Europe Development Fund
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. Mark, one of the things we enjoyed historically and currently in Sovereign Grace is the gift of, and grace of generosity that is prevalent throughout our family of churches. One significant expression of that being over the last couple of years, several global develop funds being formed in Asia-Pacific, in Africa, in Latin America, as a means to allocate funds to fuel and to fund what God is doing through Sovereign Grace based on our partnership with churches across the globe. And, happily, you have a new fund to tell us about today.
Mark Prater:
I'm excited to tell everyone of about the Europe Development Fund which was approved by the Executive Committee just this week. And I wrote that fund for a couple of reasons. I'd been interacting with a married couple wanting to give generously to Sovereign Grace to establish the Europe Development Fund. And since it was approved by the Executive Committee, I'm happy to report that this couple gave $200,000 to establish the Europe Development Fund. But I also wrote the fund because of the need that we do see in Europe. As I was writing this fund came across a 2018 Pew Research report that said that only 27% of Europeans believe in the God of the Bible. And far less have any knowledge of, or exposure to, the gospel. So they were just saying that Europe is a spiritually dark place.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes.
Mark Prater:
And, on top of that, we've got opportunities to do gospel mission in Europe, actually growing opportunities right now. Everyone would know that we have a church in Bristol, England, and a church in Hamburg, Germany. But we are exploring partnerships with churches in Belarus and, at the Pastors Conference, everyone heard an update from Ed O'Mara, who's planning to move to Italy this summer to help establish Sovereign Grace Churches of Italy where we hope to plant a church there in the next two to three years and partner with a couple of churches there who are wanting to be adopted into Sovereign Grace. So those are needs and opportunities that we see that this fund will, as you said, fuel gospel mission on that continent.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's wonderful. What kinds of things will this fund be used for?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, we've established fund categories so that people giving to this fund at least have categories of how this fund is going to be used. So the first one is theological training, including establishing and supporting Pastors Colleges. Theological training is so important to what we do in equipping pastors to lead churches and to plant churches built on sound doctrine.
Benjamin Kreps:
Right.
Mark Prater:
As you know we have a Pastors College in Germany that Jeff Purswell has traveled to and taught at, as well as some of other pastors in Sovereign Grace. And we want to support the work there. But looking into the future, maybe establish Pastors Colleges in other parts of Europe in the years to come. So that's the first category.
The second one is pastoral care and support. And funds for that would be used to help get pastors from Europe to the Pastors Conference that we have here in the states annually, would be used to help get them to training conferences that would be held in Europe, would be used to help them move from being bivocational to vocational. So that would strengthen the church. And just some of the ways that it would be used in that category.
There would be even a category for issues that European pastors face. That could be a natural disaster like earthquakes, but it also could be persecution that they're facing in Europe. And they need financial support during that time. So that's a whole category.
Another one is obviously for church planting. We want to dedicate some of the money in this fund to the planting of churches in Europe.
And then resource development. Currently there are 24 recognized languages in Europe. But on that continent, there's another 200 that are spoken throughout the continent. So we want to develop good reformed, or translate good reformed, gospel-centered resources that would be available to pastors and members of churches who would be partnering with Sovereign Grace.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's wonderful. It is encouraging whenever I hear from you—whenever we hear—about how there are members in our churches that are investing generously into the mission that Jesus has given us. But there could be others, and likely are, that are watching or reading this. And there's a lot of people in our churches who pay attention to this blog. If somebody has a heart Europe and is hearing all of this and hearing this update and just says “I want to get in on this. How do I get in on this fund?”
Mark Prater:
Well, first of all, as you mentioned, Ben, it is humbling and exciting at the same time to see how generous the members of our churches can be. It's really an expression of the gospel being worked out in their lives as you mentioned already. But if you'd like to give to these development funds, whether it's the Europe Development Fund, or the Asia-Pacific Development Fund, the Africa Development Fund, or the Latin America Development Fund, we've created a Development Fund page on our website. So, if you go on the Sovereign Grace website and go to the homepage and you click on “Give,” a menu drops down. And you'll see Development Funds with a brief introduction. And then it includes a description of each fund and an opportunity to give to that fund right there on that page. So, if you haven't given to these funds yet, and you're excited about what God is doing through Sovereign Grace Churches throughout the world, you can support that work by giving generously to one of these funds. And if you do that, let me just thank you in advance for being generous and giving to our shared mission.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes. Amen. So grateful to be part of a family of churches that is marked by the grace of giving. So, thank you, Mark for the update. And thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here, Lord willing, next week. Bye for now.