Highlights from the Leadership Team Retreat
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, when I was growing up, and some people who check out the podcast probably had this experience to of playing the game, maybe watching the TV show, Where in the world is Carmen San Diego? Well, we're playing, where in the world is Mark Prater? Because you're on the move and you are not at home, you're in a hotel room. Where are you?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I am in Bozeman, Montana. It's a beautiful day here in Bozeman. We're recording this on a Saturday and this podcast will drop into the inbox on a Monday. Let me tell you why I'm here. I was actually out on the West coast already this week in LA for a leadership team retreat, and I was asked by Greg Dirnberger, the regional leader in this area, if somebody from the leadership team could come this Sunday and install Ron Boomsma as the senior pastor and elder of the church here in Bozeman; Emmaus Road Church. Greg is on sabbatical and he felt like because of what the church has walked through, they were without a pastor for a couple of years, it would be good just to have somebody come from the leadership team just to encourage Ron and Tami, but also the church as well. And I thought, well, I'm already on the west coast. I can pop up here.
And so I made that call and so that's why I'm here in Bozeman, and maybe some of our pastors listening didn't know that Ron Boomsma is in Bozeman. He is the new senior pastor of Emmaus Road Church in Bozeman. The church has been a part of that process, so I'm not announcing anything that's not to be kept confidential. The church does know and tomorrow's going to be a great day for them. You might remember Joel Carlson led that church and then went to serve another church that was outside of Sovereign Grace and transitioned therefore out of Sovereign Grace. They were without a pastor for a couple of years and Ron and Tami heard about it and prayed and felt like the Lord was leading them here from Pasadena. You might be wondering what's happening in Pasadena? Well, Tim Owens who graduated from the Pastors College just a few years ago and has been there on staff in Pasadena, stepped into Ron's role.
So, two transitions have happened; obviously one in Pasadena from an older pastor to younger. And then in this case in Bozeman, from region to region from the West region to the Midwest Northwest region. And I wanted to mention it because it not only explains where I'm at and why I'm in this hotel room, I just think it illustrates how we want to continue to develop our partnership among Sovereign Graces churches. That as transitions occur in the future, we've got to help one another and share people and pastors with one another so that we can do effective transitions that serve our local churches and mostly give God glory. We want to do God glorifying conversations. So I'm very grateful for the sacrifice the Pasadena Church is making, the sacrifice the West region is making, the sacrifice that Ron and Tami personally are making to move here to Bozeman and to begin to pastor this church. And the church here is very excited about Ron and I just can't wait to do this tomorrow. It's going to be quite an honor.
Benjamin Kreps:
That is deeply encouraging. I mean, it is an compelling example that Ron is setting for us. He could very well have just lived out his days in pastoral ministry in beautiful California, and not necessarily early in life, but a little later in life, to pick up and move to Montana and to serve that church, that is a sweet sacrifice, I'm sure that pleases the savior and it's not the only one. There are all kinds of examples of this kind of sacrificial love for the local church, whether you have Scott Crook coming from Chaska to serve at Ed's Church as he plants in Italy. And here now we have Ron coming over; or Ken Mellinger leaving Living Hope, going down to Texas with Jon Payne. It is the older pastors in Sovereign Graces once again are setting an example for us that I'm deeply grateful for. And I'm sure tomorrow is going to be a happy Sunday in Bozeman, Montana.
But you are in Bozeman because you come by way of California. You were in California last week at the latest leadership team retreat. Tell us about what happened there.
Mark Prater:
We had a great retreat. It wasn't all of the leadership team, it was myself and Jeff Purswell and Jon Payne, Jared Mellinger, and Dave Taylor flew over from Sydney, God bless him, which is one of the reasons we do it in Southern California. It's just one leg of a flight for him. And we just had a wonderful retreat. God just blessed it. It was a retreat I've been praying for quite a bit and I'm just going to tell you some of the highlights. I don't have time to go through all of them or this podcast would be too long. We had a full, important, I would say one of the most important agendas we've had as a leadership team.
