Pastors Conference Decisions
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone. And welcome back to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. Mark, I imagine most of us, all of us probably, by now, have received and read the disappointing news in the email that you sent out that the Pastors Conference has been canceled for this year. It's not a big surprise. I think for most of us in considering everything being canceled this year, but still a disappointment. But could you give us some insight into how you and the Leadership Team navigated through this, making this decision?
Mark Prater:
Another decision that marks 2020, right? It's such an interesting year. We really wrestled through this decision for several weeks as a Leadership Team because the thought of canceling our Pastors Conference was just like, “No!” But as we began to just think through it and gather all the information we could, much of the rationale I put in the email, it seemed clear to us that it was probably the wise and prudent thing to do, although a very sad decision that we had to make.
A couple of things I didn't say in that email that I think really helped us: First of all, as a Leadership Team, we were unanimous which is wonderful to have. And when I met with the executive committee to inform them and get their input, there was no questions, no pushback from them, they fully understood. And so that brings clarity.
Another piece I didn't put in the email is our interaction with the hotel because contractually, you know, we're obligated to them financially at minimum, a $10 to $15,000 deposit. And it could have been much more than that if they really held us to the contract, but they were actually very cooperative. When Tommy contacted them, they said, “Look, we've got, obviously, other organizations contacting us right now. If you're willing to sign for a future year, we'll let you cancel. In fact, we'll even transfer your deposit to that future year.” So, in the end, you know, we didn't lose any money at all. That, compared to proceeding with the conference, with what would obviously have a lower attendance. We were looking at that a $25 to $30,000 loss. So that was helpful as well.
Benjmain Kreps:
Yeah, disappointing. But also I imagine many of us feel grateful for the Leadership Team working through that decision carefully and appreciate that there was a unanimous decision there to signify unity on the team. My first response to the email was to look at my wife and declare, “Well, it looks like an all-day Zoom meeting for me with this Council of Elders.” Is that what we're looking at for the Council of Elders? A 10 hour Zoom meeting?
Mark Prater:
No way! We're not doing an all day, 10 hour Zoom meeting. Sovereign Grace guys wouldn't attend a 10 hour meeting, Let's start with that. But, I think what we're hoping for is probably roughly a five hour, roughly, Zoom meeting, where we can accomplish a number of business items. I think we can accomplish things like voting for candidates. We’ve got to work out the voting issue. We may have guys, we may send guys ballots and have them mail them in. So we can have our own mail, you know, mail-in ballot controversy. Might be kind of cool.
Benjamin Kreps:
Manipulation of the ballots?
Mark Prater:
That's right, exactly. But, mostly, you got the voting, whether we do that electronically or, you know, guys mail in ballots beforehand. We'll hear some updates from the Policy Committee. What we want to do is to go ahead—and we really talked a lot about this as a Leadership Team and with the Executive Committee—is to go ahead, if possible, and make a vote to ratify the final version of our Statement of Faith. Yes, we debated whether holding that off for a year because you want to mark the moment and celebrate it. We felt like it was more important to get it ratified. So the next step could happen is that it goes to regions and ¾ majority of regions, you know, have to approve it by the BCO. And then we can get it up on our website and guys can put it on their local church websites.
And we've already got some creative ideas to how to celebrate that at our conference next year. So that'll be a component as well. And then, lastly, what I really want to do is end the Council of Elders meeting with a modified State of the union, that's going to be filled with a lot of just good, inspiring updates of how God is at work around the world and Sovereign Grace, even during this pandemic. So you'll not only hear from me, but are the guys on the leadership team we'll hear from guys outside the States like Dave Taylor and other men that we are befriending, you know, across the world. And I think that would just be a great way to end our Council of Elders.
Benjamin Kreps:
Sounds great to me. So I saw on Twitter recently that a guy talked about his middle school daughter on a Zoom call with her class, doing a screenshot of herself, paying very careful attention, sticking that in as her Zoom, avatar, and then heading out and doing something else. So what's your over under on the amount of Sovereign Grace Pastors that might pull that stunt.
Mark Prater:
Oh man. We’ve got a lot of guys who'll do that.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah.
Mark Prater:
In fact, you and Dave Odom would be at the top of my list.
Benjamin Kreps:
Okay. That's discerning. Well, thank you, Mark, for the update and thank you everybody for watching the podcast. We'll see you again here soon.