Executive Committee Retreat Update
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
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. Mark. I'm back from vacation and you're just finishing up the Executive Committee Retreat. How did it go?
Mark Prater:
Well, it's good to have you back, man. Hope you had a good vacation. The Executive Committee Retreat was this week, Tuesday through Thursday via Zoom, which is not ideal. We went all day on zoom, meaning like nine to five is what I mean by all day. And with 11 guys, you know, on the Zoom call, it's challenging, but I think it went really, really well. I would say we probably had one of the best Executive Committee retreats, probably since the committee has been formed.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. So what exactly was going on at the retreat?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, there were a number of things that I was doing. I presented a five to 10-year strategic plan that we have a lot of good discussion over. We always review my State of the Union. And then we spend the entire day on Wednesday evaluating me and the Leadership Team. And that's always a helpful exercise to go through.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah. What kinds of things were you being evaluated on? Can you share any of the evaluation that the Executive Committee brought to you?
Mark Prater:
I’d be glad to because I think it's really helpful for our guys to know. First of all, the way that we do the evaluation and we've done this for several years now is that because I work closely with the Leadership Team itself, I evaluate every member of the Leadership Team. I compile that evaluation into one document that I send to the Executive Committee. So that includes my evaluation of them. And it also includes an evaluation that comes from each of those guys local churches. We are just regarding how they're doing as an elder.
And so the evaluation process begins with me just working through each of the guys on the Leadership Team and offering my evaluation, getting input from the Executive Committee for each guy. And then after that, I lead the meeting and they take time to evaluate me. So, to prepare for that beforehand, I saw I send them a self-evaluation. There's an evaluation from my church, from my local eldership, the Covenant Fellowship guys. And then each of the leadership team members fills out an evaluation of me, so I compile all those things and give them to the Executive Committee. They have a separate subcommittee, an oversight committee, that sort of works through all the details and then presents it to the Executive Committee.
So I leave the meeting for, I think I left for about an hour. They call me back into the Zoom meeting and just presented their evaluation. And it was really, really helpful. They were very encouraging. I still have a job, so I'm grateful for that. That's a good thing. Right? And they held out a couple of areas of growth that they put them in categories for me. One is the category of methodical leader. So they’re saying through crisis, you've just needed to be this methodical leader. That's really stabilized us. That's helped us. But we're getting post-crisis now and make sure you don't stay in a methodical mode, that you kind of move us forward, sort of generally, is what they were saying. They had some specific examples.
And the other one is to make sure that I'm not just operating as a generalist, but as a specialist as well. And so, for example, they said make sure, it'd be things like calling our pastors to grow in one or two things over the next year as an expression of being a specialist.
So, I found their input really helpful. We had some good conversation. I kind of drew them out a little bit more about what they meant by that. And I'm praying—if you listen to this podcast, pray that God would help me to grow in those areas as a leader.
Benjamin Kreps:
Definitely. Thanks for sharing that. Any other thoughts before we end, coming out of the retreat?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I'm so grateful for our polity and the accountability that it offers on many levels for every pastor in Sovereign Grace. But for me, and the Leadership Team, to have the oversight, the input and the evaluation of the Executive Committee. I was just in my devotions this morning, thanking God for those nine men on our Executive Committee and just the helpful, wise input and evaluation they gave me this week. And it just made me appreciate what we have in Sovereign Grace on many levels. One of them, this week, is our polity and the Executive Committee, in particular.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. We thank God for the Executive Committee. Thank you, men, who serve us in that capacity. And we thank God for you, Mark. And thank all of you for taking time to spend all day on Zoom, which is a labor of love as we all know. So, thanks, Mark. And thank you everybody who watched this and we'll be back here next week, Lord willing.