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. All right, let me get this out of the way. First I realized my hat is fire. Sixers are playing tonight, game three, they will beat the Hawks. They're going to win the series in six, just wanted to predict. You're going to see this next week, but you have to understand that the game hasn't happened yet. And so I want you to respect my impressions in all of us. And also this is for Garrett and Aaron down in Georgia as well, just so they know what's going on.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, exactly.

Benjamin Kreps:

So, you just got back from Orlando from the the Leadership Team retreat. And as we talked about in the last podcast, you had the Regional Leaders in this time, you hadn't done that for a few years. So how did that go with your retreat, including the Regional Leaders?

Mark Prater:

The retreat couldn't have went better, Ben. First of all, shout out to the Sixers. I hope they win this series, that's what we're going to see. But the retreat went, I think, better than we anticipated. We prayed and God did more than we could ask or imagine as Ephesians 3 talks about it. It was just a wonderful time together as a Leadership Team. And for the first half of our retreat all of the United States Regional Leaders were with us and it was a sweet, sweet time. It was just good to laugh a lot, we laughed a lot together. It was good to just build relationally. We had the Regional Leaders start the retreat by just sharing updates from each of them and what's going on in their regions, that was encouraging. It also surfaced out of that, the ways that we could pray for them.

So we had some meaningful times of prayer, a couple of different days in a row, for some of the Regional Leaders. And that was just sweet. It was just the kind of fellowship that you want. And then just spending time talking about topics and issues that many of the Regional Leaders told me at the end of the time with us, that it really did equip them to lead their Regions. So for example, we talked, we presented the global partnership plan to them and we Zoomed Dave Taylor in to the meeting. It was just great for those guys to interact with Dave. Those Regional Leaders are excited about the global partnership plan that we're putting in place, and the Council of Elders will see it in the fall. So that's just envisioning to see what's happening in Sovereign Grace throughout the world right now.

Jeff Purswell just spent some time walking through some of the theological issues of our day related to things like gender identity and sexual orientation and complementarianism. Just some of the things that we talked about. And Jeff, what Jeff does so well, he just brings a theological perspective and precision that really will help our Regional Leaders be mindful of theological trends in our culture and even in evangelicalism so that they can help the pastors in their region to guard their churches against any heterodoxy. So that was the effect of that session. Jeff also spent some time talking about "how is a Regional Leader mindful of the preaching that's occurring in the churches in his region?" And so we just kind of talked through that and how a Regional Leader can help pastors grow as preachers which was really, really a helpful time.

And then we gave Eric Turbedsky just time to talk about church planting, several initiatives he has going on that our regions can participate in. That led to some good Q and A about church planting. And I think those guys were just saying that was really, really helpful. And then we had John Payne and Jared Mellinger talk about "how do you develop future pastors and leaders in your region?" And we've got a number of things that we're going to be implementing. For example we're going to do a a pastoral ministry interest meeting at the pastors conference on Tuesday evening after the main session that guys can come to. And John and Jared are working on a weekender where guys, we're hoping to do that in conjunction with the pastors college class, maybe they come in on a Friday, they enjoy part of a class, spend a weekend in Louisville with the eldership there and just give guys some exposure to what pastoral ministry looks like. So all those things we talked about are just some of the things we talked about with the Regional Leaders and it was a sweet, sweet time. We're going to do it again. They were asking if we would do it again. And we said, yes, we're going to do it.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yeah. Excellent. I talked to Ken Mellinger yesterday, fresh back from the trip and he was just communicating how grateful he was for that time together. It's wonderful to see the collaboration going on there as well when it comes to extra local leadership. So those guys left and went home before you guys went home. And so the Leadership Team, you guys, spent time together for a couple of days then, what kind of stuff did you talk about? Moving forward?

Mark Prater:

Yeah, We had a great retreat together. By the way, it was Mickey's last retreat before he transitions out of his role at the end of August. And so we just took some time to encourage our friend and the wonderful ways that he has served Sovereign Grace actually for decades. But in this situation, the role that he has served in as Director of Church Development. So that was wonderful and a joy for us to do.

But we talked about a number of things that were just very, very encouraging. One of them was developing future pastors and that led to just an unplanned conversation that Dave Taylor was a part of, he Zoomed in on another day about "how do we plant churches in China?" And essentially one of the ways to do that is to plant churches here in the states. And so we put together this plan, or actually I asked Dave after that conversation to have Andrew Leung, who is his assistant and a pastoral intern at Dave's church, and Chinese, to just put together this proposal for us. And we're really looking forward to see what's going to happen with that. So that was an exciting conversation for us. And then Dave Taylor presented a proposal for a group he wants to pull together regarding reaching the unreached, which isn't a new category for us, but we're kind of rethinking it a little bit in terms of what we've learned and how we can go about this especially with the new global partnership plan in place. So that was an exciting conversation that wasn't completely planned either.

And then, as we expand globally, how do we function as a Leadership Team? What should that look like? And we didn't really fully answer that question. We had some good discussions, so that'll be a future Leadership Team agenda item that we will talk about. We also spent some time just preparing and reviewing for next fiscal year's budget. And kind of talking through that a bit. So those are just a few of the things we did as a Leadership Team beyond laughing a lot and just having some meaningful time together.

Benjamin Kreps:

That's great. So it's Friday, you just got back, and you're leaving again Sunday because of next week. What's happening, real quick?

Mark Prater:

Next week. Yeah. Next week, I'm really excited. It's back to back retreats. I'm not going to do that again (laughs). I don't know why I planned it that way. But we've got a Leadership Development retreat next week, gathering some of our pastors together to just invest into them because we think they're some of our future leaders, extra local leaders in Sovereign Grace. I just can't wait to do it.

Benjamin Kreps:

Well, thanks for all your hard work and thank you Leadership Team for taking time, along with the Regional Leaders, to think about, pray about, dream about what God has for us in the future in Sovereign Grace Churches. And so we just appreciate you guys. I'm sure we all do. And thank you everyone for watching and we'll see you here again, Lord willing, next week. Bye for now. Go Sixers!