Executive Committee Meeting Update
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. I understand you had an Executive Committee meeting recently. Can you give us some updates about what you guys talked about?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I'd love to. We had an Executive Committee meeting this past Tuesday evening. We scheduled an evening meeting so that Dave Taylor, our Director of Emerging Nations could join us from Sydney. It started at 6:00 Eastern time on Tuesday evening and that's 8:00 AM Wednesday morning in Sydney. And it was important to have Dave be a part of that Executive Committee meeting based on what we were presenting as a Leadership Team. I was presenting on behalf of the Leadership Team to the to the Executive Committee for their input and approval. And I want to tell you about those two things. To give you a little bit context. We've mentioned this before, but right now we have 76 churches throughout the world who are pursuing adoption or partnership with Sovereign Grace.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wow.
Mark Prater:
One of those churches is in the United States, which we're celebrating. The other 75 are outside of the United States. And it's just God's wonderful grace upon our small denomination giving us opportunities outside of the States to help advance the gospel of Jesus Christ. So the first item we presented was the Africa development fund. Last year, the Executive Committee approved a Latin America development fund that I had created. And we've had a donor give a total, so far, of $200,000 to that fund. And the heart of that is to help Sovereign Grace expand in Latin America.
I recently wrote an Africa development fund. There's a paragraph in there that we have put this fund in place, partly in memory and honor of Wilbroad Chanda who’s gone to be with the Lord. His love for Africa and vision for Africa has shaped our entire denomination. So, I presented an Africa development fund to them. It’s different than a Latin American development fund in terms of fund categories. For example, one of the fund categories is to establish and support Pastors Colleges throughout Africa. We have one in Liberia, one in Zambia and Michael Granger in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is looking to start a Pastors College this fall. I believe he's already got at least 10 students registered. So, the timing of the fund is not only good, but we have a different donor, an anonymous donor, who has already pledged to give $50,000. He’s giving that as a matching grant program, by the way, to establish this fund. So the guys listening to this, if you have folks that might be interested in giving to that fund, let me know.
So I presented that to the Executive Committee and they unanimously approved that fund which includes an Africa development fund committee who will manage it. That'll be Michael Granger, Dyonah Thomas, Dave Taylor, and then Tommy Hill as a non-voting member. It’s so exciting to get that fund in place. And I think a timely piece of financial resource for what we're doing in the continent of Africa.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. And speaking of what's going on globally, we've talked before about a global plan for how we move forward with adoption, interacting with other countries apart from the United States. Do you have an update for us on that plan?
Mark Prater:
That was the other reason that I wanted to meet with the Executive Committee. The Leadership Team and I have been working on a global partnership plan for about six months now and finally got to the place where we unanimously agreed, “Okay, it's to a place where we now need to broaden the input and the approval of that plan.” So, the next step was the Executive Committee. I presented that to them on Wednesday, or excuse me, Tuesday evening. Dave Taylor was so important in that conversation speaking as a non-American and especially in answering questions that the Executive Committee had. They really gave us some good input and it's going to help improve that plan. In fact, I'm happy to report that they unanimously, conditionally, approved it based on the changes they gave me. I actually turned around those changes right away and got it to them yesterday. So, I think that'll be unanimously approved in the next couple of days.
And I want our guys to know that because our next step is to bring it to the Council of Elders. Ultimately, using a new business motion to put it on the floor of the Council of Elders in the fall. However, we'd feel like this is so important. And we think we can benefit from the input of all of our elders. We're going to do a regional rollout of it. So, Leadership Team members will schedule times with regions, present it to them, obviously via zoom or live, and then just take opportunity to answer questions and get input from all of our elders. We're assuming this plan will be approved as we get input. So, any changes that we make after that regional rollout kind of gives us more of a final document that can be submitted as a new business motion to the Council of Elders in the fall. And we feel like the regional rollout just allows a little bit more time than what a guy can have on a Council of Elders for just to talk through it, ask questions and give input. I'm really excited about our Council of Elders meeting in the fall and us being able to discuss and hopefully approve that.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. Thanks for the updates. And thank you, Mark and Leadership Team for strategically leading us in Sovereign Grace Churches. And thank you everyone for watching, and we'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.