Conroe, TX Church Adoption
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. Mark, we've talked a bunch recently about churches pursuing adoption internationally. And as guys know here, we are a movement that not only plants churches, but we also invite others to join us in our gospel partnership. But we actually have a church that we are adopting in the States. Can you tell us about that?
Mark Prater:
We do. It just happened last week, officially. A church in Conroe, Texas, which is a Northern suburb of Houston. If you're familiar with the Houston area, it's up around the Woodland section. And Christ Church of Conroe, Texas was officially adopted last week. What I mean by that is that the South Central region voted to formally and officially adopt this church into Sovereign Grace and to be a part of the South Central region. And we're really excited about this church and having another church not only here in the States, but in the Houston area.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's wonderful. And I understand that there is a cool story about how all of this developed and it came to be. Can you tell us what that story is?
Mark Prater:
A wonderful story. It actually begins with Darrel Schiel who leads Sovereign Grace Church in Pearland, Texas, which is on the south side of Houston. Darrel is also the regional leader there in the South Central region. And it's actually his father who has led this church for a number of years. And his health has begun to fail. But the church is a solid church but trending a little bit older. And so, they got to know about Sovereign Grace through Daryl.
And so, the elders there, along with Darryl's dad, came to Daryl and said, “Would you consider adopting this church into Sovereign Grace?” So, without going into too many details, the church was very, very excited about that and wanted Sovereign Grace to provide a pastor. And through a number of events Bart Lipscomb, who is a pastor with Jon Payne at Redemption Hill Church in Austin, Texas, is actually going to move to Conroe. He's actually going to move probably in June and formally start as the senior pastor there on July 1st. And that came about through a series of conversations, Bart traveling over from Austin to Houston to preach there. And it's pretty unusual, I would say, what happened. So, the church voted to be adopted into Sovereign Grace should that happen? They didn't realize they had a congregational polity on paper, but they voted to get rid of their congregational polity and adopt our elder led policy as clearly stated in our Book of Church Order.
The elders there readily and joyfully resigned and said, “We just want to make a way for Bart to just come in and lead us.” And all those elders are going to remain in the church and they're very supportive of what's happening. That's unusual. And they voted to have Bart as their senior pastor. So, it's a real sacrifice on the part of Redemption Hill Church and Jon Payne and Aaron Mayfield to send a pastor. But they're also sending a worship leader and his family, and two or three other families to just help strengthen this church and bring the values that we share in Sovereign Grace. And that's an unusual thing for all those things to converge at once. It really is God's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's wonderful. It's great to hear about our little family of churches growing and furthermore hearing about how men in Sovereign Grace and their families are sacrificing for the sake of the gospel and the good of the church, and to see our family of churches working together in this way. So, thanks, Mark, for the update. Thank you all for watching. We'll see you here next week. Lord. Willing bye for now.