Ethos Lunch & Learn with Matt Gay

Matt Gay is a Chicago native, a graduate of the University of Kansas, and a former NFL player for the Kansas City Chiefs. After his NFL days, Matt worked in the banking industry, where he witnessed the challenges of poverty firsthand.

In 2009, Matt and Sandy served on a mission trip team in New York City with City Relief (cityrelief.org). Inspired by this experience, they founded Circle City Relief in January of 2010 (circlecityrelief.org), and CCR has served the north side of Indianapolis every Sunday afternoon since. Each week, CCR serves approximately 175 people with over 200 rescued pizzas, over 150 cups of soup, generous amounts of Chick-fil-A chicken, and countless bread, pastry, produce, and clothing items. Over the past 16 years, CCR has distributed more than 1.2 million slices of pizza and 3.5 million food items—along with over 1,600 large bags of Chick-fil-A chicken shared with partner organizations.

Beyond just meeting physical needs, Matt works to connect people to emergency, transitional, and long-term housing, counseling, addiction recovery, detox programs, and CCR’s in-house biblical counseling – ultimately pointing each person to a transformative relationship with Jesus Christ, who is the answer to every need. Matt’s life is centered around the words of Matthew 25, where Jesus says, “Whenever you did one of these things to those who are overlooked and ignored, the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.”

Matt is the executive director of Circle City Relief, a biblical counselor, a cyclist, a connector, and is the man with the strongest handshake you will ever feel.