Time With 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 churches with our Executive Director. Mark, we are amazingly almost a decade into the polity that we adopted back in 2013. Part of that polity structure is that we have an Executive Committee; and for newer folks perhaps tuned in to the podcast, refresh our memory about what the Executive Committee does. And you just got back from a retreat last week with the Executive Committee so let's talk about that too, but generally speaking, what does the Executive Committee do?
Mark Prater:
You're right. We had a retreat with the Executive Committee this week. I just literally got home walked into my house maybe 30, 45 minutes ago after I flew home. So the Executive Committee retreat was in Louisville and we met in our new building and Ben, the new building is outstanding. It was just so good to meet there and the building is actually even better than what I thought it was gonna be. Wonderful. So that was an exciting part of our retreat.
For those that are unfamiliar or could use a refresher, the Executive Committee is comprised of nine Sovereign Grace elders who are voted on by the Council of Elders. They serve a four-year term and they really are a standing committee of our Council of Elders. And their specific role is to first of all, assign the Leadership Team, but regularly to evaluate, to oversee, to provide accountability and to give input to the Leadership Team and specifically to me, and I'm so grateful for these men.
So as a reminder, the guys that are on the committee now: Ken Mellinger, who's the Chair, Dave Odom, Andy Farmer, Wayne Brooks, Bruce Chick, Abelardo Munoz, Steve Teter, Brian Chesemore and Dave York who's the newest member and was just voted on last year at the Council of Elders. And so this was his first retreat experience and they did a great job this week.
One of the things that I found that as we've almost reached our 10th year in our new polity and after coming back from another annual Executive Committee retreat, I'm even more grateful for our polity and I'm even more grateful for the evaluation, the oversight, the accountability, and the input that they gave me this week and what they've given the Leadership Team overall. I just think it's healthy for our denomination. I think it's so important for our future. I think for members of our churches it can give them a sense of peace that we're just not flying on our own as a Leadership Team, but there's genuine accountability and genuine evaluation. And there’s another thing I would say about this week and I told the Executive Committee members this: "they're not just checking a polity box". Each of those men take their responsibility very genuinely. And they're just doing a great job in fulfilling what we'd hope they would do and in helping me and the Leadership Team. So I came back just so excited. It was an outstanding retreat and a great group of guys to be with as well.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's excellent. Yeah. We're very grateful for the men who serve on the Executive Committee and who invest the time and energy and thought that it takes to do that work so that our polity does function well for us. And it has been, which is wonderful. What things happened last week with the retreat?
Mark Prater:
First of all, I typically do this every year, I give an outline of my State of the Union. I just kind of walk them through what's on my heart for the State of the Union. That gives me a chance to benefit from their input and they gave me some good input this week. So I'm very grateful for that.
And then I gave a Sovereign Grace update, a general update, but then I got much more specific to follow up on the 5 to 10 year strategic plan for Sovereign Grace Churches that I gave a couple of years ago. So now we're two years into that plan. And so I gave an update on each of the several points for strategy and then tactical steps on how to fulfill each of those strategies that we're looking to accomplish. And so I walked them through the tactical things that we were able to accomplish over the last year to give them the bigger, broader picture of what the Leadership Team is doing to serve our family of churches. And then after that, I update the 5 to 10 year strategic plan based on what we accomplished, make some adjustments and then present the next 5 to 10 year plan that we'll evaluate again a year from now. So we took time doing that, which is really helpful.
And then something we've done now two years in a row, Ken Mellinger had asked for this, is a report of departments. So I walk the Executive Committee through each department in Sovereign Grace: the Pastors College, Theology department, Sovereign Grace Music, Finance and Operations, Church Planting, Church Development and Emerging Nations and Latin America, that Rich leads. And so that's just really helpful. We go through each department. I talk about present accomplishment and future goals. And after we talk about each department, we stop and we discuss it, they give any input. And so that's been really, really good.
And then from there, we move to evaluation. I present my evaluation of each member of the Leadership Team and we discuss each of them, and then I leave the room and then they evaluate me and I come back in the room and and we talk through my evaluation and the input they gave me. So the good news is I still have a job. That's a good thing. And every guy on the Leadership Team still has a job. But it was both a very encouraging evaluation of each guy and very helpful input for each of the guys on the Leadership Team. So it was just a really good week.
And then after that they reviewed all the BCO amendments and had input and recommendations to each of the sponsors or authors of those. And as a heads up, for our Council of Elders meeting, we got some good stuff we're gonna talk about related to the size of regions. For example, as a Leadership Team, we think smaller regions geographically really do foster strength because you can do things together as churches, you can get together as pastors. So we'll look to bring a BCO amendment to reduce sort the range of number of churches that would qualify for a region. And when you do a smaller region, you've got a lot of guys on a lot of committees. And so we're looking to present a BCO amendment for some committees to give regions the flexibility to have fewer members on it as a way to try to reduce that workload.
They also had to approve the budget. Tommy walked through that and it included a commitment to invest into a studio to be built for Bob, for Sovereign Grace Music in the new building. In fact, today, Bob is meeting with an architect, a studio engineer architect, to begin to discuss what should the space look like. And from what I'm hearing the space is ideal, so how do you want to use it? And so there's some cost to that. And I'll be talking a little bit about that at the Council of Elders meeting as well. So those are just a few of the things that we did this week.
Benjamin Kreps:
That's excellent. I imagine there was also some eating and laughing and all kinds of expressions of warm brotherhood as well, which is something that I love even at official committee meetings and retreats. They're built relationally underneath it all. There's good work being done, but there's also brotherhood happening as well. So thank you, Mark. So grateful to hear about how our polity continues to function in a healthy way. I actually had the opportunity to hear some of what you're gonna be sharing at the retreat I was at with you a few weeks ago, at the Council of Elders. Guys, get ready. This update that Mark is gonna give there's probably gonna be some shouting and clapping and perhaps dancing as we consider God's faithfulness to us over the past year.
So thank you, Mark, for the update. Thank you all for reading or watching. We’ll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.