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, we're recording this just about a week after the conference from last week, ended. And as come to expect over the years, a wonderful conference and thank you for leading that conference. Thank you for the leadership team and the thoughtfulness you brought to planning the conference. It certainly was enjoyable; it was practical, it was edifying, it was certainly God glorifying and a joyful time that we enjoy every year. And last week was no exception. But what was your take on the conference?

Mark Prater:

My take on the conference was that God was very, very good to us in so many different ways and it was just good to be together. I didn't realize, I think I talked to Erin sometime late in the conference. We had over 800 folks there.

Benjamin Kreps:

Nice.

Mark Prater:

Which was wonderful. And then people from 22 different nations, which adds that global flavor that we love in Sovereign Grace and a mix of different generations. So it's just a picture, a visual picture of, and a reminder that we are a global multi-generational family of churches by God's grace alone and will continue to be that way by God's grace alone. And it was just wonderful. I was telling some of the guys on the leadership team, even told you before we started recording Ben, that this year was especially enjoyable to lead along with the guys on the leadership team. It was just a delight and a joy that I can only give credit to the grace of God for. But it was really enjoyable. And I remember there's so many highlights for me. One was at the very end, the last session's over and Aaron Law, who's the senior pastor of Grace Covenant Church in Jacksonville, Florida, came up with these four really young men, late teens, early twenties, who were just so excited to be there.

And I think all of them are aspiring to pastoral ministry and that gives this old man a lot of hope for our future to have young men like that who want to be Sovereign Grace pastors in the future. So there's just sweet moments like that for me throughout the conference. And God was very, very good to us. One of the ways he was good to us was through the teaching we enjoyed in the main sessions and the breakout sessions. And each of those main sessions and breakout sessions, we think about them in a way that they not only serve in the moment during the conference, but actually can provide ongoing resources for pastoral teams and for leaders and members of our churches. And so I just want to make sure that folks access those, all of the audio and most of the video, I think all the audio and video for main sessions and all the audio for breakout sessions are up online and are accessible on the events page of our Sovereign Grace website. So just want to mention those as solid resources to be accessed over the next several months.

Benjamin Kreps:

Well, I certainly plan on revisiting those resources and some of them I actually haven't even checked out yet. I was in one breakout, can't attend all of them. But those main sessions, man, what a wonderful experience to sit under the preaching of these gifted and godly men that we love and respect. Certainly had some highlights for me personally when it came to the main sessions and the sermons. There's a couple of those that you want to highlight for us and also give us suggestions on how we can benefit from the main sessions.

Mark Prater:

Let me make some recommendations to pastoral teams first. And so senior pastors, if you're a follower of the podcast, listen or read or watch, I would recommend that you ask all the guys on your team to just listen to all the main sessions. Again, I think it's going to be helpful to do that. And you want to do that in a way that you're thinking about your local church and how do you bring application to each of those main sessions.

Some specific recommendations would be that you listen to Jeff's message, which talks about 2 Timothy 2:2, and ask the question, who are the sons in our church and how are we equipping them for pastoral ministry if they have interest in pastoral ministry? Just a wonderful way to begin to think through that. Of course, Jon's message on pursuing godliness is something we want to begin with our own lives as pastors. Jared's message on encouragement, cultivating a culture of encouragement, first of all on your pastoral team and then in the church. And then would really recommend CJ's message to listen to again or for guys who weren't at the conference, I heard a number of people say to me, it was like CJ was pastoring me personally with his message on regret and how he skillfully preached that in ways that I think really helped people. I think that is a message actually that people will go back to and listen to again and again because we will all have regrets in this life.

So just some recommendations for pastoral teams in terms of your leaders, I'd recommend that you send them all the main sessions out to your leaders. And I think that again, CJ's message on regret will be especially helpful to them because they not only have regrets, but if there are small group leaders and they're helping you pastor people in your church, that sermon can be accessed by any member of a church and really be pastored and served. Just all the main sessions to all of your leaders I think could be really, really helpful. So just some quick thoughts on how to utilize the main sessions as a pastoral team.

