Retreat Recap: Highlights of God's Presence, Leading & Faith for the Future

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Ben 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. If guys read or watched the podcast last week, they heard, they read, that there was a retreat happening this week, it's Friday when we're recording this. You were with not only the Leadership Team like you typically do a few times a year, but also with the Regional Leaders and also global leaders that were able to come in as well. How did it go?

Mark Prater:

Ben, I want to talk about this because I just landed back from Orlando just a couple of hours ago and my heart is full. I'm excited about how God met us this week. And if you read this podcast or listened to this podcast and you prayed for us, thank you so much for praying. God answered our prayers and did more than we could ask or think to ask him. It was such a good retreat. You plan a retreat, you prepare for it. We had excellent teaching throughout, which I'll talk about in a second. But it was really just a tangible awareness of the presence of God that I think we all felt and the Spirit leading us throughout the week which man can't manufacture.

God was just merciful and kind to us as men gathered from different parts of the globe and as you mentioned, our US regional leaders were there. We had about nine global leaders that were with us from different parts of the world. And the National Leader Fellowship Group, a few guys that we're developing and actually are already serving Sovereign Grace extra-locally. And Jeff Purswell was asking me; what did you think? And I said, well, on a big picture level, I think this retreat, Monday through Wednesday with those men, accomplished what we had hoped. And that was to gather our leaders from around the world and be together, build together relationally, which happened. We prayed for one another. We shared meals together, we laughed together. We had good conversation with one another.

So that happened. We wanted to gather them and just make sure that we're on the same page theologically and on the same page of what we're building together in terms of our gospel culture. And, even though Sovereign Grace is changing, becoming multi-generational and globally diverse, we are leaders that must make sure that Sovereign Grace doesn't change. That we remain who we've been, and we want to continue to be who we've always been by the grace of God. And, I think that was accomplished. I I think all the leaders left saying, Yeah, this is why we're in Sovereign Grace regardless of where we do ministry, and this is why we're excited about our future. So I was just so grateful for that sort of big picture result.

I won't go through all the sessions, but I think Jeff's session on theological clarity and integrity is just one of the best I've heard him teach and you know, every time Jeff teaches, we say oh, that's the best. We all say that. That's what it seems like. <laugh>. Yeah. This was really outstanding. And then CJ made a unique contribution in a couple of ways. First of all, teaching on the pastor's heart, which he has, you know, taught for years, but not just taught; he models that so well. It's who he is, it's how he lives his life. And, so that made a real deposit into men who especially outside of the states may not have heard that before or heard it as frequently. And then on Wednesday morning, Dave Taylor was really wise and invited CJ to be with the global leaders and he just interviewed him as our founder, one of our founders. And that was just a great use of time where these global leaders heard about the history of Sovereign Grace and his enthusiasm and faith for our future. So those are just some of the highlights that we had from Monday through Wednesday. I'm so grateful to God that he was kind to us and he was gracious to us. So again, thank you for praying. We're, I'm grateful for your prayers.

Ben Kreps:

Yeah, that is a wonderful report. So happy to especially hear about the nearness of God you experienced as you gathered together. But the retreat didn't end on Wednesday. When the Regional Leaders, global guys, and leadership development guys left, the Leadership team stayed and you guys got back to work, as the last few days of the retreat concluded. So, what happened there? What was that like?

Mark Prater:

Yeah, we kept working. When we go to these retreats, we work hard. We laugh a lot and we enjoy being together, but we do work hard and try to get a lot of work done. So, one of the things that we talked about, there were implications from this retreat for us. So, we spent all day Thursday morning talking about what does it mean for us to be a global leadership team? That's a conversation we've had for about the last year or so, but we're filling that out more, especially after being around our global guys. Just trying to zero in on what the Leadership Team should focus on. And so we defined that and remained disciplined to focus on things like theological fidelity, for example.

And, then walking through each of the guys and how they uniquely contribute to that. So we just talked about what it means to be a global leadership team. And then on Thursday afternoon we devoted the afternoon to global development for Sovereign Grace and worked through what does that look like; how do we expand globally? We talked about staffing that we needed. How do we want to build out leadership structures that will care for and do mission and church planting in Sovereign Grace? Because on Monday these global leaders presented a five year plan where they're talking about church planting. Jeffrey Jo's talking about planting more churches in the Philippines, and he hopes in the next two years to plant a church in Vietnam. So, how do we prepare for this? How do we get ready for this? So that was Thursday.

Wednesday afternoon we actually took time and debriefed from the retreat for the first couple days and then we planned the pastors conference for this coming year. And I won't talk much more about that because that's top secret at this point. But yeah, what I can say, it's gonna be a really good conference based on what we put together. And then we had some other things we needed to talk through, somewhat related how the Leadership Team does its' work and what is it. Because things have changed a lot in the last two or three years. Our policies have matured a bit more, which creates really good ministry work. There's obvious global expansion. So we've really had to step back and say, we've gotta rethink how we use our time. So yeah, we spent some time talking about that as well. So it was just an outstanding retreat. My heart is full, my mind is tired, but my heart is full and I'm just grateful to God that he was so good to us.

Ben Kreps:

Excellent. Well, what a great report and thank you Mark for leading that retreat and all the work you've put into it. And thank you to all of the men who sacrificed time away from church and family, to serve our family of churches by attending that retreat. And we're looking forward to the fruitfulness that will come from your time together in the days ahead. So thank you, Mark. Thank you for reading or watching. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye, for now.