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, when this podcast drops into emails, you will be at a retreat with the leadership team, but also with the regional leaders. Talk to us about that.

Mark Prater:

Yeah, thank you for asking, Ben. The retreat that will start on Monday, February 5th, is a leadership team retreat. And for about three or four years now, we've been inviting regional leaders to the first half of the retreat. So the regional leaders are with us from Monday, February 5th through about noon on Wednesday the 7th, and then the leadership team is there until Friday and it's such an important strategic retreat. We've done this I think three or four years now. Initially we did it where we had the regional leaders join us in June and they gave us really good input. They loved the retreats. They said, could we do that the first retreat of the year? Because what it does is it helps us inform how we might want to lead through our regional assembly of elders. So that's why we do it in February as a leadership team and we invite our regional leaders in.

You might remember, if you listen to the podcast, that last year we also had our global leaders join us. We'll probably do that every few years, but this year it's just the nine US regional leaders that will join us. And it's such an important time because we believe these men are really the frontline of leadership in Sovereign Grace as they lead each of their regions and collectively help us lead Sovereign Grace together and forward in mission. And we just thank God for these regional leaders and want to not only invest into them, we want to encourage them and pray for them. And so we've just got time mapped out with them that we've thought through.

The first part of the retreat is just taking time to get updates from every regional leader about their region. And that's very important to us because we learn a lot as a leadership team about how our churches and our pastors are doing. But we also learn a lot from our regional leaders about how we can serve our churches better. So we just have some long conversation blocked out for those updates. And as a leadership team, we always look forward to that.

And then we've got three topics chosen that are in a short-teaching, long-q-and-a discussion format. And those three topics are a reflection of some of the things I'm carrying as the executive director, and the leadership team is carrying; just burdens that are on our heart for this year. Some of them actually I mentioned in the State of the Union. So we've got a session related to leading toward encouragement as I mentioned in the State of the Union, I think it's an area that we've gotten weaker in recently as a family of churches. So, just growing and encouragement. Jared is going to do a short teaching on encouragement and then we've got some questions we just want to kick around with the regional leaders.

The next one is a focus on godliness. We want to build Christ-like churches. I also mentioned that in my State of the Union. So, leading toward godliness and then a q and an after that, John and I will lead through. And really the purpose of that is to make sure that the cultural pressures we face that can locate responsibility for our actions outside of us, don't impinge upon the church. And that we continue to see the fact that indwelling sin still remains and we need the grace of God to transform us. That's in a nutshell a little bit what we want to talk about there. We also want to be aware of a therapeutic influence, you might call it the new therapeutic influence, which has more of an expressive individualism component in it than it did maybe back in the late nineties, for example. So we will kick that around.

And then we've got a session entitled Leading Toward the Future, and Jeff Purswell is going to talk about leading into pastoral equipping. And as I mentioned both in the main session and at the State of the Union, we've got guys, about half our pastors, in their fifties and sixties, and we just want to prepare for that transition that's coming up. So it's really about recruiting and sending men to the Pastor' College and just a little bit on how you do that. And then just a q and a discussion. So those are the sessions that we have planned with the guys along with updates, and we're really excited about our time with them. And so if you would pray for each of our regional leaders here in the States and for our time together, that would just be very, very helpful.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yeah, I just thank God for the gift of leadership that we've enjoyed historically in Sovereign Grace and that I know the leadership team and our regional leaders, you guys take your work seriously. It's wonderful to hear about the kinds of topics you'll be discussing, but also that you'll be building even deeper relationally by doing it in a retreat atmosphere. But they are leaving on Wednesday and the leadership team remains for a few more days for you guys to go over some things. What's going to happen when the leadership team is meeting together?

Mark Prater:

Some of the things that I have planned, I always have more of an agenda than we typically have time to get to, but some of the things I have planned that the leadership team has been thinking about and is coming prepared to discuss, there's a session entitled Sovereign Grace Vulnerabilities. So, just thinking through where our churches might be vulnerable theologically, vulnerable to the culture, and just trying to identify those so that we're keeping an eye on that and figuring out how do we lead in such a way that serves our pastors as they serve their churches in really protecting their flocks and really being aware of those vulnerabilities. And I've got that scheduled before we plan the pastors' conference because maybe there's something that emerges out of that conversation that might inform either a breakout session topic or main session topic that we want to talk about at the pastors' conference.

But we plan to plan not only the 2024 pastors’ conference, we hope to plan the 2025 conference, because in 2025, as I announced at the pastors' conference last year, that is going to be a pastors and leaders conference where we're encouraging our churches to bring all of your leaders, bring any members you want to bring; those that are not only small group leaders and deacons and ministry team leaders, but also those you might be developing for leadership. And we want to broaden that and we think the theme of that, we've got to sort of maybe even choose first before thinking about the theme of 2024, because we really want to serve our churches with the extra leaders that'll be there in 2025. So we'll plan the pastors' conference. We need wisdom for that, just not in terms of themes, but topics for main sessions and breakout sessions.

Jared is going to give a publishing update, which I'm really excited about. And then I've got Rich giving a Latin America update. And I just want to talk to the team, actually we have a session just about the broad application of our shaping virtues as something that Jared would like to discuss, which I think is really good. We have these shaping virtues. How do they continue to affect our churches? How do we continue to model them as pastors, that sort of a conversation. So that's basically the plan that we have.

As you mentioned, we take our work seriously, but we have a lot of fun in what we do. There will be a lot of laughter with the regional leaders. A lot of laughter with the leadership team guys. These men for me, not just the leadership team, but the regional leaders, they're men I just love working with and I can't wait to see them next week. And so if you're listening to this as it comes into your inbox Monday, thank you so much for praying.

Benjamin Kreps:

We will be praying for you guys as you sacrifice your time and with your church and your family as you serve us. Thank you so much to our excellent regional leaders and to our excellent leadership team. We thank God for you and thank you for the updates, Mark. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.