As a lifelong resident of Minnesota’s Twin Cities and a minister trained in deescalation, Matt Moberg has spent many of his past mornings at the Whipple Building in Minneapolis alongside those protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement descending on their cities. He’s spent his nights at the 19,000-seat arena in the Target Center, as a chaplain to the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves.

“Sports can be done and sports can be held—and I think the Timberwolves in particular do it well—not as a distraction from real-life unfoldings,” Moberg told Sojourners. “It’s a way to go, we’re still going to come together, not in spite of that, but because of that, and figure out how we can move forward together.”

Now, Moberg’s found himself in a small spotlight after his words reflecting on faith and social justice went viral on social media, where he chastised churches for “posting prayers for peace and unity today while my city bleeds in the street.”

“Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness. Don’t call silence ‘peacemaking,’” he wrote. “Don’t light a candle and think it substitutes for showing up.”

Moberg became a Christian in college, he told Sojourners, at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, moving from “a business marketing major on a Thursday to biblical and theological studies on a Monday.” He started attending Sanctuary Covenant Church, a predominantly Black church led at the time by Efrem Smith. There, Moberg said any tint of white evangelicalism began to wash from his theology.

“I’d never been introduced to any kind of liberation theology. When I started to see Jesus on a bigger, more beautiful and robust scale than what I had been previously introduced to, I felt like, ‘Yeah, this has weight,’” he said.

After college, while working with Christ Presbyterian Church, he met Ryan Saunders. When Saunders was head coach of the Timberwolves, he invited him to work as the team chaplain—a volunteer role coordinated by the NBA with a history dating back more than 40 years.

“I do not want to be the lamp that players come in, and they rub, and then they hope for some kind of good fortune to pour out afterwards,” he said. “I want it to be relational.”

Moberg was also a co-senior pastor at The Table MPLS, helping found the church after the congregation he was working with joined a denomination that didn’t affirm LGBTQ+ people. For the last two years, he’s been working as a full-time artist while parenting three kids alongside his wife. As a team chaplain, he offers a 20-minute service before games, for players and coaches from both teams who wish to attend. Those meetings spur opportunities for relationships and conversations, where he tries to help players stay grounded.

“Every game, I tell them who you are is more important than what you do, even if what you do gets more attention than who you are,” he said. “Week in, week out, it’s just relational check-ins … I’m not asking, ‘Are you working on that jump shot? I saw your stats.’ I’m asking, ‘How are you handling your marriage? You’re a newly married individual, taking on this turbulent schedule, and you have all these different pressures.’”

Many sports chaplains emphasize meeting players as people rather than superstar athletes. But in Moberg’s seven years as chaplain, Minneapolis has weathered numerous crises. From the police killings of Philando Castile, George Floyd, and others; the COVID-19 pandemic; the shooting at Annunciation Parish; the surge of immigration agents upending daily life; and now three shootings in the past month, his emphasis to players is often on what it means to be a neighbor.

“God has gifted you with extraordinary abilities, and that’s not a small feat. You’ve put in the time, you’ve put in the effort, but that didn’t remove you from your brother next door or your sister down the road. You’re a part of this thing,” he said. “When one part is hurting—I talk to our guys a lot about, if somebody down the road has been slapped up by somebody, you ought to feel a bruise on your cheek. There is a collective call that the scriptures hold us to.”

On Jan. 7, after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good, Moberg posted on Instagram, eyes filled with tears as his heart wrenched for his neighbors. He was trying, he said, to hold on to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of faithful nonviolence.

 “The scriptures you love weren’t written to keep things calm,” Moberg wrote. “They were written to set things right.”

Two weeks later, after Customs and Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, Moberg’s post somehow spread across the internet, now pasted on a screenshot reading “STATEMENT FROM MATT MOBERG, CHAPLAIN OF THE MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES,” along with a team logo. Screenshots went viral, shared by hundreds of thousands across social media platforms.

Moberg, who is careful to never act as if he speaks for the team or even in an official team capacity, was caught off guard. Team officials checked in with him to confirm he wasn’t the one posting a “statement” with team letterhead, but Moberg didn’t seem concerned that it would affect his work with the team. The Timberwolves did not reply to Sojourners’ request for comment.

“They could not have been more gracious,” he said. “The Wolves have been the least of my concerns.”

The timeout entertainment wore ‘ICE OUT’ shirts while performing in the third quarter of the game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors at Target Center on Jan. 25, 2026 in Minneapolis. Matt Blewett/Imagn Images via Reuters

Since the posts went viral, he’s faced online vitriol and backlash. Still, he is encouraged that his call for Christians to act justly is gaining more attention.

“I don’t know what to do but to be heartbroken with our megachurches in particular, which we have a couple in the cities—you guys can be such a catalyst for good,” he said.

In the days after Pretti’s death, Moberg said one of the most beautiful things he’s seen across the Twin Cities are candlelight vigils, where families can pause, mourn, and even sing together. The team has learned from that and worked to build similar spaces for players and coaches.

“We’ve done the same thing in the Timberwolves locker room and in Zoom meetings or Microsoft Teams meetings along the way,” Moberg said. “There’s temptation when crisis hits: When the press comes with their cameras in your face, how do you polish your best paragraph to present to the public so that you look like you’re informed and you’re caring? We don’t do that.”

In previous years, Moberg admitted his zeal for justice made him push players to consider speaking out during previous crises. But since then, he’s learned to prioritize actual growth and relationships.

“We’ve seen celebrities out there who have reactively responded to crises at hand, but they had no bite behind their bark. And so they spoke up, but they didn’t step in,” he said. “I want to be contributing to people who are being formed as actual children of God and not just puppets of a different kind of thing.”

“There’s temptation when crisis hits: When the press comes with their cameras in your face, how do you polish your best paragraph to present to the public so that you look like you’re informed and you’re caring? We don’t do that.” —Matt Moberg