. It’s a personal testimony about his own daughter.
In a Nov. 11 episode of the “POWERS Pod” with Chris Powers, Chandler, lead pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, recounted his daughter's eight-year rebellion and the difficult decisions he and his wife made to keep their relationship intact.
The 52-year-old Chandler described the now-adult Audrey as energetic and adventurous from birth, a girl who traveled the world with her parents and saw the Gospel lived out in their home.
“Audrey came out of the womb with a furrowed brow,” Chandler said. “We always had a great relationship. I mean, we did daddy-daughter dates. I took her with me on ministry things. I took her all over the world. Like, she had a better passport at 13 than most adults are going to have in their whole lives.”
Their relationship changed, Chandler said, after a high school teacher and family friend called to report that she was "smoking pot" almost daily in the school bathroom with a group of girls.
“Audrey came home, and I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to ask you a question that I know the answer to. And I just want to see what kind of relationship you and me are going to have,’” Chandler said.
After she tearfully admitted to the act and was punished, Chandler said Audrey’s rebellion deepened into eight years of “fully giving herself over to worldliness.” Chandler said that time was more personally challenging than his own battle with brain cancer more than a decade ago.
“I don’t know that I’ve been through anything that was as heartbreaking and as disorienting as that,” he said. “Whenever we tried to discipline her for those actions, she would just beat it. We would take her phone. She’d get a burner phone from a friend at school. We’d take her car. She’d sneak out, and her druggie friends would pick her up.”
'She doesn’t need a pastor'
Eventually, Chandler said, a friend suggested Audrey didn’t need another sermon.
“She needs a dad. She doesn’t need a pastor,” he said. “And if she’s not a Christian, how lonely do you think she feels in your house?”
Chandler said the counsel shifted his approach, leading him and his wife, Lauren, to protect the relationship rather than force spiritual conversations.
“She knows we disagree. She knows we’re not going to celebrate the things she’s celebrating,” Chandler said. “But how do we just protect the relationship with this child of ours? And that’s where we try to put our emphasis.”
When Audrey, then married, later asked to leave her husband and return home amid a deteriorating relationship, Chandler said he initially refused.
“I just kind of braced and said, ‘Not now, no,’” he recalled, saying having to tell her that felt "brutal."
Chandler conditioned any return on her seeking Christian counseling that confirmed the marriage was destructive rather than merely difficult. She eventually did so, divorced and moved home under clear parameters, including paying rent and attending church.
Still, Audrey’s return to Chandler’s home did not bring immediate change. Chandler described confronting her after she drove under the influence and crashed into the family yard.
"I don’t know that you’ll ever understand how heartbreaking it is that I have no idea who you are," he said. "Nothing that comes out of your mouth can I believe."
'God has the match'
Chandler said his daughter began spending more time at the barn with her horse, attending a local cowboy church and reading Christian books on spiritual warfare. But the turning point came when Audrey called him in tears while he and his wife were overseas.
“My phone rings, and it’s Audrey. So I answer it, and she is sobbing. Like, she can’t get her words out,” he said. “And in my head I’m wondering, did she get raped or arrested? It’s literally what I was thinking. I mean, that’s the way she had been living her life.”
Instead, Chandler said, Audrey stunned him with words he will likely never forget.
“She just, through like trying to get her words out, was like, ‘Dad, Jesus is so good. He just took all my shame,’” Chandler said. “I hardly knew a follow-up question to ask.”
Chandler said Audrey then asked to be baptized at his church and began reading Scripture, sharing her testimony and dating a Christian man preparing for ministry.
Still, Chandler said he recognizes that apart from Holy Spirit intervention, Audrey’s story would be much different.
“We’ve got kindling with no matches. We have a sail with no wind. God has the match. God has the wind,” he said. “There are no grandchildren in the kingdom of God. There’s only children. [...] I can’t make them love Jesus. The Spirit has to do that.”
