Fr. Mathias is Co-Founder and President of Encounter Ministries. He is also the Pastor of St. Patrick Catholic Parish in Brighton, MI.

Father is both a graduate of St. John Vianney College Seminary and of the University of St Thomas in St Paul, MN where he earned degrees in both Philosophy and Catholic Studies. He attended Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit for his graduate seminary formation and after graduation was ordained a priest on June 11, 2010 for the Diocese of Lansing.

He served several parishes before joining the faculty of Sacred Heart as a spiritual director and assistant professor of theology. In 2016, Fr. Thelen earned his Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) from the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He is the author of the book, Biblical Foundations for the Role of Healing in Evangelization (Wipf and Stock, 2018) and has appeared in the documentaries Fearless (2017) and Revive (2020). Fr Mathias is passionate to see the Church come alive with the fullness of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit so that the world might believe in Jesus, the Son of God.