Global Leaders Fellowship

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director.

Mark, as some people, many people, that have checked on the podcast, know, one of the important ways that we're building globally in our denomination is that we are seeking to see men living in different areas across the globe in these different locations we're partnering with who actually live there, boots on the ground, leaders playing a meaningful role in the global expansion that we're enjoying; what God is doing in Sovereign Grace. Before we started the podcast, you were saying you had a call with the Global Leaders Fellowship, which is a collection of these boots on the ground men, globally, who are serving us denominationally. Tell us about the Global Leaders Fellowship. What is the Global Leaders Fellowship and why is it important?

Mark Prater:

Thanks for asking. In fact, it's a great question because just this morning, so we're recording this on Thursday, March 6th, just this morning at least 7:00 AM Eastern Time, Dave Taylor pulled together the global leaders that are a part of the Global Leader Fellowship and joining us was Jon Payne and Rich Richardson from the leadership team. So we decided to pull this group together, form this group because we realized as a leadership team that as we expand globally as God allows that to happen, we do need, as you said, boots on the ground, good leaders in different nations or parts of the world because we can't lead that alone. We lead that together with these men who are doing a wonderful job. And so we pull them together to just care for them and get updates and strengthen them and encourage them.

So the Global Leaders Fellowship, the guys that were there this morning, Jeff Jo who is in the Philippines, he really is our national leader there in the Philippines and doing just a great job. Joselo Mercado who lives in the States but is really working in Latin America and helping us to expand wisely there. Riley Spring, who is our national leader in Australia. You might say, well, Dave Taylor's there, yeah, Dave is there, but he's on the leadership team and is responsible for all of our global missions. So wisely Dave deployed Riley to just focus in on Australia, which is just a great decision. Ed O'Mara is in that Global Leaders Fellowship, joined us today and he obviously is planting a church in Torino, Italy, but he's our area leader for Europe. He's just helping to grow a continent, Sovereign Grace Europe really. He's just doing a wonderful job. Of course, Carlos Contreras, who's in Juarez, Mexico and is our official national leader in Mexico because Mexico is officially a nation as of a couple of years ago in our denomination. And Michael Granger from Addis Ababa Ethiopia, who's just doing a wonderful job leading and planting a church in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, but also along with Josh Pannell, a pastor's college. And they are training pastors that are affecting East Africa. So one of their PC graduates, Brian Kiama has planted a Sovereign Grace' church there in Nairobi, Kenya.

So those are the guys that were gathered together. It was 7:00 AM my time, it was 5:00 AM in Juarez, Mexico. It was 11:00 PM in Sydney. It was like lunchtime for Ed. So there's this crazy, trying to figure out when everybody could be on this Zoom meeting at the same time, and it's just a picture, I'm looking at my screen early this morning and it's a picture of us becoming a global family of churches. It's not just a name we have, they're actually leaders who care for pastors and churches in different parts of the world. And I don't think there's a part of the world I missed there that I just mentioned. They are just doing really, really good work. And it's also a picture of how we should lead, I think, within our denomination, that it's not so centralized, that it has too much of a US perspective or so centralized that things bottleneck with the leadership team. No, we like our elder led polity, are trying to put a leadership structure in. It's a bit decentralized in that sense, yet connected to the leadership team, that allows us to lead effectively care for churches effectively throughout the world.

So I thank God for each of those men that I just mentioned. And again, they're just doing wonderful work and we wouldn't be advancing the gospel reaching the lost, and there were stories of that this morning, without them. So I thank God for them.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yes, we do thank God for them. We talk often on the podcast about how grateful we are, how humbling it is, to experience what God is doing as Sovereign Grace grows globally. But we also thank God that in all of this growth and expansion, God has given us the gift of these godly, wise, effective leaders and pastors, just list of names. It just makes me smile thinking about these wonderful men that are a real gift not only to their local churches but also beyond in Sovereign Grace churches. So you had your phone call, the people at all different time zones. Some people it's tomorrow and some people it's lunchtime. What did you guys talk about? What are some updates that you got from your Zoom call?

