Four Reasons for the Pastors Conference and a Preview of Breakout Sessions

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, last Friday, something I look forward to each year, the email for the 2024 pastor's conference dropped into our inboxes. Exciting to start thinking about just a few months from now, heading to the conference again, but you've shared this kind of thing before. It's always good to be reminded though, and people that don't watch the podcast in the past or listen to them might ask "Why do we have a pastor's conference every year?"

Mark Prater:

It's a great question. It's something I want to speak into actually each and every year because you can go to register and think, should we go again and is it worth the effort? Should we take the time it costs to travel? If you've got a young family, you've got to arrange childcare while you're away if you don't bring your kids. And so there's a lot of work that goes into it, and I want to explain why I think it's important to be at our pastor's conference, pastors and wives and leaders in our churches, and why we do them each and every year.

I've got four reasons of why we do these each and every year. The entire context is we are a family of churches, so it is a family reunion, a family gathering in that sense. And we do a conference to cast theological vision for the way that we do ministry in Sovereign Grace Churches. And we want to, as any leader knows, cast that vision over and over again, not to remind us, but to strengthen our theological convictions in how we do pastoral ministry and how we build churches in Sovereign Grace. So that's the first reason that we do that.

The second reason we do a conference is that we want it to be the spiritual and relational highlight of the year for our pastors and wives and leaders and wives from our churches. This is a conference where most of the pastors, leaders and their wives are coming with little or no responsibility, and they can just receive, they can receive and their souls can be strengthened. But there's also just that relational element that pastor's conference does feel very much like a family reunion. Just being together and praying for one another and singing to Jesus with one another and listening to preaching together as we sit next to each other, that just strengthens us. And there's just times of just catching up with one another. And it reminds us that we're not just a denomination in a organizational sense, but we are truly a family, a family of churches. That's the second reason.

The third reason is we do a conference every year to cast vision for our shared mission. And that's just an important thing to do because we can get sort of siloed in our churches at times or even doing things regionally, but when you gather a global family of churches together and we cast vision for our mission, you're hearing updates about how the gospel's advancing throughout the world. You just leave realizing, I'm not doing mission alone. I'm doing it with other like-minded brothers and sisters in Christ.

And then a fourth reason we do a conference every year because it's a unique way to introduce those outside of Sovereign Grace to our family of churches. Now you can do that at a local church level. You can do that at a regional level, and that's very effective. But there's something unique about gathering once a year as a global family of churches. And I just think people who come for the first time, they see something about Sovereign Grace that they do see locally and regionally, but it sort of gets bigger for them when they come to a conference. And one of the common refrains I hear from feedback from the conference, especially from guests each and every year as they say this, I don't think I've ever been around such a joyful group of pastors and leaders and their wives, and that impacts them. They just think, well, maybe I'll consider being a part of Sovereign Grace. So those are the reasons that we do it. I believe it's worth the effort and the cost and the travel. And so I'm looking forward to seeing each and every one of you at our pastor's conference November 5th through the 7th in Orlando, Florida.

Benjamin Kreps:

I can't wait. It certainly is a highlight for my wife and me each and every year. We've been going for 14 years. This will be our 14th conference, so can't wait. So reading the conference email, we have five breakout sessions that various people will be teaching. They all look very interesting. Talk to us about why you chose the five breakout sessions that we'll have at the conference.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, these breakout sessions, we put a lot of thought into it and we got a lot of input from our regional leaders. So typically the first leadership team retreat of the calendar year, which is typically in February. We meet as a leadership team for a retreat for a few days, but for the first part of that retreat, we ask the United States regional leaders to join us. And a part of what we do in that retreat is just hear updates in different regions and then let the regional leaders tell us what pastors and churches in Sovereign Grace are facing, the challenges they're facing in building churches and doing pastoral ministry. And so this list of breakout session topics really comes from that discussion in February, and we hope that it does serve our pastors and leaders and their wives.

So I'm just going to give you just a sort of a brief overview of each one and explain why we chose it. We do have a women's breakout session entitled The Virtue of Godly Submission. Betsy Ricucci is going to teach on that from 1 Peter 3 as a teaching she's done previously that she'll obviously tweak for the conference. And in her description she says this is what springs to mind when you think of the word submission, especially in our culture today. And she goes on to say, in our day, it's a concept misunderstood, misapplied and misaligned. But she goes on to point out that actually it's a virtue in scripture and even a command in scripture. So this women's breakout session is intended to just equip and inform and give wisdom on this wonderful virtue of Godly submission. I think it's going to be a timely breakout session for our ladies.

