Shaping Tomorrow’s Leaders: Investing in Young Men for Pastoral Ministry
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director. Mark, those who were at the Council of Elders, or have heard us talk about this on other podcast episode, know a burden that you carry for our family of churches is a crucial one, an important and necessary burden for actually every pastor to carry. And it's this, we need to raise up the next generation of pastors in Sovereign Grace churches. There are a number of guys, you've laid out the statistics before, who will be retiring, moving on, over time. Of course, that's the natural progression of it all. And we're going to need more men to be trained, equipped, and deployed in pastoral ministry in the coming years. And you have some thoughts you want to share with us about that.
Mark Prater:
It is a burden I carry and I think that's a good term and a desire to act on that burden only by praying, but also just developing ways that we can prepare for the number of transitions that will happen over the next decade as our first generation pastors get to a place where they're going to transition leadership to the second and third generation pastors. And so one of the issues that we face in that is do we have enough young men who feel called to pastoral ministry to step in and lead? So it's a wonderful opportunity to call young men to consider pastoral ministry and begin to invest into them. And it's not just a Sovereign Grace churches issue. As I talk to other pastors and leaders in other denominations in the states in particular right now, they face a similar issue; just having enough young men that they're preparing for future pastoral ministry.
But it's not just a current issue in our culture, it's actually one that the church has faced at different times over the course of church history. And I think one of the ways to illustrate that is really the example of Charles Spurgeon. So many of you know that Charles Spurgeon started a pastor's college for the purpose of equipping young men for pastoral ministry and for church planting. And between 1856 and 1861, Spurgeon covered all the expenses of that pastor's college from his own personal savings, his own personal proceeds. And he used basically the books that he published and sold most of them in the United States and just directed that money into the pastor's college. And during that six year period, it's estimated that in today's dollars, he gave personally $300,000 out of his own pocket to fund his pastor's college. But there was some event that occurred and the books sales dried up a bit for Spurgeon. So in May of 1861, Spurgeon went to the members of his church at Metropolitan Tabernacle and made them aware of this need to support the pastor's college. And this church responded with a wonderful faith and generosity. They not only took a special offering for that particular year, they continued to support the pastor's college year after year as a way to invest into young men that would plant churches and pastor churches. And because of one church's heart for that and generosity in that regard, there were 862 men that graduated from Spurgeon's Pastors College. 607 of those were deployed as pastors and church planters and missionaries throughout Great Britain, the United States, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and the Asia Pacific part of the world.
So I say that because the sacrificial giving and the prayers and the faith of just one church who had a vision to invest into young men, it not only strengthened Metropolitan Tabernacle, it strengthened the advance of the gospel throughout the world. And I mentioned that because that's the kind of family of churches I want to call us to be; that kind of prayer-saturated, faith motivated, generous churches who invest in the young men because we want to see the gospel not only continue to advance throughout the world in our day, but in the days to come, as we invest into young men who will plant churches and pastor churches in the future.
Benjamin Kreps:
Amen. It is part of our calling, for those checking out the podcast, to our pastors, for us to entrust the faithful men who will be able to teach others in the days ahead. It's part of what we're called to in pastoral ministry. And so it's not only just a burden for you, it's actually a burden that God has placed upon the pastors of his church. It's not a burden that destroys us, of course, it's an honor and it's a privilege, but it's a calling for us to raise up those young men. And so to that end, you guys and the leadership team, you've been talking about this for years now and thinking about how you can serve us, how you can come alongside us and help us as pastors in the task of this calling to raise up the next generation of pastors. And you have a few different things you want to tell us about.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I think we as a leadership team carry that burden and we want to just fulfill that burden by being responsible and finding ways that do serve our pastors and churches to invest in the young men. And these are ways actually that if a church would like to give, or members of church say, "I want to invest in the young men", each of these are ways that you can contribute to that, not only by praying, but also by giving generously.
So the first one we've had for a number of years is our summer internship grant program. In fact, just sent out an email this week to our pastors just reminding them that the deadline for the applications to apply for summer grants for summer interns are at the end of this month, March 31st. And we've had this program for several years now, and the feedback that we've received when churches take young men, maybe high school, college, maybe newly married who have interest in pastoral ministry, you put them into a summer internship and it gives you a chance to invest into them and disciple them, equip them, evaluate and assess them, and really give 'em some practical experience in pastoral ministry, which helps them to determine whether they're called to this or not, and It helps you determine whether they're called to that or not.
