Advancing the Gospel with Our New Director of Church Planting
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, many people checking out this podcast, many guys, these pastors checking out the podcast, received an email recently informing us that we have a new Director of Church Planting, Joel Shorey. And so a question is, why is it important for us to have a Director of Church Planting?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, it's a great question. And for those that are listening to this podcast and don't get my emails like maybe a member of our church, one of the members of our church, Joel Shorey is the Senior Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in Newark, Delaware, a church he planted six years ago out of the church. I'm at Covenant Fellowship Church where he served in pastoral ministry 13 years there before planting a church. So he's got almost 20 years of pastoral ministry experience. And for those that don't get the email, and maybe those who do, just a reminder, this is a non-leadership team director role, kind of like Bob Kauflin as Director of Sovereign Grace Music or Eric Turbedsky our Director of West Coast Development. So we have directors that are not on the leadership team. We wanted Joel to focus on church planting without being encumbered by additional denominational wide leadership team responsibility.
So here's a quick little bit about Joel and the role that he's in. So why do we need one? That's the question you asked me. There are four reasons why we believe as a leadership team that we need a Director of Church Planting. The first one is our mission. Our mission is this: we are a family of churches who advance the gospel of Jesus Christ together by planting and strengthening churches throughout the world for the glory of God. So it seems like if planting churches as one means to advance the gospel is a part of our mission, then dedicating someone to church planting seems like it will strengthen our mission. So that's the first reason.
Second, last year at the Pastors Conference, I called our pastors to take more prayer-filled thoughtful risks to plant more churches, especially here in the United States. And I called us to do that, not to grow Sovereign Grace, but to reach more people in this world who don't know Christ as their Lord and Savior. So it's at the heart of that, a call to risk, is the gospel itself and seeing people come to know Christ as their savior. That's the second reason.
Third, Eric Turbedsky, our previous Director of Church Planting, just did an outstanding job of serving us in that role for over a couple of years, maybe three years if I remember right. And once he transitioned out, we as a leadership team, we did notice a vacuum that was left there. And we wanted to fill that with a good leader, which we think Joel is.
And then fourth, without a Director of Church Planting, Jon Payne took on the responsibility of just working with Mike Seaver, who oversees and leads the National Church Planting Committee. Thank God for Mike. He keeps so much of our church planting machinery moving forward. And those on the National Church Planting Committee, they do a lot of good work that a lot of people don't know about. But Jon was giving them direction and leadership. So I was wanting to get that responsibility off Jon's plate. That's a very practical reason, but a reason that was in our thinking in selecting Joel as our next Director of Church Planting. So please pray for him as he steps into this new role.
Benjamin Kreps:
Appreciate the wisdom of the leadership team. I can think of no finer choice actually for that role than Joel. He is a compelling example of a faithful pastor and planter. So what will Joel be doing in this new role?
Mark Prater:
Well, one of my prayers is that the spirit of God is at work in our churches in obviously a number of ways, but one of them stirring, first of all, pastors, to take faith-filled risks to plant churches, to send out their best like you've done Ben, but also men in our churches who are being stirred by the spirit to plant churches. So what Joel is doing, I pray, is first being led by the spirit of God, that God would lead us and help us to take more faith-filled risks to plant churches.
And so what Joel's going to do is simply serve you, the pastors of Sovereign Grace Churches, in planting a church. And if you've never planted a church before, please pray about doing so because it will change your church. It will strengthen your church in so many ways. And so Joel is coming alongside of you and serving. He's not coming as the church planting expert. Now let me qualify that. Of course, he's going to study church planting. He wants to know the church planting world. He wants to find resources that will help us, but that's not Joel's heart. What Joel's heart is, and you see this in his own church planting experience, is he wants to reach more and more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ through the planting of churches. And so he wants to serve you. You know your context better than he does. You know where to plant better than he does. He wants to resource you, he wants to help you. He wants to serve you in any way he can. There's a distinction between being a church planting expert and being a guy who's got a heart for the gospel and wants to see more churches planted. And you'll be hearing more from him on that in talking with him. By the way, he's so excited about this role. It's one that he seems fit for. We talked about, actually to be straightforward, three different candidates for this role. All were very good candidates. It was a very hard decision and all have planted strong Sovereign Grace churches, Joel is just a fit for it, we think. And you see that in his enthusiasm and excitement. And so you'll be hearing from him and you'll hear his enthusiasm as he helps us to plant more churches.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. Well, eager to experience Joel's leadership in the days ahead as he leads the church planting team, the church planting group which is just by the way, so helpful. Anybody considering planting a church and you feel uncertain about what that's going to look like and what the process is, they will resource you and lead you carefully, thoughtfully, through the whole process. So eager for Joel's influence to be felt in all of that. Why don't we end here with that encouragement, repeating for us, reminding us of the encouragement that you shared with us at last year's pastors conference.
Mark Prater:
Yeah. The encouragement really is taking faith-filled risk to plant churches. And I mentioned this in a podcast, I don't know how many episodes ago, but several episodes ago, and I read from 1 Corinthians 3, and I'm going to do that again for 1 Corinthians 3. Let's keep the context in view. There are divisions in the church, people are following Apollos and Paul, et cetera. And so Paul's writing to correct all of that. But he writes in verses six and seven, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. So let us plant and let us water with faith believing that our good God will give the growth. Because as the text says, we're not really anything because it is God who gives the growth. And one of the joys about church planting is seeing God get all the glory when a church is established, when a church is in a community reaching people who don't know Christ. That is a work of God that man can't do without God. And so let us plant more churches for the sake of the gospel, but as our mission says, for the glory of God alone.
Benjamin Kreps:
Amen. Thanks for that encouragement, Mark. Thank you for the update. God bless you, Joel, as you serve us in the days ahead. And thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.