Learning what to do with knowledge

Jakub Matoulek is a rare breed: a passionate follower of Christ from a country whose primary religion, according to Operation World, is “none.” An amazing seventy-one percent of the Czech Republic is non-religious.

Jakub grew up in Brno, Czech Republic, in a Christian family (another Czech rarity).

When he was eight or nine, people praying over him at a church gathering declared that one day Jakub would “teach the Scripture” to people. “That was very cool,” he says. But he soon forgot about those words.

Dustin (left) and Jakub

He thought instead about going into architecture, mostly for the money. At the same time, however, he’d begun to listen to YouTube talks by a Slovak pastor named Pavel Hanes.

Through Pastor Hanes’ talks, Jakub began to realize that faith, which he’d experienced primarily as something emotional, can be reasonable, too. He loved discovering that “there can be a question and an answer to the question.” He became fascinated by apologetics. When his mother told him of a university in Slovakia where the famed Pastor Hanes actually taught, Jakub’s dreams of wealth via architecture disappeared.

“It was like a treasure for me,” to think of studying with this Bible scholar he only knew from YouTube. Maybe someday, Jakub thought, Pastor Hanes “could sign my shirt. But, if he could sign my thesis, that will be even better.”

Pastor Hanes is now one of Jakub’s theology professors at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrice, Slovakia.

Since early 2024, in addition to his studies, Jakub and three fellow seminarians have met regularly with a “weird, American guy” who has become a friend: Dustin Combs. The five of them study books like Measure of a Man by Gene Getz, and Dale Burke’s How to Lead and Still Have a Life.

Jakub likens this extra-curricular group to the second side of a coin. “In school we learn knowledge,” he says, while in this group “we learn what to do with it, how to live what you believe.”

Jakub remains focused on the calling he received as a child, now his own passion as a 23-year-old, soon-to-be-married student. “I want to teach God’s word,” he states without hesitation. He desires to serve in a local church in the Czech Republic, to help believers know what they believe, to learn how to read the Bible, “to give their lives to God and to know God more.”

Jakub is exactly the kind person Dustin, and Entrust, love to invest in: one who is poised to influence and multiply Christians in his own culture, as a theologically-sound, growing disciple of Jesus.

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“We get to walk with Jesus together.”

That’s Dustin Combs’ greatest joy in his relationship with Jakub and the other seminary students. Future Slovak and Czech church leaders, experiencing relational discipleship.

Just one impact, for Jakub, is discovering the value of listening.

When he graduates and returns to the Czech Republic to serve in a church, “the first thing … will be to just shut up and listen … what they are struggling with, what they are thinking about, what they want, what they need.”

“That’s my hope,” Dustin says, “that wherever they end up” these young men will live out and multiply practical application of biblical truth.

Maybe God will use Jakub to become a multiplying leader of a multiplying church in his largely non-religious country!