Josh Blount is going to do a breakout session entitled, Still Competent to Counsel: The Pastor, the Word, and the New Therapeutic Age. And all of our pastors, we've talked about this before in previous episodes on this podcast, but there is a reemergence of the therapeutic in our day. And as Josh says in his breakout session description, words like therapy and mental health, trauma, wellness, self-care, that language is used much more increasingly now. And we have new people coming to our churches who are saying, I need a therapist. They don't think about, they need a pastor first, but a therapist first, for example. So Josh is just going to, I know, teach this well. He's very excited about it and just talk about how do these cultural pressures emerge and this cultural language emerge, and then how do we pastor folks that have that mindset? So it's not so much about how you do all the counseling, but it's actually building a biblical counseling model or culture within your church. So that's going to be great. CJ's actually going to interview Josh after he teaches, just to draw out a little bit more. I know that's the one you're thinking about attending, isn't that right, Ben?

Benjamin Kreps:

That's right. I'm having trouble picking from the four. Of course I won't be at Betsy's, but that one really sticks out to me. There's been, we talked about it on a podcast recently, about the creeping influence of therapeutic culture in our churches. And so it just seems more and more when you meet with someone to counsel, you're having to sort of undo some things that have been implanted in their thinking before you can actually get to the heart of the matter. Just anecdotally, that certainly is increasing the common language of the culture, the creep influence of the culture, breathing in the air of the culture all week, and then sitting down in the office and having to work through and undo some things that are in place. And so yes, I think that's the one although I'm not going to promise though; they all look so good.

Mark Prater:

Well, yeah, but I think what you just said is what a lot of our pastors would say, and one of the reasons why they may be interested in that breakout. Jeff, first of all, is going to do a breakout session entitled, Putting God’s Word to Work: The Task of Application in Preaching. We want to do a breakout session or even a main session somewhat regularly over a few year period on the topic of preaching because that's so central to what we do in building gospel-centered churches. And there isn't anybody better among us to do that than Jeff. So he's just going to talk about application in preaching, and I think you should read his description because I think it will intrigue you. I think it's going to serve our pastors who regularly preach or who preach even just some.

Jim Donohue is going to talk about the role of an evangelist. He's going to lead that breakout session. He's going to do a bit of a teaching about that role and then do a panel discussion. They'll have some guys on that. As Jim says in his breakouts, that evangelism is one of the most challenging areas for our churches, and evangelists can be some of the most challenging people to deal with. And Jim would say that about himself, actually. But Jim is, and evangelists are, very, very necessary to us building churches that have this culture of reaching out to the lost with the good news of Jesus Christ. So, Jim is going to unpack that a little bit more, and I think it's going to be a great breakout session.

And then finally a breakout session that Brian Chesemore is going to lead and teach, and then there's going to be a panel discussion. John Pannell will be a part of that panel discussion. His breakout is entitled A Glorious Vision for God-Centered Homes. And the reason that we chose that particular topic is because we don't want to lose a culture in Sovereign Grace that rightly prioritizes building a Christian home, building Christian marriages and making sure that we're parenting according to biblical convictions and biblical values that can be lost. I think the founding generation has done that well, and that can be lost in future generations. And even for our founding generation pastors, this can be a helpful breakout session for us. So we're hearing that from our regional leaders. This is something we need to give attention to, is building a Godly home, and Brian is going to do that well. So those are the reasons we chose the breakout sessions. Really want thank our US regional leaders who really gave us input and helped us shape what topics to choose, what breakout sessions to offer. We had a longer list than the ones we did, so we had to prioritize them. And I do hope they serve our pastors and churches.

Benjamin Kreps:

I think they will. It's just wonderful that there's sort of a little bit of something for everybody here to be able to choose from, and I so appreciate how you guys get together and you pray together and you think together on the leadership team about what would serve our churches best. And looking at this list of five sessions, I can't help but see something of your care for us in selecting these various topics to serve the pastors and wives of Sovereign Grace Churches. So can't wait. I'm not promising which one I'm picking yet, but I'm so eager to attend and to attend a breakout and to gather with everyone at our yearly family reunion. It really should be called the Pastor's Family Reunion or something like that to accurately reflect what we're up to.

So thank you, Mark, and the leadership team, for your thoughtfulness, your labors, your care for us reflected in the conference each year. Thank you, Mark, for your thoughts, and thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.