Mark Prater:

Yeah, Dave started by just having every guy just give an update on their family, their church, what's going on in the nation. That was just wonderful to hear. And then we had some things we wanted to just talk with them about, get their input on sort of the entire meeting. But the updates, I won't go through all of them because there's so many of them, but I'm going to give some highlights because these are just some I wasn't even aware of and sort of just fresh off the press, so to speak, updates. I'll start in the Philippines with Jeffrey Jo, by the way, his oldest son who is interested in being in pastoral ministry has applied for and hopes to attend the United States Pastor's College this Fall. So pray that Jeff's son could just get all the visa work, so that he and his wife and I believe they have two children can get here to the pastor's college. He also has another son who is younger who's getting married. And Jeff said with that because they also have a daughter who's married, Jeff and Jeannie will be empty nesters before too long, just a different season of life. They're continuing to plant churches. Jeff is a church planting machine in many ways and is planting churches in the Philippines both around Manila and in the Mindanao region. And it's just wonderful to see his heart for the gospel. He's doing that because he wants to reach the lost with the gospel.

And then there was just a pastor down in the Mindanao region who led a church for a number of years there that is a candidate church for Sovereign Grace. And he passed away last year, it was last summer sort of unexpectedly in some ways. And they were trying to figure out what to do with the church, an ordained Sovereign Grace elder there in the middle area who leads a partner church. He and his wife decided to move to Mindanao to care for this church. And he turned the church over to some other elders there. Ray is probably about the age of Ken and Beth Mellinger. So people remember Ken and Beth Mellinger's story at the pastor's conference, in their early seventies, late sixties, making that kind of sacrifice. That's what you're seeing in the Philippines; leaving a stable, secure situation to go to Mindanao to care for the church. And that's just the way partnership is being built in the Philippines as well. So just a couple of wonderful stories there. Jeff talked about how his church is growing, as well. They just added 35 new members and have 40 signed up for their next new members class. It's really, really good.

Joselo Mercado was just giving an update on Latin America. Some of these I've mentioned before are going to be ordained at the end of the month, potentially four elders as the first Sovereign Grace elders in Costa Rica. And then on March 2nd, just this past Sunday, March 2nd, Emerson Suarez was ordained as a Sovereign Grace elder in Rio Grande, Brazil. So we now have our second Sovereign Grace elder, ordained elder in Brazil. Fabiano is in Sao Paulo and now Emerson in Rio Grande. Bert Turner was down there, a pastor in Akron and had the joy of doing that ordination service. I just saw a picture today and it's just wonderful to see. And then there's 13 other guys in Latin America that are in the ordination process right now that Jose was working with. Yeah, so that's crazy.

Riley Spring, who's there in Australia and focused on growing Australia, reported that Andrew Leung, who is with Dave Taylor, was just ordained, was a couple Sundays ago as another Sovereign Grace elder. They now have four Sovereign Grace ordained elders in Australia, and they plan to ordain another one in May. That'll take 'em to five. And then they have two PC students at the pastor's college, US Pastors College now. They'll be going back; Austin and Joel, and they will be potentially ordained at some point as well. So again, they also gave this report, Jim Donohue was over there last summer, I believe it was or recently. And they have now started doing the Bridge Course both in Wahroonga where Dave Taylor is and in Parrarmatta where Riley is. And they've got active Bridge courses. I think Dave said they had 13, no, 15 people in the Bridge course in Wahroonga and 10 Riley said, 10 in Parramatta. So just people who don't know Christ and coming to the Bridge course, another reason why we do global expansion, we want to reach the lost with the gospel.

