Faithful Preaching, Faithful Churches

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, on the last podcast, you talked about how you were entering into a week-long retreat with the Leadership Team, also with the Regional Leaders for part of that time. You just got back yesterday from the retreat, how did it go?

Mark Prater:
It was outstanding. It was just a wonderful retreat on so many levels. The retreat began with all the Regional Leaders here in the United States and just being around those men. I'm just so grateful for each of our Regional Leaders for the time and leadership they bring to each of their regions. We are a stronger family of churches because of those men. So a shout out to all of our Regional Leaders. One of the things I really wanted to share from the retreat: we started the retreat by asking the Regional Leaders to just give us an update on their regions. We just said, tell us about your region's strengths, weaknesses, and how can the Leadership Team serve you. They were answering those questions, and as I listened over the course of listening to all nine regions, there were a couple of themes that emerged that really encouraged me. And I wanted to share them with the listeners and readers of this podcast.

The first one is this: there are people coming to our churches who have never been a part of Sovereign Grace before. And they are looking for Reformed theology, but also expository preaching. So in some parts of the country, people have moved because of the pandemic to other states and they're actually Googling expository preaching and then showing up in Sovereign Grace churches, because that's what they're looking for. Other situations are people just through transitions are leaving a church or maybe are moving into a new community. That's what they're looking for and what emerged. It seems to be this growing appetite for the word of God and having the word of God preached faithfully to them through the means of expository preaching each and every week.

And it was just a good reminder of the culture that we're living in. It's obviously moving away from scripture. And it's a reminder that Evangelicalism is still kind of fracturing a bit, I think. And because of that, people are looking for churches that will be faithful to the word of God and therefore trustworthy and dependable. I say that because if you are a pastor listening to this podcast, what you do each and every week to faithfully exposit and preach God's word is not an ordinary thing. It's an extraordinary thing in the sight of God. It not only serves and strengthens your church, it is becoming more appealing to those who've never been in a Sovereign Grace church before. So that really encouraged me.

Benjamin Kreps:
That is very encouraging. Yeah, we've experienced exactly that as new folks have come to the church, having never heard expository preaching. It's just wonderful to watch their delight, really, as the word is opened up on Sundays and they experience that kind of preaching. I heard an interview with a couple of attractional megachurch pastors a few years ago, that wondered why the church wasn't growing. It was your typical attractional model: begin the meeting with, for instance, a cover of a Taylor Swift song, keep the prayer light, keep the sermon practical and not so much expository. And the church stopped growing the way that they wanted it to. And as they examined why, they discovered that unbelievers, unchurched people, weren't coming because of the Taylor Swift covers and things like that. It was in spite of it.

And what they discovered in their polling, was that the people said: "We're coming to church because you say God is here. We want to experience it if that's true. And because the Bible is your book, we want to understand what it says, and opened up and taught to us." And so this attractional megachurch has shifted their model to focus on more lengthy pastoral prayer, singing, and expository preaching. Actually, as they discovered this new way of doing church, I couldn't help but think, we've been doing that. And a bunch of other people, not just Sovereign Grace, have been doing that for a long time now. So I'm encouraged by what you're saying and what I'm seeing, and I hope all of us are encouraged each week as we faithfully seek to open up the scriptures and preach them.

Mark Prater:
It's funny you mentioned that because I read a blog post last week written by Kevin DeYoung. I think it was published on his blog on June 9th. The title was about the Mainline church decline and he was looking at the PC USA. I believe he was a part of that as a child growing up. So he has some good memories of the PC USA at that time, before they turned more liberal. And so he was just looking at stats. Actually last year they closed 104 congregations. Churches lost over 50,000 members. They continued to see people leave PC USA churches and he gave a couple reasons why. One of them is that they've tried to be relevant. That's kinda what you were just saying, but Kevin makes a wonderful observation, relevant Christianity doesn't stay relevant for long. He said, it may appeal to those who are deconstructing, but it won't appeal to those who are really wanting to know God and experience God. And obviously it won't appeal to those who are truly Christians.

And so I just thought that was a wonderful observation that we certainly want to avoid in Sovereign Grace. We want to remain faithful to preaching God's word. Now, we want to bring good application to people's lives, but we're not gonna try to be relevant in the way that Kevin was talking about. So it's just good to learn from other denominations and mistakes that they have made. We've made mistakes. I don't want to make us sound like we haven't, we've made several, but we want to try and learn from them at the same time. And he actually ended the article by just basically saying, we have no guarantee that faithful churches will continue on for decades, but we do have some idea of why churches decline. And I just thought it was a really helpful article. If the listeners of this podcast haven't read it, I would commend that blog post to you.

Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, I'll definitely check that out. Anything else? Any other thoughts before we go?

Mark Prater:
Yeah. Another thing that emerged from our time with the Regional Leaders: since the pandemic, we are seeing more unbelievers come to our churches and more unchurched come to our churches. I'm hearing that more and more, and I had that experience myself a couple weeks ago when I was in Guadalajara, Mexico on a Sunday. That church has grown from 100 to 240, probably in about the last two years, approximately, which is wonderful. They now have two services to accommodate the number of people that are coming. I preached in the second service, faithfully, from Colossians 1, and a man walked up to me after the service in tears. And he said, this is the first time I have ever been in a Christian Church and your message spoke to me. And so I interacted with him and directed him towards Chobi and the member there that had invited him, but that kind of a thing is happening more and more in our churches.

So it's just a reminder for us. First of all let's be a loving, welcoming community, family of churches because when unbelievers walk through our doors and they experience really who we are that helps them to stay and let's be faithful to continue to reach out to the lost, because there are people now God is drawing to himself. That story and what I heard this week is a reminder that God is still doing the work of saving sinners like you and me, Ben, and that's great. And that I'm grateful for, and that I'm glad we get to participate in.

Benjamin Kreps:
Yes. That is excellent. Mark, can I share a quote that I'm about to use in my sermon for this Sunday that stirred my heart concerning preaching? It's from JC Ryle, and maybe this will be encouraging to others, as well. And he writes, "Let us never doubt for a moment that the preaching of Christ crucified, the old story of his blood and righteousness and substitution is enough for all the spiritual necessities of all mankind. It is not worn out. It is not obsolete. It has not lost its power. We want nothing new, nothing more broad and kind, nothing more intellectual, nothing more efficacious. We want nothing but the true bread of life which Christ bestows, distributed faithfully among starving souls. Let men sneer or ridicule as they will. Nothing else can do good in this sinful world. No other teaching can feed hungry consciences and give them peace. We are all in a wilderness. We must feed on Christ crucified and the atonement made by his death, or we shall die in our sins."

And how grateful I am to be part of a family of churches that stands on that old story of his blood and righteousness and substitution. So pray that we will continue to be that kind of family of churches and preachers.

Mark Prater:
Amen, by God's grace, we will.

Benjamin Kreps:
Yes. Thank you, Mark. And thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye, for now.