Leadership Team & Regional Leaders Retreat Recap
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, as we record this Thursday before, this is going to drop the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday for those in the states and care about it.
Mark Prater:
Oh yeah.
Benjamin Kreps:
Right? Yes. As we record this, Eagles Chiefs Go Birds. I will not make a prediction. I am a pessimistic and angry Eagles fan, but I feel somewhat hopeful. In any case...
Mark Prater:
A stereotypical Eagles fan, by the way.
Benjamin Kreps:
<Laughter> When I got to the senior pastor retreat for the northeast a couple of weeks ago, I was with Jeremy Hetrick and he informed the guys who were gathered there that "the Eagles had just won a playoff game against the Rams and Ben has been angrily ranting about it the whole trip". In any case, we're up here in the northeast of the States, it's cold. We're looking at freezing rain over the weekend. You are not in the northeast, where you live. You are in sunny and beautiful Florida.
Mark Prater:
I am.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah. What are you doing there?
Mark Prater:
Well, it's been a wonderful week, not only weather-wise, but I've been down here this week because as I mentioned in the last podcast, this week we've held our leadership team regional leader retreat. It began on Monday. Today is Friday and it has been a wonderful week. I wanted to thank you if you've prayed for the retreat. I mentioned that in the last podcast. So if you did happen to pray, I just want to thank you and want to report how God answered your prayers. I wanted to start with our time with the regional leaders, and of course we had other leaders with us, other leaders like Bob Kauflin, Director of Sovereign Grace Music and Joel Shorey, Director of Church Planting, Brian Chesemore at the Pastor's College, Josh Blount, Jim Donohue, who is helping us with evangelism, and Bart Lipscomb, who's our area leader in Africa. So those guys joined our nine regional leaders and we had a packed out meeting, obviously, with the leadership team added upon that, but they came in on Monday.
So what we did on Monday is we really just listened to the regional leaders. We had each regional leader give an update and Jon Payne just led this so well. He said, give strengths, give weaknesses, and any significant updates in each region. Of course, we're all taking notes because we learn from that as a leadership team and it does influence how we lead and it does directly impact our planning of the pastor's conference. That's in the fall, and I just came away from the time, just so grateful for the United States regional leaders. These men, they work very hard. They serve with wisdom, with carefulness, but with courage and with truth. And these men, I just thank God for, because as they report, they're telling us about some of the encouraging things that are happening in the region and then some of the challenges that are happening and they were actually helping one another as they talk about those challenges.
And then to hear some of our churches are going through a difficult time. Eric gave an update on Pasadena, for example, the Sovereign Grace Church in Pasadena and how the Eaton Fire really had just wiped out that area of Pasadena where they meet and they can't meet in the school where they're at because the cities had to store a lot of things there. They're meeting in a home, they can't quite find a meeting place. And so that's difficult among all the other significant tragedy that they've had in their church, that's just one illustration. And yet that region, Eric and that region, they're caring for the Pasadena church. So as they gave the updates, just thanking God for how they lead on the frontline serving our pastors. And as they gave those updates, it was just a picture of how they're helping one another as regional leaders. It was a wonderful picture of partnership as well. So that was on Monday and then on Tuesday morning we had Jeff teach on the pastoral epistles, and it was in typical Purswellian fashion. Outstanding. It was so, so good. And a little update a little mark this in your calendar. He's actually going to teach a PC class, A class at the pastor's college on the pastoral epistles in April of 2026.
Benjamin Kreps:
Let's go.