Ed O'Mara gave an update on Italy and what's happened in Torino, which was really pretty exciting because it's very hard ground there to sow the gospel seeds. It's just very, very difficult. But the church is slowly starting to grow. They have four new people that are coming now and they're looking for a meeting location, hopefully move out soon from meeting in Ed's house to a public meeting location. And the timing of that's good because there's some other people that are considering moving to Torino to be a part of this church plant. One example is a theologically trained man in Rome that is thinking of moving from Rome, he's Italian, up to Torino, to help them with that work. So all really, really exciting. And in terms of Europe, Ed is going to be leading a Europe pastors and wives retreat I think in April, in England, somewhere in England. So that will draw together either pastors and wives who are part of Sovereign Grace or who have interest in Sovereign Grace. So you can be praying for that.

Carlos Contreras, there in Mexico who has been building for 40 years. So many exciting things just going on. They are now their own nation. But a couple of highlights, he said both the church plants in Mexico, the one in Reino and the one in Oaxaca is just really, really going well. In fact, they've grown to the point that both are looking for bigger meeting places because they've just grown out of where they started to meet when the church plant began. So they're reaching more people with the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They also started a pastor's college there and they've got students in that pastor's college there in Juarez, from Veracruz, from Chiapas and from Guadalajara. And the plan is to train them and send those men back to do pastoral ministry in those areas.

And then one more, Michael Granger, who is in Ethiopia, he always has happy updates, shared a conversion story; in the last couple of weeks, a young man he never met before in their service, talked to him at the end of the service, just confessed that he is an alcoholic. He's addicted to drugs, living with his girlfriend and just learned she's pregnant and he is hopeless. So Michael talked with him, shared the gospel with him. It appears like he might have been born again and he continues to come back to church and potentially now is growing in Christ. Again, another reason why we plant churches, but this Sunday they're going to be ordaining two Ethiopian elders. Ebenezer is one of them, like I mentioned before, and Emmanuel, who will be Sovereign Grace ordained elders. And then they have two others that they're hoping to ordain before too long. And then they have some pastoral interns there now from the last PC class. And two of them want to plant a Sovereign Grace Church in another part of Addis Ababa, which is possible because it's a city of 10 million people. So some hot off the press updates I wanted to share with everyone.

Benjamin Kreps:

Excellent. Well, that's all very encouraging. It's just wonderful, again, whenever we have the opportunity to hear about what God is doing throughout the globe, across the world in Sovereign Grace. So thanks to all those men that you mentioned, for their faithfulness, for their commitment to see the gospel proclaimed in their context and beyond just ordinations and conversions and evangelism and church planting. I mean, wow, it is just wonderful to hear about what God's doing. But before we end the podcast, there's one more update because there's not just stuff going on globally. There's stuff going on in the states as well. And you have an update for us about a church plant in the States that's coming.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, just this past Monday, I signed a US partnership agreement for Vine Church in Tampa, Florida that is being planted by Mario Figueroa, who graduated from the pastors college and has done a church planting residency with Josh Murphy in Orlando. And they are planting that church. He has been affirmed. He passed all his ordination exams. The southeast region voted to affirm him, and there'll be a commissioning service there in Orlando before he is sent out to plant in Tampa. They've already gathered about 40 individuals who are a part of that, going to be a part of that church plant. And they are going to have their first public service this Easter Sunday, which is so exciting. Right? It's so exciting. Next month a new church is going to be birthed for the purpose of reaching people in the Tampa area. And the interesting thing about this church plant is it's going to be a bilingual church plant, which I've talked with Mario a little bit about because I think we can learn from him just how to do a bilingual church and how to do a bilingual church plant. So he's got a number of ideas and of course he'll try some things and see what works and doesn't work. But he'll have first, second, and third generation Spanish speakers, and then some of them English speakers in that church that he wants to plant with. And then to reach, obviously, Spanish speakers for the gospel in the Tampa area. So please be praying for the Vine Church plant on Easter Sunday.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yes, Mario, good job passing ordination exams. And we thank you for your faith and your commitment to Christ and being willing to go and plant that church. And we do look forward to hearing about and learning from this church plant, like you said when it comes to bilingual church planting and ministry.

So wonderful to hear wonderful updates. Thank you, Mark, for the updates. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.