So if you are a church or a member of a church that gives to Sovereign Grace especially in that most needed category, we take some of that money and we put that into the summer internship grant and in our budget every year, and we give away at least $15,000 a year to that. So again, please take advantage of that, too.
As a reminder to our pastors, we've got a new program, I believe I just briefly mentioned it in a previous podcast. It's called the Pastoral Development and Deployment Program. I announced this to the Council of Elders last November. And the next step was to just have our regional leaders review it here in the states and to get input. I did that in February. They were actually very excited about this program. They gave me some input to improve it, and I made those modifications to it.
I sent it to the regional leaders actually this week and asked them to consider whether their region wants to participate. Here's what I mean by that. The Pastoral Development Deployment Program offers grants for pre pastors college internships for young men. It can also help with pastors college expenses, that's the second category. And then post pastor college residencies where PC graduates can do a residency in a local church and there's funding available for that. And the reason that regions can participate voluntarily in it, it's a matching grant program that involves the finances of the local church. Of course, we want them to invest in the young men in their church, but a matching grant program with the region and with Sovereign Grace Central, where all three of us work together: the local church, the region and Sovereign Grace the denomination, to come up with grant monies that we can give to, again, a pre PC internship, a PC student or a post PC residency.
And so regions need to determine whether they want to participate in this. And if they do, they probably need to create a bit of a budget category in their regional budgets. We have already set aside money in our operating budget in Sovereign Grace, and we've had a region, the Northeast region give generously to this program because they want to invest in our denomination knowing that some of that money will not go back to that region, but to invest into other churches. And of course any church in Sovereign Grace can apply for grant monies in this program for those regions that are participating. But we especially have small churches in mind who may not have a lot of resources or savings, and they need young men for the future of their church. We especially have them in mind in wanting to support them.
And if you're a member of a Sovereign Grace church and you are listening to this and saying, man, I'd love to invest into that, you can designate your funds for the Pastoral Development and Deployment program and we'll make sure your money gets used that way. So that's a new program. Very excited about that. We'll roll out, we're hoping to begin to accept applications for grant monies right around July 1. So I just can't wait for that program to be launched.
And then just one other one just to briefly mention. Jeff Purswell, our Dean of the Pastors College started a pastors college development fund a couple of years ago. And we've had individual donors give to that fund as we seek to invest into PC students. So those are just all ways, practical ways that we're trying to provide leadership and opportunities for our pastors and churches to invest into young men. And those are opportunities to be like Metropolitan Tabernacle as a family of churches, to give generously as we invest into young men for the future, men who will continue to preach and proclaim and build churches on the gospel long after we are in glory enjoying Jesus forevermore. And may that all be for the glory of Christ.
Benjamin Kreps:
Amen. Well, we're grateful for the many ways that you guys on the leadership team are always thinking about how you can help and serve us in our local churches. Last summer, we took advantage of that internship program and we had our young friend, CJ a Junior in high school, spent a month with us, just sort of giving him exposure to all different parts of the church, even did scripture reading during the service and things like that as we sought to just make an investment in what God might be doing in this young man's life. So I commend anyone who's considering that to take advantage of a program like the Internship program, but with this other program with helping to get guys in small churches on staff, this is really just another beautiful expression of partnership and a way that we can help bear that burden with other churches that maybe don't have the kind of finances to be able to do what they really need to do, which is raise up more men.
So that's a wonderful opportunity and I'm grateful for that. And if there's anyone checking out the podcast, if you're a young man or maybe not quite so young, and you do aspire to pastoral ministry, your pastors would love to hear that from you. Do not think of that as an expression of arrogance to humbly come and submit aspiration to your pastors. They will appreciate that and they will help you navigate through that. And may God do just what you've been talking about, raise up a generation greater than we can even envision at this moment of men who are willing to lay their lives down for Christ and to proclaim his gospel. And so grateful for the ways that we can do this together in the days ahead.
So thank you, Mark for the updates. Thank you for checking out the podcast everyone, and we'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.