Executive Committee Meeting Recap

Benjamin Kreps:

Hey everyone. And welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. By way of reminder for our guys, our Executive Committee is the governing board that brings oversight and evaluation to the Leadership Team. And Mark, you had a meeting with the Executive Committee yesterday. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened there?

Mark Prater:

I did. I'm a non-voting member of the Executive Committee and I'm really grateful for the men and the elders that serve on the Executive Committee because of the input they give me and the accountability they bring to myself and to the other guys on the Leadership Team. So, I thought it'd be good just to talk a little bit about what we did yesterday. First of all, they welcomed Brian Chesemore who is a new Executive Committee member. The Council of Elders voted on him to approve him basically back in November, but the term doesn't start till January 1. They also chose a replacement for Walt Alexander. So, if you remember, Walt Alexander was affirmed for the Theology Committee, he resigned from the Executive Committee at the end of 2020. And so, the BCO allows a committee, a standing committee, to choose a replacement until the next Council of Elders meeting. So, basically, that term will run through the end of this year and they chose the guy. I'm not able to say who it is in this podcast because I don't know whether he's accepted or not. If he does accept, he'll be on the Executive Committee for this year, and then it'll be up to the Nominating Committee whether he would be renominated or not.

The Executive Committee also decided upon a chair and a vice chair. Jon Payne had been the chair for the last several years. And he resigned in September because he transitioned onto the Leadership Team. So, I'll let the Executive Committee communicate who the chair and vice chair are.

Another important thing that they did is they approved an updated version of the Executive Committee manual. And that really is an important document in a couple of ways. First of all, it helps us to keep our ECFA accreditation which is really important, another level of accountability for us. We lost that accreditation years ago because we didn't have a board. But once our polity was affirmed and it called for a board, like the Executive Committee, Tommy Hill went to work in getting our ECFA accreditation, which we have now. So that manual demonstrates to the ECFA, how that board functions very practically, and it just strengthens our accreditation with them. And it helps the committee to know how to work together. Especially when you hit crisis. We find a manual is really, really important. And then one of the things I mentioned that they did is that Tommy Hill kind of walked them through, especially for the new guys, but a refresher on the bylaws and the articles of incorporation. That can sound somewhat, you know, boring. But it's really important in terms of how that committee functions and what they're supposed to do and not do. And it brings clarity to the relationship between not only the Executive Committee and Council of Elders, but between the Executive Committee and the Leadership Team.

Benjamin Kreps:

That's excellent. And while that is tedious work, like you said, it's so important. Grateful for that hard work. I understand you also gave some updates to the committee.

Mark Prater:

It's one of the parts I love about getting together with the Executive Committee. I just give them a little bit of an update of what the Leadership Team is working on. And I do that because, you know, they evaluate us annually. But I want them to stay up to date throughout the year so that their evaluation is informed when we get to the fall. We'll have a retreat in August and they'll do that formal evaluation then. So, I just gave him an update on the retreat we had a couple of weeks ago. And I basically framed that retreat or structured that retreat after the five-to-10-year strategic plan that I presented to the Executive Committee last August. And that allowed me to demonstrate that this is not just a plan on paper, we're actually moving it forward. And here's the things that we're accomplishing and fulfilling that plan. And I think they were really helped by that. They were encouraged by the updates that I gave them.

And then I asked them for a couple of decisions. One of them I can't mention yet. I will in a future podcast. But the other decision I asked them to approve, which they did, is we're finding that looking to provide strategic theologically informed leadership as a Leadership Team, along with the fact that we're not in crisis, we're just producing a lot more content right now. And we've got more websites where that content is being communicated. And so, our communications department has a lot of work to do, and we've got two part-time people there. Eric Turbedsky, the Director of Communications and Melissa Goins gives part of her time in helping him with communications. So, we need somebody to get work done and went to them with a proposal for them to approve an out of budget expense for a content specialist. Ideally, we're looking for a younger man or younger couple in Sovereign Grace who can write, who can copy, edit, who can do some graphic arts and, and even be able to have the ability to build a website on Squarespace, which isn't too hard to do. So that was approved yesterday. I let Eric know and he's all excited and he's going to begin the hunt for that position. So, I'm very grateful for the Executive Committee’s approval, as well as input on that decision.

Benjamin Kreps:

Great. Thanks for the updates. And thank you, Executive Committee and the faithful pastors that serve. They're doing good work and assisting the Leadership Team in all of this. So thanks for the updates, Mark, and well, for everybody else, we'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.