Speaker 2:
It is the week following Easter. I forget the dates, but put that in your calendar. That's the tentative date. Every pastor in Sovereign Grace should be there for those pastoral epistles. So he taught on that. It was a wonderful morning. In the afternoon we had Josh Blount teach on biblical masculine leadership and it had this aim towards discipling men and even discipling sons. It was so, so well done. Some other things that happened. There's many other things that happened afternoon, but I'll just give one. Joel Shorey just gave a church planting update and really talked about some things that he's been thinking about with the church planting group about how we approach church planting. And you're going to be hearing more about that in the days to come. So that was just Monday through Wednesday morning with our regional leaders and the other leaders we invited. And it was simply an outstanding time.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent to hear. I'm so grateful for our regional leaders and the crucial work they're doing. They are, man, those guys, they're serving their churches, caring for their churches, and then putting in countless other hours to care for the churches in their region. So we thank God for you guys and I'm so glad that you were able to benefit together in the leadership team with the regional leaders. So that was the first half of the week and the second half of the week, which is continuing actually today, we'll conclude today is more exclusively for the leadership team. So what's been going on in the second half of this retreat?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, the regional leaders and the other leaders left around noonish on Wednesday, and then we go right back into retreat mode as a leadership team. The very first thing that we do while it's fresh in our mind is we just debrief from that time for our regional leaders, what were some of the big lessons we learned? What were some of the things that we heard that we may need to bring leadership to for all of Sovereign Grace? Because there were some consistent issues among regions that we were hearing. One example is just this growing issue of leading a region that has a group of multi-generational pastors, first, second, and third generation pastors. That would be one illustration. And we just talked about just issues like that, which then shaped how we planned the pastor's conference. The other thing we did after in the debrief is we had some new proposals we were running by the regional leaders to get their input.
So we just went back through those, incorporated their input to find next steps to move those forward. So we're reviewing our adoption process, trying to improve that, the Pastoral Development and Deployment Program, which is a grant program for churches that they can receive some grants or funding from Sovereign Grace Central and potentially a region to equip and develop young men for pastoral ministry, PPC internships, pastors college scholarships, and post pastors college graduation residencies, for example. So we talked through that and made some next steps on that. So those are just some of the programs we were talking to them about. We talked about leadership development, we talked about just a number of other things that we're moving forward. That was the rest of that afternoon.
And then on Thursday morning, we just took by far the morning and into the early afternoon to plan the pastor's conference for both 2025 and 2026. And we've got breakout session topics defined. We've got speakers' ideas for main sessions for 2025 and 2026. And I can't wait for our pastors to hear that. It won't be long. And we'll be putting up registration for our pastors conference in November, and I can't wait to communicate actually some very exciting news to you about our pastor's conference, so stay tuned for that as well. We were also just working through just a number of leadership issues that we're addressing in Sovereign Grace and the time has just been very, very rich.
I think the other thing about our time together as a leadership team is that we continue to build relationally. So we work very, very hard, but we laugh a lot and we care for one another and we pray for one another. And I had this moment yesterday with the leadership team, I'm sitting with them outside at a table, we're planning, and I just said, guys, I can't believe I get to be on this team and I get to serve alongside of you and that we together get to serve this wonderful family of churches that has deeply impacted and changed my life. And it was just one of those moments that you're just so grateful, not only for the family of churches that you're in, why do I get to be in Sovereign Grace, and then to serve alongside of these quality men on the leadership team. So it's just been a wonderful retreat and again, thank you for praying.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Thank you for the update. Our polity I think is a gift that we've enjoyed and as it's functioned and we've been working on it and tweaking it, I think we've largely seen so many benefits from our polity that was introduced 12 years ago, but we could approach our polity in a more business-like fashion that wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but it is wonderful to hear in keeping with what we've enjoyed historically in Sovereign Grace to hear how you guys are building within the structure of our polity. You're building in relation, there's love and unity and learning from one another going on. And so for those of us out here, that is very gratifying to hear about and to get an update on.
Just wanted to say as well, keep praying for Pasadena. You mentioned them earlier, Pasadena. Hey guys, we prayed for you at our monthly corporate prayer meeting on Sunday night. I'm sure there are many others praying for you. Just so you know, we love you guys.
And can't wait to hear about the 2025 pastors conference registration opening soon. Somewhat shocking to hear, but then you think, well, we're in February. So actually not. Time moves on. We're not that far away from our next conference.
So thank you, men, everyone who attended the retreat this week; for your investment, for your sacrifice, for the thoughtful way that you care for your regions, and leadership team, how you care for us and Sovereign Grace. Mark, how you care for us as our executive director, couldn't be more pleased. So thank you so much for the update. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.