Cross-Cultural Church Planting
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, if whoever was following along the podcast last week, if they saw last week's podcast, then they know you were in Louisville hanging out with Bob, who you like to call the most famous man in Sovereign Grace. And you're probably right, but you weren't only there to interact with Bob and Sovereign Grace Music and what's going down there in Louisville. You were also hanging out at the Pastors College. Talk to us about that.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, when I go to Louisville, one of the things I always plan to do is to get a longer lunch with the PC students. I don't teach there during the PC year, so it's important for me to get with them and usually I have a topic I've chosen that I just want to talk with them about and it's always just a wonderful time. I try to do that at least three to four times a year just to invest into our future pastors in Sovereign Grace and this particular conversation with the PC class along just with my experience, that was really just a happy event for me. And here's what I mean by that. It was sort of the evidence of a couple of burdens I'm caring for Sovereign Grace right now. One of them is developing, recruiting, and deploying young men for future pastoral ministry in Sovereign Grace. So that's what's represented in this PC class.
Additionally, another burden is that we would continue to plant gospel centered churches, and that's represented in this class as well, which I want to tell you about. Let me just give you a little bit of a profile of the class. There are students there that are representing three different nations; Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. And the week I was there, actually a fourth nation was represented because Josh Kruger Jr. Is going to plant the Sovereign Grace Church in Namibia and has been a missionary there for years in Namibia. So we had four nations represented as we sat around this table just talking a little bit about the future, and one of the things I did just to begin that conversation, it was my first time with them during this PC year, was just to draw them out about their hopes for the future without building any expectations after graduation.
And it was good to hear from each of the men. Let me just give you a profile of who's there. Gil Bosch is there from Athens, Tennessee, Arturo from our church in Juarez, Mexico. Mario Figueroa who is from Tampa, and we'll hopefully plant a Sovereign Grace Church there. We'll talk about that. Nick Richardson, who's from Somerville, South Carolina, Risen Hope Church, Richard Richie Rodriguez from Sovereign Grace Church of Pearland, which is in South Houston, and Emerson Soares who is from Rio Grande Brazil. So that's a profile of the class along with Josh Kruger Jr. this past week who's back in the United States doing some theological training. He took his second week of Homiletics the week I was there and he plans to go back to Namibia.
So it was just a wonderful time with that PC class. And I want folks in our podcast to be praying for them and we're going to talk in a moment about what they want to do in the future. And I want to talk about that because I want to not only ask you to pray for them, I want to ask you to pray about participating in what they may want to do, they may do by the grace of God.
Benjamin Kreps:
It's wonderful that our Pastors College serves not only men in training for pastoral ministry in the States, but also globally, and wonderfully a number of these guys are planning on planting churches, which we care about, we're passionate about, and with some very interesting stories. Talk to us about that.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, let me start with Mario Figueroa, who is in Tampa, is coming from Tampa, Florida, hadn't been a part of a Sovereign Grace Church. He got to know Joselo Mercado and Joselo was just commending him. And I think it was really because of the relationship with Joselo and his leadership, along with Josh Murphy and his region, the southeast region, that just kind of all converged at the same time. We were able to get Mario to the Pastors College and his heart is to go back and plant a church in the Tampa area that would be a Hispanic church. He's going to take a bilingual approach, so Spanish and English because he is wanting to reach both first and second and third generation Hispanic or Spanish speaking people. And he's just very excited about this. And so I just got talking to him and just wanted to mention on the podcast that if you have a heart, maybe for the Tampa area or you have a heart to participate in a Hispanic church plant, this could be one that you should pray about if you speak Spanish, that would be one to consider. And if you don't or it's a second language for you, again, Mario's going to take the approach of being bilingual. So it may be something that you pray about. I've got this burden for Sovereign Grace Churches to plant churches, but we can't do that without people from our churches that form church planting teams. And that's marked our history for 41 years now and I'm praying it continues to mark us in the future. So pray about that church plant and if you have interest in participating in that, if you're a pastor and have members that are interested in that, I'd say contact Joselo Mercado and contact Josh Murphy, who's the regional leader there in the Southeast. So there's that one here in the States.
