Three Timely Resources
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ben 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, as a faithful pastor, you are committed to being a learner and a reader and as a wise executive director who cares about us, you have some recommendations, some resources that will help equip us as pastors and members in Sovereign Grace churches. Why don't you tell us about what you want to recommend?
Mark Prater:
I do, and the first one is hot off the press, Ben just being published this morning. We're recording this on Thursday, September 21st. An article written by Bob Kauflin published this morning on Desiring God. The title of that article is The Physicality of Faithful Worship, Why We Bend Knees and Lift Hands, and it's just a wonderful article. It's typical Bob Kauflin who lays out a wonderful biblical case for expressive worship, essentially using our bodies as we sing to God. And I think anybody that's been in Sovereign Grace for some time, whether it's a pastor or a member of one of our churches that's listening or reading this podcast, and reads Bob's article will say, we've heard this before, we practice this. But I think this is a very important resource. It's a very important tool for pastors because we have a number of new people that are coming to Sovereign Graces churches who know nothing about Sovereign Grace.
As I've talked with pastors in the States and actually outside the states, the new people coming into our churches are either recently converted, which we celebrate that and want more recent converts, or they've never been in a Sovereign Graces church before and really don't completely understand who we are. And a part of what pastors are facing is helping new people understand how we build churches in Sovereign Grace. And what we value in Sovereign Grace is biblically defined. And one of those is expressive worship. So this is a wonderful article that you can use as a tool to give to a new person or maybe even incorporate into a new member's class that will help them understand biblically why we do bend our knees and raise our hands during worship.
Ben Kreps:
It is an excellent article. I'm so grateful for Bob and the gift he is to Sovereign Grace Churches, and it is gratifying to see his influence and theologically informed instruction about singing physicality go broader. And so this is just the kind of thing that lots of folks have never learned about, but that we have benefited from for many years. I know that in planting our church, we sent off a lot of members and we have a lot of new people who are not aware of what Sovereign Grace is and didn't come to our church because of that. And so I'm definitely going to be looking to use that as a resource to help encourage the newer folks in Living Hope Church. So, wonderful article, highly recommended as well. You have two more recommendations for us.
Mark Prater:
I do. And the next one I want to mention is one I've mentioned in a previous podcast, but I want to explain why I mention it again, it's God, Technology, and the Christian Life by Tony Reinke. Again, if you're a pastor or a member of one of our churches reading or listening to his podcasts, please, I encourage you to read this book. And I think it's important because of what I'm learning, the members of our churches are facing, the members of my church are facing. This Saturday, September 23rd, I'm actually leading and teaching at a Faith and Work seminar for Covenant Fellowship members. And the topic that I'm teaching on is The Christian and Technology in the Workplace. And I'm teaching on that because of the progress of technology, rapid progress of technology and artificial intelligence, AI has raised ethical questions that Christians face in the workplace. So on one hand, artificial intelligence is good. We can be a tech optimist as Reinke says. I just read an article that was published this week, September 19th, that an AI tool that's been produced by Google DeepMind is able to identify genetic mutations that lead to the cause of diseases like cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and cancer. And this AI tool categorized 89% of the 71 million possible missense genetic variants. And so once you're able to do that, it's a lot easier to predict those diseases and to treat those. So that's a good use. At the same time, AI can be used in wrong ways and possibly even in evil ways. I mean, we've talked before, Ben, we've laughed where we've seen online just a guy write an entire worship song using AI. And so is that okay?
Ben Kreps:
It wasn't that bad. It was actually kind of decent.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, it was on the holiness of God if I remember right. And I thought, that's not so bad, but is that integrity? It raises those kind of questions and Christians are facing that in the workplace. So what I'm doing in this teaching, and I'm relying heavily upon Reinke's book, is teaching just a brief theology of technology because I think we're not able to sufficiently answer those ethical questions unless we have a good biblical basis, a good meaning, a good theology of technology and biblical wisdom to prayerfully then figure out what do we do with ai, especially as it begins to be used more in the workplace. And then after teaching on a theology of technology, I end my teaching by presenting just convictions. I've written eight of them that they can consider for themselves in guiding them and hopefully helping them give wisdom in facing and addressing the ethical challenges that they face.
