Thanking God for the Role of the Executive Committee

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, you just recently returned from a retreat that you regularly have with the Executive Committee. You were mentioning before we started recording how our polity was ratified 11 years ago. And while some of us are more passionate about Sovereign Grace Churches polity and some of us like to eat it for breakfast and do their devotions in the Book of Church Order, it is certainly not a necessary evil. It is a gift from God as we seek to apply principles of church government and denominational governing structures according to what we read in God's word. But you were expressing your gratitude; that is appropriate when we think about our polity, is gratitude. And you wanted to talk to us about that.

Mark Prater:

I did. I mean, remember when we ratified our polity, our Book of Church Order 11 years ago in April of 2013. And I think we'd all have to admit at the time it looked good on paper, but is this really going to work? It's sort of what we were thinking. And 11 years in, it's not perfect. It still needs to be tweaked and adjusted, but it's working. And I thank God for the polity that we have and in particular this week, thanking God for a component of our polity, which is the Executive Committee. And we have listeners or readers of this podcast who really probably haven't read the Book of Church Order, but there's a place in the Book of Church Order where we have an Executive Committee that is assigned to do a number of things on behalf of the Council of Elders. So this is a standing committee that works on behalf of the Council of Elders that oversees and evaluates the Leadership Team.

They also are responsible for their fiduciary financial responsibilities and legal responsibilities. So in that sense, they do really govern as a board, what the Leadership Team does, and really they govern, in that sense, Sovereign Grace Churches. And I'm so grateful for that structure because I've benefited from it over the years, including this week. I just got back today, this is Friday, you'll get this in your inbox on Monday. Just got back from an Executive Committee retreat that was held in Louisville. And I'm so grateful for those men. And I told them that I was actually praying for them by name before the retreat and then I just saw God answer those prayers as those men gave me input and evaluation and thoughts, not only for myself as executive director, but for the Leadership Team as well.

So the men who serve on that Executive Committee, Ken Mellinger, who chairs it, did a great job of leading a retreat that keeps things moving and yet allows all the voices on the committee to share their thoughts. That's not an easy thing to do. And Ken does that very well. So Ken Melllinger, Andy Farmer, Bruce Chick, Brian Chesemore, Bill Patton, Steve Teeter, Abelardo Munoz, and Dave York. Nine men that are pastors who are busy serving their churches and yet they take a week away from their families and away from their church to serve our family of churches by exercising their governance role in Sovereign Grace.

And these men gave me a lot of good input. They evaluated me, they evaluated the Leadership Team. We spent all day yesterday or most of the day yesterday on the budget. And they do that for the Council of Elders because they approve the budget. The Council of Elders affirms it. So we do drop into detail and they ask some very pointed detail questions that you would want them to ask. And thank goodness Tommy Hill has answers for all of them or most of them. But it was just really a wonderful retreat in many, many ways and a fresh appreciation to God for our polity and for the Executive Committee in particular

Benjamin Kreps:

As you were reading off those names, wow, what a gift these men are to us. These are wise and discerning pastors with integrity who are sacrificing to serve our family of churches and what a gift they are. So what happened at the Executive Committee retreat?

Mark Prater:

Yeah, we had a full schedule. We kind of started off with some personal updates and praying and then Ken did something this year that I'm really glad he did. We were just trying something that had never been done before. He asked Executive Committee members to come with just thoughts on the things they're encouraged by that they see in Sovereign Grace, and areas where they may have questions or they're seeing vulnerabilities. And it was really good. I sat there and just took notes and it was really good to hear both where they're encouraged and where they see potential weaknesses or current weaknesses and really benefited from that discussion. So I'm glad we did that. And it's another reflection of these guys that had put thought into this and it's not just the content of what they shared. Their heart for our family of churches comes across. So this is not a dry polity where we're going through the motions. This is very much a polity that men carry on their heart and they carry the churches and our pastors on their heart. So I was really grateful for that and that input.

From there, really what we've been doing in recent years, and we sort of followed a similar pattern this year, I give a Sovereign Grace update where I just kind of share where we're at and where we're headed. And the way that I talked about it this year, and I'm not going to get in too much detail because this will probably frame my State of the Union message at the Council of Elders meeting in November, is there's a lot to be encouraged by in our family of churches about how God is providing. And as you look into the next 10 years, there's much to be encouraged about, much to have faith in God for.

At the same time I see present and potential vulnerabilities that along the path during those 10 years we must address. So I just kind of framed where I'm encouraged as well and vulnerabilities that we see and we're actively addressing or have new plans to address. I framed the update that way and then just went into topics with that framework and we had a lot of good dialogue over that that actually took several hours one afternoon and just found that really, really helpful not only in terms of just what was shared, but more of the input I got from the Executive Committee.

I wrote a five to 10 year strategic plan. They asked me to do that a few years ago. So each year I give them a progress report on the progress we made over the last year. And then I write a new one or it's not a complete new one. It's really a rewrite of the present one that is adapted to the things that we're seeing or the things we had accomplished, and we want to accomplish some different things this year. So I presented that to them as well. From there, they ask and I give a report of departments and regions, and so I just methodically walk through every department in Sovereign Grace and when I talk about departments, I mean Department of Theology, Sovereign Grace Music, Finance and Administration, Church Planting, Church Development, Publishing, West Coast Development, and I think that's most of them. And just walk through each of those. And then for the regions, I didn't drop into specifics in regions. Jon helped me write this. Jon Payne. Really it was just an overview of the regions and that was just real encouraging to go through with our Executive Committee.

And then from there, they spent time, we just spent time, walking through an evaluation of each member of the Leadership Team. I evaluate the Leadership Team and bring my evaluation to the Executive Committee and then they evaluate me. I submit a self-evaluation and then every member of the Leadership Team evaluates me and I just pass those along to the oversight committee within the Executive Committee responsible to sort of package all that and bring a proposal. And then also we get from every church where a Leadership Team member or non-Leadership Team director is based, just a local church evaluation. All that gets sent to them about six weeks before the retreat. And so they just took time to evaluate me.

And then from there we went on and as I mentioned, just took time to just methodically go through the budget, looking at financial projections in the future and also just talking through any sort of legal issues that they need to be aware of. Nothing bad. When you say legal, you think, oh man, what's wrong? Nothing at all. Like Tommy this year was able to renew the Sovereign Grace copyright for another 10 years. That's legal work that he had to do. Or recently, especially as we expand globally, he's got to do a lot more work with visas. So he was working with Josh Kruger Jr. He was in the States for a time now back in Namibia, there's visa work that has to be done there that's under the legal category. So just kind of gave some updates there as well. So that's a bit of what we covered. We also laughed a lot together and prayed with one another, and they're friends, so we just got updates and fellowshipped and it was a wonderful retreat that I thank God for.

Benjamin Kreps:

Excellent. Well thank you, Mark for your role in all of that and the sacrifices you made to go be in Louisville for a week with the Executive Committee. I too share with you in gratefulness for these wonderful men that serve us effectively. It sounds like you guys are getting work done. So thanks for working hard for our good in Sovereign Grace, and thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.