We Are a Family of Churches
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone. And welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of churches to our Executive Director. Mark, I always say "family of churches" when introducing this podcast, because that's what we aim to be. That's what historically we've enjoyed together. We want to preserve that relational way of building together as family. We've talked a lot over the past number of months about church planting, about global partnership agreements, and churches being adopted and brought in, and that sort of thing. So potentially a lot of growth in the days ahead, as a denomination, as a family of churches. What are your thoughts about the way that we build relationally and that value we have in Sovereign Grace?
Mark Prater:
Great question. Last week we talked about a walkup song for you and it just dawned on me. We could have teed up Sister Sledge, "We are Family". That was a big hit years ago. The Pittsburgh Pirates owned it for a period of time.
Benjamin Kreps:
You can have that song, I'll stick with the Pink Floyd.
Mark Prater:
(Laughter) It is it is humbling to see the work that God is doing in Sovereign Grace by giving us these opportunities to partner with churches all throughout the world. And we're planting more churches as well. And so it's an important question that if God allows us to grow and it looks like he's going to do that, how do we maintain that value of building relationally? And that we aren't just a denomination having a book of church order, but we are truly a family of churches. And I don't have all the answers to that yet.
I do know there's a commitment on behalf of our pastors to continue to find ways to build relationally. And because that commitment is there, I think we'll find a number of ways to do that. I've got a number of ideas that I've been thinking about, but I just want to be honest, I don't know fully how to do that yet, but I believe God will give us help.
Benjamin Kreps:
What are some of the ideas that you have?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I think one of them is to use a platform like this podcast that we're doing regularly, Ben, and to talk about some family news in Sovereign Grace Churches. And so let me just give you a few family news updates.
As you know if you live here in the states, hurricane Ida hit New Orleans and Louisiana pretty hard, actually the Southern part of the United States. We were just talking before the podcast. We got a lot of rain from Ida last night here in our area. Jon's been texting with Keith Collins and I've also been texting with Pete Schefferstein in New Orleans, Louisiana. Keith leads Lakeview Christian Center. I've also texted with Jeff Ehrhardt who leads Christ Community Church in Covington, Louisiana, which is what they call on the north shore, over the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. And in both cases the members, most of the members in those churches did evacuate before Ida. And you know we learned from Katrina there was damage to homes of members of churches.
They're trying to figure out when they can come back into the city, because as of this morning, Thursday morning, we're recording this, there's still no power. There's not water. So you don't want to come back too early and step back into difficulty. So they were saying, could you pray for wisdom to know when to come back to our homes? It's very similar for Jeff Ehrhardt's church, Christ Community Church, a number of folks have evacuated. They're trying to figure out when to get back. Some folks that did stay have generators. I think he said he had one member of the church that had a home basically destroyed by a tree that had fallen on their house. I think they're low, closer to Lake Pontchartrain. So they've got a long road ahead and we just reached out to see how we could serve them, how we could pray for them. Pete Schefferstein told me that the church building at Lakeview Christian Center had some minor roof damage and they've got a lot of cleanup to do, but it's not bad at all. So that's good news.
So whoever is listening to this podcast or reading the transcript, pray for Lakeview Christian Center's pastors and the members of that church, and pray for Christ Community Church, for Jeff and the members of that church. So that's one update.
Another one is our brothers and sisters over in Australia which would be Sovereign Grace Church of Sydney and Sovereign Grace Church, Parramatta. Dave Taylor leads the Sydney church, Riley Spring leads the Parramatta church. And as you know, their approach to the coronavirus in that nation is that when there are some infections, they just lock down. So they were in lockdown for a long period of time. Then they were able to gather again as a church for, I think, a few months or several months, and then about a month or two ago had to go back into lockdown.
And Dave was telling me just last week that the difficulty of being able to gather again and then not being able to gather again is really harder the second time that you have to lock down. They're doing fine. They're persevering. They cling to Christ, but it weighs on them. It's hard for them. So again, if you're listening to this podcast, please pray for both of our churches in Australia; in Parramatta and in Sydney as well. And then so that's another way I think, to keep ourselves updated on what's happening in our family of churches.
Here's another one starting tonight. This is Thursday. So guys will get this next week and so I'm talking about a conference that's already happened. There is a regional Life Together conference that involves the churches in the Northeast Region, the Mid-Atlantic Region, and actually you're bringing folks so it involves the the Great Lakes Region as well. This is for members of churches and the pastors of the churches to gather together at a regional event. And the focus of this is, as we gather together again coming out of the pandemic, how do we think about corporate worship and what are some of the ways that we can not only think about it biblically, but practice it biblically as well? And I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a great conference because it gives the members of our churches a chance to be together and experience partnership in a way that our pastors do more consistently than our members do. So that's another part of our future, looking to do regional conferences that build partnership like that. So those are just some of the ways that I think we will continue to be, by God's grace, truly a family of churches.
Benjamin Kreps:
And I think all the pastors reading this are anticipating November, where we experience that family reunion sort of vibe environment that we didn't get to have last year because the pastors conference didn't happen. So excited to build together in that way at the Council of Elders and then also as we enjoy fellowship together.
So we'll be praying for the guys down in New Orleans and the guys in Australia. They are family, they're our brothers and sisters there. And so we'll be interceding on their behalf in the days ahead. So thanks Mark for your encouragement, your reminders. And thank you all for watching. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.