And while we're in the States, let me just talk about Richie Rodriguez, who came from Sovereign Grace Church of Pearland, Texas, which is the south side of Houston, and it's Richie's heart sometime in the future to plant a Spanish speaking church there in South Houston somewhere. So again, if you have a heart for the Houston area, or maybe you're listening to this podcast, not a part of a Sovereign Grace church and you live in Houston, or again you're a Spanish speaker and want to participate in Sovereign Grace planting a Spanish speaking church in the south part of Houston in the Pearland area, then I would contact Darryl Shield, who, if you're a pastor listening to this contact Darrel Schiel, who is not only the senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Pearland, he's also the regional leader for that area. So those are two that are going to potentially happen in the states that will come out of this PC class. We don't know for certain, I want to clarify that, but we're going to pray that way. And I really wanted to use this podcast to make people aware of both of those plants.
Now let's move outside of the states. As I mentioned, Josh Kruger Jr. was there taking some more training as he prepares to go back to Namibia. So Josh Kruger's father, Josh Kruger Sr. is an ordained elder, a bi-vocational elder at Kingsway Community Church in the Richmond Virginia area led by Matthew Williams. Josh's parents are from South Africa. They came at some point to the States and lived here for quite a while. And so Josh from South Africa grew up here in the States and at one point just went back and he went to the southern part of Africa to the nation of Namibia. He's been a missionary there for years and in recent years has just had this desire to plant a Sovereign Grace Church in Namibia. So he's been back in the States for a year getting training. In talking with him, he and his family will move back to Namibia in the middle of January and they are going to start and plant a Sovereign Grace Church this year.
And it's interesting. I said, well, who's joining you for that? He goes, well, right now it's just my family. So Mark, would you pray, would you pray that other like-minded gospel centered people would join us to plant a gospel centered church there in Namibia? And the city that he's planting in has a number of embassies, so there's a lot of expats there. So he is going to preach in English, although in Namibia they speak Afrikaans. So if you're a member of an English speaking church somewhere in Sovereign Grace and just would have a heart to go to the southern part of Africa to Namibia and join Josh Kruger, boy, please pray about that. Or if by chance you speak both English and Afrikaans, that would actually be ideal. And maybe it's the reason you speak both languages so that you can join Josh in Namibia. So if you have any interest in joining Josh and what he's doing, I'd say contact Matthew Williams, who again is the senior pastor of Kingsway Community Church in the Richmond Virginia area. That's where Josh is being sent from. And also contact Dave Taylor, who obviously is involved in helping with this church plant as well.
So those three are really essentially cross-cultural church plants in some way that will be happening in the future of Sovereign Grace. And I just believe that God has given us members in our churches who have a heart for that kind of cross-cultural gospel mission. And if you do, we thank God for you. Or maybe you’re listening to this podcast and something's stirring in your heart, please pray about that. And if you don't go, you still participate in mission because we are able to plant churches, because we build strong local churches, and our best church plants are sent from our local churches, strong local churches. So if you're not going, please pray for each of those plants that I just mentioned, and may God bless it to reach more people with the good news of Jesus Christ.
Benjamin Kreps:
Amen. It is wonderful to hear about the continuing activity as God raises up men in Sovereign Grace, both in the States and outside the states, and we engage in all kinds of church planting; Mandarin speaking churches and Spanish speaking churches. It's exciting to hear. There's some pastors that are likely checking out the podcast and would like to participate in church planting. Don't see a way forward to plant, but there could be members of their churches that could be sent and in doing so, participate in the wonderful work of church planting. So we'll be praying, Mark. Thanks for your updates and your encouragement, and we'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now. Merry Christmas.