The Monster, the Temple, and the Missing Ministry in the Church
When a man who has held his friends’ body parts in his hands calls himself a “monster,” your theology of the body stops being abstract.
On this week’s episode of Created in the Image of God, I sat with Matthew and Leah Headden, founders of Temple Keepers. Their story—combat trauma, addiction, surrender, and eventually a Christ‑centered health ministry—is more than a redemption arc. It’s a wake‑up call to the church.
From “I’m a Monster” to “I Surrender”
Matthew grew up in small‑town North Carolina: Southern Baptist mom, deacon dad, “good home.” He was valedictorian and getting expelled, leading youth services and getting kicked out of school. Smart, restless, never quite fitting the mold.
College didn’t stick. After a conversation with his dad about Vietnam, he enlisted—ten days before 9/11. He tested off the charts, but ended up kicking doors and running raids. Two and a half to three years overseas. Multiple tours.
He saw and did what war always entails:
Burying people.
Taking lives.
Holding dying men in his arms.
Watching friends lose limbs.
Killing the wrong people. Children dying.
In that crucible, a verdict settled deep inside: “I am a monster. I don’t matter.”
His parents said he had a good heart. His church background said God loved him. But his lower brain said: a good person doesn’t do this. The identity followed.
And his life followed that identity: brutal alcoholism, drug addiction, obesity, serial infidelity, suicidality, blackouts so severe he woke up on planes he didn’t remember boarding. All of it made sense if you accepted the premise: monsters deserve destruction.
And yet, even in Iraq, he was leading church services. Back and forth. Drawn to Jesus, trapped in self‑hatred.
The turning point came years later, after another cycle of “I’m done” and relapse. Driving home around 4:15 a.m., weeping in the car, he prayed:
“God, I know I need to quit. I’ve known for a long time. If you could give me a sign, and I know I can’t demand it, but if you could, that’d be really rad.”
Five hours later, his attorney called. They’d been fighting a DUI case he was absolutely guilty of—blackout drunk, drugs in the car.
“Anyway, Matthew,” the attorney said, “your case is dismissed.”
Five hours after that prayer.
He hit his knees and said the hardest words for many of us:
“I surrender. I’m Yours. Never again.”
From that moment: no more alcohol, no more drugs. Not instant perfection. But the behaviors that were killing him stopped so that the Lord could finally get at the deeper roots.
That is the man behind Temple Keepers.
Now add Leah.
A single mom of three, middle‑school teacher, living a different but equally demanding story. She met Matthew on a dating app. She lived an hour and a half away, but “accidentally” bought a car at the exit where he lived. He was already driving to her town for church.
“Our first conversation was about Jesus and the gym,” she said.
As their relationship deepened, they both began to see something in Scripture they hadn’t fully noticed before: God has a health plan.
Not a vanity plan. A stewardship plan.
Health as Worship: The Missing Ministry
Most Christians can quote 1 Corinthians 6:19–20:
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit… You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
We affirm the verse. We seldom apply it beyond sexual ethics.
Matthew and Leah do.
They call their ministry Temple Keepers for a reason. In the Old Testament, God entrusted priests to maintain the physical temple where His presence dwelt. In the New Testament, we are that temple.
The question is not whether you’re a temple. If you belong to Christ, you are.
The question is: Are you a good temple keeper?
Leah described her own shift. For years she chased health and “skinny” the world’s way: constant workouts, “healthy” processed foods, body‑image obsession. Little peace, little progress.
She knew God loved her. She didn’t yet know He had a design for her health.
As they searched Scripture, four pillars emerged:
Nutrition – God’s food, not the world’s.
Genesis and other passages specify what God gives “for food.” The modern food industry layers confusion on top of that. Temple Keepers helps people return to real, God‑made foods—thousands of delicious options, not a lifetime of punishment.
Movement – Bodies made to work.
God puts Adam in the garden “to dress it and keep it.” We weren’t created for chairs and screens. Daily steps, strength work, and wise cardio aren’t just fitness trends; they’re participation in our original assignment.
Sleep – Rest as obedience.
God wants us to sleep. Regular, sufficient rest is trust in action: He runs the universe while we lie unconscious.
Stress & Sabbath – God’s rhythms, not the world’s.
Honoring Sabbath, being in the Word, journaling, getting sunlight, stepping away from noise—these aren’t optional extras. They’re part of how the Designer meant the system to run.
As Leah put it, when she realized that everything she did with her body could be worship—what she ate, how she moved, when she slept—that sense of closeness she used to feel only in Sunday worship began to permeate her daily life.
