Growing Globally

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, before we started recording this podcast, you were telling me about some encouraging updates that are just coming to you in this past week about global partnership and opportunity. Tell us about that.

Mark Prater:

It's one of those weeks where I just have this privilege of being in this role and I get this information and my response is "Aslan's on the move". God is just on the move in our small family of churches regarding more opportunities to partner with churches throughout the world. So I got a text yesterday from Joselo Mercado. Most people listening to this podcast or reading the podcast know Joselo travels in Latin America for Sovereign Grace and just represents us and serves us so well.

I got a text from him yesterday saying that there's a church in Barranquilla, Columbia that now wants to take the formal steps of being adopted into Sovereign Grace and Joselo and I were with that church last December and had just a great couple of days with them answering a lot of questions related to partnership. And Joselo reports in the text that the time we had with them seemed to have a real impact. And now they are formally requesting to be adopted into Sovereign Grace. So we will now have two candidate churches in Columbia: one in Barranquilla and one in Santa Marta. We're early in the process, but if that process goes well, we'll have two partner churches someday in Columbia. So that was yesterday morning.

I got up this morning and opened an email that I received from Dave Taylor and attached are signed letters of intent from nine different additional churches in the Philippines that are pursuing adoption in Sovereign Grace. So you might remember in a previous podcast I mentioned 13 churches that signed letters of intent to become candidate churches. Those churches relate to Jeffrey Jo in Manila. These nine additional churches actually relate to Cornelio Ebo. We call him Nilo, he's in Cebu City. And so it's just amazing. There's nine more churches in the Philippines, a total now of 22 candidate churches in the Philippines that are pursuing partnership and adoption in Sovereign Grace. And just to remind the guys who were at the Council of Elders meeting that we had in November before we took the vote on the global partnership plan, BCO amendments, I said that there were pastors around the world that were watching us and how we were gonna vote today. And those pastors obviously are happy with the vote and are now taking steps to be formally partner churches in Sovereign Grace. So that's just a glimpse of my week where I'm just so grateful to God and I'm humbled by the number of opportunities he is giving us.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yeah. I actually went to the Pastors College with Nilo Ebo. So shout out to Nilo, yeah, that's great to hear. Well, as you're describing, you mentioned all these opportunities and on this podcast you're regularly updating us about all kinds of stuff that God's doing globally and how pastors all over the world are interacting with us and moving towards adoption into Sovereign Grace. There's a lot of opportunity and a limited amount of time that the men on the Leadership Team can spend on these kinds of things. How do you think through and navigate as you lead the Leadership Team navigate through the busyness and the potentially overwhelming nature of the amount of requests that are coming toward us as you seek to faithfully steward these opportunities? How do you think about that and your role leading the Leadership Team?

Mark Prater:

I don't completely know yet, quite honestly. What I do know in interacting with guys on the Leadership Team over the last few months, is they are excited about our mission. They love serving our churches. They are working hard and are saying this is a lot of work but they're not complaining at all. They're happy with the work, but as I watch them I don't want them to get pulled into more operational admin type things but want them to remain leaders. So I just told them earlier this week in a Leadership Team meeting that I'm tracking their work and watching how they use their time. I'm so grateful for their work but we've gotta put our heads together and think about what to do. Do we hire more staff? Do we restructure in some way? I really don't have all the answers to that. I'm looking to try to get at least a day or two retreat just to pray and to think through that.

So I'm glad you brought it up, Ben, because if you're listening to this podcast or reading the transcript, please pray for me. Please pray for the Leadership Team, that God would give us wisdom on what to do. Pray for the Executive Committee because I'm sure they will be helpful with us in that. And it's another reminder, especially coming off last week when you and I were at Jeff's pneumatology course, it's just good to be reminded of our dependence upon God through the work of the Spirit. You know as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, these things happen so that we will rely upon God and not ourselves. And I'm feeling that reliance even more and that dependency even more and need the Spirit to lead us. So guys, if you're listening, people who are listening to the podcast, please pray that God would grant us wisdom.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yeah. Amen. Grateful that you shared that little window into how God is actually sanctifying you as you serve which we should all expect when we step into serving the Lord. So thank you to the Leadership Team, the Executive Committee, all who are in leadership who are working so hard stewarding the opportunities that are ahead of us. We're so grateful for the gift of leadership in Sovereign Grace. So thank you, Mark. We look forward to more updates in the days ahead as God continues to grow our small family of churches. And thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.