So, here's my encouragement to our pastors in Sovereign Grace. Consider in the future either a sermon or one class or a brief sermon series on technology where you're able to teach a theology of technology where you're able to equip your people in your church with some biblical wisdom, maybe convictions they can use for themselves, and I think it will serve your folks. So that's the second resource I wanted to mention.
The third one is a book I'm making my way through right now. It's entitled Mission Affirmed: Rediscovering the Missionary Motivation of Paul. It's written by Elliot Clark. Elliot Clark has been a cross-cultural church planter, mostly in Asia now. He works for Training Leaders International, an organization that we've related to, an organization that theologically equips pastors and leaders throughout the world. And that's what he's doing now. And the reason I'm reading through it actually was a book recommended to me by Joshua Jordan, senior pastor of Lifegate Church in Seguin, Texas.
And there's a couple of things that Clark says in his introduction that really resonated with me and that he's making points from throughout the rest of the book. Those two things are these: number one, he said that in his experience and in watching other missionaries, that missionary failures typically happen a lot of the time because there is no strong partnership. And when I read that, I thought that just makes a lot of sense and it reminds us, especially the pastors in Sovereign Grace of why we have a polity in a book of church order that defines and brings structure to our partnership. Not just so that we can get the business or the machinery of church life and denominational life done, but because that partnership can actually strengthen our mission to reach the lost with the gospel and we can help each other do that more effectively together.
So partnership is a key point that he makes, and obviously he spends much of the rest of the book just unpacking second Corinthians. And obviously when you study Paul and you rediscover his missionary motivations, partnership is there because he has a number of mission partners that he serves and they serve him and together they just advanced the gospel throughout the world.
The second point that he makes in the introduction that really resonated with me is that we need to build something that lasts. And he makes the point that in our Western mindset, we can want results very, very quickly; send a missionary and immediately we want to see fruit, and he's making a case for slowing down and building thoughtfully and carefully because we want to build something that lasts. There's a couple of things he says in his introduction that I just want to read to illustrate this. He said this: "from my years living in Asia to my current travels around the globe, what I find are missionaries and ministries with the unbiblical view that when it comes to missions, any effort is commendable. Equally troubling, many assume that the all important goal of reaching the lost validates our use of almost any means." What he's saying there is that it's a bit troubling because everything doesn't go as planned and we don't want to just use any means. We want to be thoughtful and we want to be biblically informed in the way that we build, especially as we do mission. So I thought that was a very good point.
Here's another quote. He says this: "at such a time as this, we don't necessarily need more impassioned pleas about opportunity and urgency. While those are important, I'm convinced that what we desperately need are voices of discernment, calls for wise investment and plans for better building." And those couple of sentences are really well said and that resonated with me as well because I think historically we've always joked in Sovereign Grace, that we're just slow and we build slow and we laugh about that and maybe there's some good even critique in that. But there's something about building slow, and building thoughtfully, for the purpose of building something that lasts, whether it's church planting or some sort of global mission's effort because we want to be effective in spreading the gospel and reaching those maybe even who are unreached at this point with the good news of Jesus Christ. And we'll do that best if we have that mindset. And really Elliot Clark draws from Second Corinthians to show that Paul took a similar approach. So that is Mission Affirmed, a book that you might want to check out as well.
Ben Kreps:
Excellent. Thanks for the recommendations. I think it was C.J., I remember hearing years ago say about Sovereign Grace. We're slow but we're stupid. <laughter>
Mark Prater:
Yeah, exactly. <laughter>
Ben Kreps:
So, it is gratifying to observe; we do have a number of guys that are doing missionary work, they've gone overseas from the states. And to see these guys, including in our region, meaningfully connected to not just to sending churches but to regions where there is financial support, there's encouragement, there's prayer, and they are doing that good, slow, but good work in their labor. So thanks for the recommendations, Mark, that I'll be certainly checking out. I have a copy of this, I'm reading. It's excellent. Very thoughtful. He's a great guy, Tony Reinke. So grateful for that book and grateful for your recommendations and your care for us expressed through recommending good resources to us. And thank you all for reading or watching. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.