Building Relationally for the Advancement of the Gospel
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, One of the hallmarks in Sovereign Grace, our culture, for a long period of time when it comes connecting as pastors, is that we build relationally. It is a joyful hallmark of our culture of grace. And I know you have a passion to see not just enjoying the past 40 years of that relational connectivity, but also for the next generation of younger pastors that are being raised up to also enjoy that as well. Talk to us about that.
Mark Prater:
Yeah. I'm very grateful for one of our founders, CJ Mahaney, who has built Sovereign Grace that way for 40 years. As you mentioned, Ben, it's just been a part of our culture in Sovereign Grace. And CJ led us that way because it's biblical. It's what you see in the New Testament. You study the epistles in the New Testament, and both Paul and Peter, they mention people by specific names, people they know, people they are friends with, people they've done ministry with. I think a great illustration is 2 Timothy 4, that last section, verses 9 through the end of the chapter where Paul writes his very last letter. So these are the last things he's talking about. And in that section, he mentioned 16 different people by name.
Now one of them has deserted him. That's Demas, and there's a warning about Alexander the coppersmith, who's done him great harm, as he said. But everybody else, the other 14, are friends that he's doing ministry with. And, he puts friendship, I think, in the right place. He loves those men. He has affection for those men. He would like to be with them, but if you read that part of his letter, he's deploying them in ministry. So, friendship doesn't trump mission, actually friendship is used in the advancement of the mission of the gospel that you see there in Paul's letter. And I think we tried to take a similar approach in Sovereign Grace, to build that way, because it's one expression of how our interdependence gets worked out, and we try to capture that in a number of ways.
Our seven shared values would be one of those ways. Our seventh value is united in fellowship, mission and governance. And just to remind us, especially our pastors who are listening, this is, this is what is written about that value. It says this, indeed the New Testament testifies to a vibrant interdependence among churches in the first century. And then we seek to express a similar interdependence through our common fellowship, mission and governance. Our fellowship extends beyond mere denominational affiliation. We are committed to applying the gospel together in relationships that foster mutual encouragement, care, and a glad pursuit of Christ-likeness. And I thought, boy, that's well written. I think it is just well written by Jeff because it captures why relationships are important as an expression of interdependence. And that for us as pastors, we have that kind of fellowship that we need not only in our churches, most importantly, but outside of our churches with men, other Sovereign Grace pastors, leading other Sovereign Grace churches, where we have true fellowship. And the whole purpose of it is growing in Christ-like character. And we pray that's used to advance the mission of the gospel. So it's a biblical reason why we want to build relationally in Sovereign Grace. And as I get older, and I think about the next generations in Sovereign Grace, my prayer is that those men, those second, third generation pastors and beyond, would continue to build relationally as well, because it is biblical and because it's always marked our culture.
Ben Kreps:
Amen. Well, Easter season is over, but our R A E season is here. So pastors throughout Sovereign Grace are gathering for the Regional Assembly of Elders. The Regional Assembly of Elders is a time for us to gather, to do business. We have business we need to do together as a region, but that is not purely why we gather as guys who go, know. It plays a key role, function, to help us build relationally together. Isn't that right?
Mark Prater:
It does, that's exactly right. Our Regional Assembly of Elders, it's sort of the spring RAE season, as you mentioned, Ben. Several Regional Assembly of Elders have been meeting. Yours just met this week. The northeast meets beginning tomorrow. We're recording this on a Thursday, we meet on Friday. And, we do get denominational business done. But as you know, our shared value says it's not just about denominational affiliation. Those regional assemblies have been used to equip pastors as well, through theological training, and also just to cultivate relationships among pastors who lead our churches in a given region. And it's just been so sweet to watch it. I think when our polity first started, some guys wondered, is this going to hinder us building relationally? And actually the opposite's been true. Our polity has been used in Regional Assembly of Elders in particular to actually strengthen our relationships with one another.
And I was just at the East Central region last week, a region led by CJ Mahaney. And the time together was just so rich. It's a region that loves one another. Pastors are there for one another and encourage one another. And it was just such a joy. Actually, after I returned, got an email from Jake Cronin. Jake Cronin graduated from the Pastors College two or three years ago. He's been serving as a pastoral intern in Cornerstone Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. And he was just thanking me for coming. And he was just talking about the relational time that the Regional Assembly had together. And he said this, I've known pastors who have been in ministry 30 years or more, and their experience has been one of loneliness. And he said, I'm just so glad that so far in my ministry experience, it's been exactly the opposite. I've rich relationships. And so that was only encouraging because of what he enjoyed. It's encouraging to me, because Jake is probably a second or third generation pastor in Sovereign Grace, and he gets it. He understands why it's important to build relationally. So, I'm just grateful that God is giving us young men who will be leading Sovereign Grace churches in the future and our family of churches in the future, who I believe will be committed to building relationally in Sovereign Grace.
Ben Kreps:
Amen. Yes. At our regional assembly, we did business. We passed a guy in his oral exam, for ordination. Our church plant, Redeeming Grace Church in Mechanicsburg, was officially affirmed. And the partnership was signed, yeah, you signed the partnership agreement. So we're excited to have an official Sovereign Grace Church plant. We did that business though, in the context of friendship. And so when we voted to affirm the church plant, for instance, I was gathered with men who were voting, who have prayed for me and my church for the past several years, and have cared for me and invested in what we're doing as well. We did it together when we announced that this young man had passed his oral exam. It was celebratory because there is care and affection in that room as we do that business.
And I sought to encourage some of the younger guys just observing the younger pastors. I'm 46, I'm not a young pastor, but there were younger pastors there. And to see them relating to each other and encouraging each other, and praying with one another, gave me great hope for the future. It's a joy to see what we've enjoyed over the years being duplicated, replicated, in the next generation of pastors. I praise God for that. And thank you, Mark, for your thoughts on all of us and your encouragement to us. Thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.