Planting Churches: Joy, Sowing & God's Faithfulness
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ben Kreps:
Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our Executive Director. Mark, in Sovereign Grace we are partnered together to strengthen churches, but also to plant churches. And at the conference a few months ago, you told us about 20 church plants in the works over the next two years, three of which are in the United States. Give us an update about that.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, three in the United States are actually going to be planted by men who will preach in three different languages. It's amazing. So we have a church plant in the Clarksburg Maryland area that'll be led by a Chinese speaking pastor, a Mandarin speaking church. We're so excited about that, a man by the name of Fengyu Ji and his wife, so be praying for that church plant. Also, another Chinese speaking church will be in Charleston, South Carolina. Perry Wong is gonna plant that church, so actually two Chinese speaking churches in the next couple of years in the Charleston area. I think he's gonna be in the north Charleston side of the city. And then, Ramon Flores is planting a Spanish speaking church in Yuma, Arizona. And then an English speaking church plant is actually being sent from your church, Ben, to be planted on the west side of Harrisburg. At the conference, you and the church planter, Jeremy Hetrick, gave an update. I'm just curious to know how things are going.
Ben Kreps:
Yeah, thanks for asking. So I was wrong. There's actually four church plants happening, not three. Wonderful. <laugh>. Well, yeah, we've made a lot of headway since the testimony that we gave at the conference, and it was a delight to give that testimony of God's faithfulness to us. And then coming off the conference, we were earnestly in the work of preparing to plant: interest meetings, interviews, applications, identifying a core group. And we put together an advisory team to assist Jeremy, because at first he'll be the only elder there. Where we're at right now, this is now middle of January, is we have about a hundred people, adults and kids that are interested, in going on the plant. So, we're excited about that. God is clearly at work in our church and raising up men and women who are willing to go and leave the familiar; leave the church that they love to strike out into the unknown for the sake of the gospel and to see Jesus' name glorified in Mechanicsburg, Dillsburg, PA area.
That's where we're planting, Lord willing, by Messiah University. So there's a lot of excitement here. It's also a little bit bittersweet, you know, discovering that it isn't all joy because there is sacrifice at times, relationally. We are in our building here that we built almost six years ago. Many of these people gave for years, gave generously, sacrificially to see this building established and then are willing to leave and go meet in a strip mall or wherever it is, when we find our location. So, there's joy but it's real life and there's real sacrifices. So, God is clearly at work and we're very grateful. A lot of excitement around here.
Mark Prater:
A hundred people, Ben, that's not an insignificant amount of people.
Ben Kreps:
Terrifying, yeah.
Mark Prater:
So how's your faith with sending that many people?
Ben Kreps:
So people can understand what that means; on a Sunday morning here, we have around 400 members, adults and kids, and we get about 400-450 on a Sunday. So that's about a quarter <laugh> of our attendees heading out on the church plant. It's a little unnerving. But early on we decided, and I've settled into my heart, that we are going all in and banking on the faithfulness of God. And we believe firmly in the biblical principle of sowing and reaping. So I've been encouraging our church and elder team; hey, we're sowing sacrificially. We're cutting deep here. And so we do that with faith because we expect God to return to us everything we need, whatever that looks like, in order for Living Hope to flourish for his glory as well.
The crazy thing is, we're already seeing God replenishing. We're already reaping before we've actually sown. The church plant's not until the fall. But it's remarkable over the last six months, how many new people are coming. Just excellent servants who are not going on the plant, but love Living Hope and have begun serving and are eager to help in various ways to fill the holes that are left. Our giving has never been higher. So we can comfortably weather reduced giving for a little while with the reserves that we have. It makes the whole process so much more full of joy, because we're doing what we can. We are making our efforts, but we are watching God work and bless us. And so I'm completely banking on the faithfulness of God. If I wasn't confident in his goodness and faithfulness to us, I would be terrified about what's gonna happen here as we send out a hundred people. But God has been so good to us, and so we are experiencing his goodness, his favor, his blessing, all over the place, all undeserved, all by his grace. So, that's the update for the moment.
Mark Prater:
Well, thanks for your faith. Thanks for being willing to send a hundred of your best. Really, those are risky steps of faith that God does bless. We've seen that at Covenant Fellowship. We sent out Nick Kidwell with about 50 or 55 adults in September to plant Valley Creek Church. And it's just been fascinating to us as an eldership, as a pastoral team at Covenant Fellowship, to see the new people that are now coming. Jared mentioned in an elders meeting just a couple weeks ago. He said, I've talked to so many people on a Sunday who are telling me this is like my second week here. And, we're just kind of scratching our head like how quickly the Lord is replenishing. I was greeting some folks a little bit later and walked into the service after the singing started and looked around the room at our church and thought, man, this place is a little bit fuller than what I anticipated. So, I just think God blesses those risky steps of faith because of our trust in him and our commitment to advance the gospel that his son died for. So thank you for your example there, Ben. And, thank you for sending your best for this church by the way. Jeremy Hetrick, I just remembered, he emailed me earlier in the week just to communicate some things and said that they've chosen a name for the church: Redeeming Grace Church. Is that right? Redeeming Grace.
Ben Kreps:
That's right. So we officially have a name and he's in the middle of all the legal stuff that entails as well. So yeah, it's quite a joy. I think about last week when we were in the gospel of John and I preached on Mary breaking open the costly perfume at Jesus' feet anointing him, and the confusion of Judas <laugh> and saying like, well, you could have put this to better use, this seems like a waste. And just being reminded and compelled by her example to say, no, go all in with Jesus. To those observing, maybe that doesn't seem like the wisest thing in the world, but you will not fail in going all in with Jesus. And, that's what we're trying to do here. And I know that so many of the churches in Sovereign Grace are the same. So may God provide us with church planters, and may we see many more churches planted in Sovereign Grace in the days ahead. So, thank you, Mark, and thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.