And here’s the key: when the goal shifted from “get skinny” to “honor the God who dwells in me,” weight loss and strength showed up as a byproduct.
This is, I believe, one of the most neglected ministries in the church.
We have programs for prayer, preaching, marriage, finances, parenting. But almost nothing that treats stewardship of the body as a core aspect of discipleship.
As Matthew said:
“We don’t actually have an obesity epidemic in the church. We have a stewardship epidemic.”
Which leads to the next uncomfortable truth.
Praying for Healing While Eating Ourselves Sick
Many believers are praying for healing in areas where God has already given clear, practical instruction.
Matthew hears it often:
“I’m praying for better health.”
“What are you doing?”
That’s not cynicism. It’s theology.
Faith, biblically, is never just mental assent. Hebrews 11 says, “By faith Noah built an ark. By faith Abraham went. By faith Moses left Egypt.” In every case: by faith… and then a verb.
Temple Keepers is built on that understanding. They see patterns like:
Praying for deliverance from sugar cravings while leaving sugar in the house.
Asking God to heal lifestyle‑driven diabetes while refusing any change to diet or movement.
Praying for rest while ignoring Sabbath, screens, and sleep.
To ask God to miraculously remove what we are actively maintaining by daily choices is to treat Him as a genie, not a Lord.
Jesus at the pool of Bethesda (John 5) is instructive:
“Do you want to get well?”
The man answers with reasons he can’t. Jesus doesn’t debate the excuses. He simply commands: “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.”
God absolutely works miracles. Some conditions are not our doing. But even there, the pattern is participation more often than passivity.
Matthew and Leah stress that God generally doesn’t erase the struggle; He refines us through it:
He may not remove every craving; He invites us to run to Him and build new habits with Him.
He may not reorder our body overnight; He walks with us as we relearn food, movement, and rest.
Matthew backed this with data:
Roughly 73–74% of Americans are overweight or obese.
Around 92% of U.S. chronic disease is treatable, preventable, or delayable through lifestyle changes.
In plain terms: much of what we call a “health care crisis” is really a stewardship crisis.
We then try to outsource the bill: to pharmaceutical companies for lifetime management, to governments and insurers for funding, to pastors and counselors for emotional fallout—while seldom addressing the daily habits that violate God’s design.
And the church, in many cases, reflects the culture:
Regular church attenders are statistically more likely to be overweight than non‑attenders.
Pastors, on average, are about 50% more likely to be overweight than their congregations.
This is not about shaming anyone. It is about noticing that we have not discipled people in this area at all. We pray, “Lord, heal me,” while keeping the pantry, calendar, and couch exactly as they are.
Temple Keepers is one attempt to close that gap.
What Matthew and Leah Bring
There are many health coaches. There are many Bible teachers. There are not many couples who carry both worlds in their bones the way Matthew and Leah do.
Matthew brings:
The scars of a combat veteran who has stared death in the face—others’ and his own.
Years in the fitness industry, graduate‑level work in nutrition and behavioral psychology, multiple certifications.
A hard‑won identity as a son, not a monster.
Leah brings:
The mind of a teacher, able to turn scattered information into a coherent curriculum.
The lived experience of a mom whose body has carried and nursed three children, who has rejected the culture’s body‑image script.
A gentle but firm conviction that surrendering your health to God is not bondage but freedom.
Together, they help believers reframe the conversation:
from “I need to look better” to “I want to worship better.”
from “I’m praying God will fix this” to “By faith, I will take the next obedient step.”
from “My body is my project” to “My body is God’s temple, and I am its keeper.”
If we are created in the image of God, then the way we inhabit these bodies is not a side issue. It is one of the main places that image is meant to be seen.
God’s love is not in question. But His love will not leave us where it found us.
Sneak Peek: Next Week on Created in the Image of God
Next week, we’re going to stay with this theme of stewardship, but shift the lens from our bodies to our global family.
I’ll be joined by Roger Wheeler, who has spent years working with churches in Zambia to live out the New Testament model of “fairness” in the kingdom of God—matching surplus in one part of the body with desperate need in another.
If Temple Keepers challenged us to care for the temple of our own bodies, Roger’s work will challenge us to care for the starving members of Christ’s body:
What does it mean that millions in Zambia live with chronic hunger while Western churches sit on surplus?
How do we move beyond guilt into practical, biblical patterns of sharing?
And what spiritual danger do we face when we cling to excess while others lack daily bread?
Join me next week as we explore what it means to be created in the image of a God who hears the cry of the poor—and calls His people to answer.