Benjamin Kreps:

Again, just very grateful for those main sessions and just sort of the broad spectrum that was covered in those main sessions from diagnosing and caring, for pastoring our hearts in a very specific way with that regret sermon to the practical exhortations embedded in, for instance, Jon's and Jared's sermon. So I heartily agree, and that's something your church can benefit from all manner of different kinds of people can benefit from different of those different main sessions.

But we also had breakout sessions. I attended Josh's masterful, that's not an exaggeration, masterful breakout session on counseling and biblical counseling and the state of the therapeutic world and so forth, which is incredibly important for pastors definitely to understand what's happening more broadly speaking in that world because we're caring for folks that are coming into our churches having been affected by the therapeutic world, breathing the air of that world throughout the week. But there were a number of other breakouts as well, each one with an intent to serve in different ways. And so I'm looking forward to hearing them. I've only heard Josh's, looking forward to hearing the other breakouts, but talk to us about the breakout sessions.

Mark Prater:

For the breakout sessions. By the way, all of the outlines, and I think maybe even the transcripts are up on the website, so the audios there, but there's a number of other resources that are important to capture. First of all, for pastoral teams you just mentioned Josh's breakout session, competent to counsel, it was excellent. Just so, so good. That is a breakout session. So filled with good content, you need to listen to it probably a couple of times. I think every pastoral team ought to listen to that one. And senior pastors take responsibility to get the resources that Josh made available; he has counseling and mental health book reviews that are available on the website. And he also has a David Powlison reading list, a separate document that's also on the website. Those are gold. And make sure, senior pastors, make sure that your pastoral teams are aware of all those resources and utilizing them. But I would listen to that and then discuss it as a pastoral team. Similar with Jeff's breakout session on application and preaching, putting God's word to work, the task of application and preaching. I wasn't there, but I've already heard a lot of good comments about how helpful that was.

Benjamin Kreps:

I'm sure.

Mark Prater:

We designed that one because one of the strengths in Sovereign Grace historically has been a good application that helps you apply the gospel to your life in preaching. That is something we don't want to lose. And that's why we asked Jeff to teach a breakout session. Discuss that as a pastoral team. If you are a pastor or you have a leader in your church who's responsible for evangelism, make sure you have them listen to Jim Donohue's breakout session on the role of an evangelist. That's going to be really, really important to listen to. And as we plan the conference, one of the things we talked about is we don't want to lose this priority of building godly homes, which Is why we asked Brian Chesemore to teach his breakout session, which is a must listen to and his outline is up there, I believe as well. God's glorious vision for the family. That would be one to discuss as a pastoral team and make sure that in your own family, you men are building godly homes as a wonderful example to the church.

And then for the leaders in your church, have them listen to all the breakout sessions, but certainly Josh's breakout session, competent to counsel, especially small group leaders. I think that's really, really important for them. Anybody helping you with evangelism? Jim's breakout session and then Brian's breakout session on building Godly homes could help anyone in your church and make sure that they're listening to that. One other breakout session was Betsy Ricucci's breakout session Lessons from Eve. Just really well done. Of course I wasn't there.

I read the transcript before, and Jill, my wife, was just saying, Mark, that was just so good. That will serve any woman in a Sovereign Grace church. So to pastors, again, have your wives listen to it, you listen to it, discuss it with your wife, and then consider how you can make Betsy's breakout session available to all the ladies in your church. It's just really well done. Again, lessons from Eve is the title of that. So just some recommendations to not just let the conference go by and not utilize it in an ongoing way, these wonderful resources that will strengthen your church and help us to build God-centered churches.

Benjamin Kreps:

Excellent. Well, grateful to you, Mark and the leadership team each year. That conference is the fruit of your prayerful and careful and thoughtful planning as you guys seek to serve us. And you certainly did it again this year and it is always wonderful to hear from just a variety of gifted pastors in Sovereign Grace that are there to serve us, and serve us they did.

So, thanks Mark. We'll certainly be checking out the resources and seeking to utilize them in our churches. If we are wise, we will all do so. And thank you all for checking out the podcast. Let's see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.