God's Work in Australia

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Ben 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, you and I are back in our natural habitats 'cause I'm back from Ocean City. If guys looked at the podcast last week, I was spending time with Kyle Huber and a Sovereign Grace Church there, Greentree, near Ocean City. And you're back as of last night from Australia. Why were you in Australia?

Mark Prater:

I just got back last night, and I feel a little jet lagged. So if I say something stupid on this podcast, I have good reason. Just as a sort of a heads up.

Yeah, I went to Australia for two major purposes. One was to talk with Dave Taylor as attempt to serve him. Anybody in Sovereign Grace whether a pastor or a member of our church knows that Dave is our director of Global Missions. And because of what God is doing in our family of churches outside of the states, his plate has overflowed with work. I've had pastors tell me, I don't know how Dave does what he does. I don't know how he gets things done. So, part one of my trip was to sit down with Dave and work through a number of questions I'd given him to reveal what is it that he should focus his time on, meaning, do the things only he can do as a director of global missions. And hopefully those things are things that he enjoys doing as well as is gifted to do. So the purpose of the trip was to sit down and do that with Dave, which we did, and I spent time with Dave and Emma working through that as well, because I always find our wives are so valuable and important. And Emma was very important in that process, giving us good input.

And then I met with Dave and the elder with him,  Brendan Willis, and then also Riley Spring, who's in the church in Parramatta. And those guys met with them together just to talk about how do we refocus Dave's job description for Sovereign Grace and what are the implications then locally for the church in Wahroonga, and maybe by some extension in Paramatta as well. So that was the first reason for going.

The second reason for going is that every other year these two churches get together for a celebration-like event (for our historic Sovereign Grace folks), they call it Together 2023. They go to a retreat center about an hour north of Sydney. And it begins on Friday evening. It ends on Sunday afternoon, and it's just a time to be together; two churches fellowship together, sing to Jesus together, here preaching together. And I had the joy of participating in that. So the two purposes of those trips sort of just happened and it seemed like a really good reason to go. And I must say I was just writing in my journal this morning in my devotions, just thanking God for how good he was the past nine days. And it's a reflection of how much we need God for trips like that. And I know how much we need his wisdom and help, and how much he really has been helping us as a family at churches. I'm a man full of gratefulness to God for his kindness towards us this morning. So those are the reasons that I made the trip.

Ben Kreps:

Excellent. Yeah. I, along with everyone else who knows what Dave does, we're extremely grateful for Dave's tireless work. But we have all looked on in wonder at how he has the capacity to do as much as he does. So it's wonderful to hear that you guys are developing a plan to serve him and his family so we don't burn him out, as he works so hard for us. And I saw on social media, you posted clips of that conference and it looked very familiar; joyful expressive singing to Jesus. And we were talking before about the impression that those churches made on you when you visited. Talk to us about that.

Mark Prater:

Yeah. When we did Together 2023, again, it started Friday evening and ended Sunday afternoon, Riley Spring preached, I had the privilege of preaching, and Brendan Willis preached. All the messages were outstanding. Riley and Brendan did such a good job. The theme of the conference was Zealous for the Name of Christ. And those folks and those two churches had an obvious zeal for Jesus. Just being with them really impacted me and felt very, very much like being home at Covenant Fellowship Church for me. Which is remarkable. You know, when I travel and I go to different Sovereign Grace churches, I see really a similar experience that doesn't come from Sovereign Grace trying to franchise themselves to say it that way. It really is the outworking of our commitment to be gospel centered in all that we do. That's what it is. It is gospel fruit that you're experiencing when you're with people who love Christ, who are joyful, who are grateful, who are generous, who are encouraging, and that is something that I see in all the Sovereign Grace churches I travel to and saw it again in Australia with both the Sovereign Grace church in Parramatta and the one in Wahroonga. It also speaks of how well Dave and Riley are leading their churches and pastoring their churches. So it was such a joy and was even more encouraging because both churches have grown since the pandemic. I'm seeing that in a lot of churches I travel to throughout Sovereign Grace. That's a bit anecdotal, so it's not a hard statistic, but both churches have grown.

In fact, there were new people there who had not met one another in both churches. I talked to at least a couple of folks who said, we've only been coming for about a month and we decided to come to this retreat and just check out what the church is really about. So that was really, really encouraging as well. So it was just a good time to be with the church and to see people, not just Australians, but people from the Asia Pacific part of the world who now live there; the Philippines, South Korea, and China. So it was just really, really encouraging.

The other aspect of the trip and I believe Dave would agree with me; God really gave us clarity on his job description. In fact, he's going through now and refining it. I'll be communicating more details about that soon. But essentially, he's going to be able to focus on strategic development and leading our global leaders and some of the operational aspects of his responsibility we're going to have other people help us with. That's sort of the headline news. And I think Dave's very excited about that. I think he feels a little bit more unburdened than he was before the trip. And it seems that Emma, his wife, is excited, as well as Riley and Brendan. So it was just a really good trip. And I'm grateful to God for how he helped us, not only by giving us wisdom, I pray that our entire time gave him glory because he's worthy. That's just the reality.

Ben Kreps:

It is so beautiful that all throughout the world we have distinct cultures that are very different often from each other, but wherever the gospel is cherished in churches, there is that like-minded culture of grace that transcends our global differences. And so it's that way in any church, of course, that is gospel centered and seeks to live in the good of the gospel. How grateful I am, though that across Sovereign Grace that is our common experience. So thank you, Mark, for the update. Thank you, Dave and all the men who lead in Sovereign Grace Australia. We love you guys. Thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.