So here's just some topics that we talked about. First, church planting. The Church Planting Group and Joel Shorey, our new Director of Church Planting, just had a retreat last month. And so Jon gave us an update on that. It's just so encouraging to see what work our church planting group is doing and now the leadership that Joel is bringing not only to them, but to our church planting efforts. And that's just very timely because we have six to seven, I think, church plants planned here in the states over the next two years. (Ben: "let's go") And then another 10 outside the states over the next two to three years. So in the next two to three years, we're going to plant somewhere between 16 and 17 churches if things go as planned. Again, not wanting to be presumptuous upon the sovereignty of God and part of the reason we wanted to talk about it at the retreat, we're asking are we prepared for that? And that would include financial preparation. Do we have enough resources to fund the church plants we want to fund both here in the states and globally.
And it gives me a chance to mention the Council of Elders Delegates. Just a couple of weeks ago, received some information about our meeting in November, and one of those was a new business motion from the team. And if you've read it in the rationale, we're proposing that the Council of Elders approve making a division between the current church planting fund that the Council of Elders established several years ago, and divide it into a US fund and a global fund because it helps us to use our money more strategically. It helps us to track how we're using it more effectively and it helps us on the leadership team in particular and those in different parts of the world, including the states, to request funds and they know how much they've got to work with. So, just a number of reasons. We'll talk about that at the Council of Elders and potentially that will be approved by the Council of Elders. We'll see.
We also talked through our church adoption vetting process. We've just looked back and thought there's some things we can learn as we go to adopt churches. It seems like there's some things that we can grow in. And so Jon and Dave brought a whole proposal on how to improve that. I was very excited about what they're proposing. So we're going to work through that just a little bit more. It may require some BCO amendments in the future. My guess is it probably will, but looking to just make that process a little bit better so that we're just being wise in the church adoption process.
We also planned, initially anyway, the February leadership team regional leader retreat. That's the one retreat we do as a leadership team every year where we have the regional leaders join us. That's a very strategic time. And so we've got to do a lot of preparation beforehand. And I really like the plan that we've got in place and you'll hear more about that obviously on future podcasts.
We did a discussion about the Relay Conference in 2025, just doing some additional planning, including a pre-conference meeting for young men aspiring to pastoral ministry that most likely will involve Jeff and I can't wait for Jeff to just be exposed to them, to those new men, those young men aspiring to ministry.
There's a number of new initiatives that many of the leadership team guys have been working on that we discussed. I don't have time to discuss 'em now, but most of those will be talked about at the Council of Elders meeting. So if you're not a delegate and you want to hear about 'em, come as an observer. We would love to have you at that meeting. You'll hear about those.
Then Jared gave us a publishing update, really a publishing plan over the next year. It's really exciting to see what is about to be released and what's in the works that will be released over the next year in the categories of the Journal. In fact, next month, October, the next edition of the Journal with the theme Books That Have Shaped Us, I can't wait to read that, that'll be released. And then the category of Theo-Pastoral resources, we're just going to use the old name, The Perspective Series from guys have been around some time. Those are written at a little more theological level and we're about ready to release that first one; Who Governs the Church, you'll hear more about that. And then books we're just self-publishing. In fact, there's a new one up that Jeff has written. It's a chapter that was in a book, that honored Wayne Gruden. We now have permission to use that. And so that is the republishing of that chapter. That's new on our website. But also a number of other things. I think 10 to 12 other projects that are in the process of being published right now. So you'll hear more about that.
And then we planned the 2024 Pastors Conference and we're planning on that and the 2025 Pastors and Leaders Conference. So we hope to announce at the 2024 Pastors Conference that the 2025 conference will be a pastors and leaders conference, where churches can bring leaders, members of their churches, to this conference. And we're tailoring it that way with a number of different breakout sessions that will serve those members who serve our churches. Things like small group leadership and things like parenting and marriage. And there's just a whole list of those. So we did some planning for that too because we hope to announce it with specific dates at the end of the 2024 conference because people need to take time off work in 2025. It's good for them to know ahead of time and then open registration as soon as possible. So those are just some of the things that we talked about this past week in Southern California.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, thanks for the update. Thank you for sharing about the hard work you guys were getting done at the retreat. At least it was in beautiful California. If you're going to work hard, that's a great place to do it. So, thank you, Mark. Thank you for all the guys on the leadership team, for your thoughtful and wise leadership and investment in us. And thank you for checking out the podcast. And so we'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.