Using the Statement of Faith
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 talked a little bit a couple of months ago about the historic moment in our family of churches when we ratified, as elders, the new Statement of Faith. Now many of us have shared that Statement of Faith with others. We're already benefiting from it, but you have some thoughts about how to potentially use that Statement of Faith in an ongoing way going forward. Tell me about the sermon series that you guys are planning at Covenant Fellowship.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I'd love to. First of all, Ben, happy birthday!
Benjamin Kreps:
Thanks!
Mark Prater:
How old?
Benjamin Kreps:
44. And I just had to buy reading glasses. So …
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I remember that day when I fought getting reading glasses. But they're great, aren't they?
Benjamin Kreps:
Oh yeah. Harry Potter is so much easier to read now to my kids.
Mark Prater:
Exactly, exactly. Well, happy birthday!
Benjamin Kreps:
Thanks.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I think there's a number of ways that I'm sure our pastors are thinking about. And I don't know if I'm going to give anything new in this podcast. But I do want to share some thoughts and ideas that we kicked around even yesterday in an elders meeting at Covenant Fellowship. Just different ways to use this Statement of Faith. The first one is a sermon series that our Senior Pastor Jared Mellinger has mapped out. And for that sermon series, we're going to purchase a hard copy of the Statement of Faith and give it to every family in in our church at the start of the series. And then we're also going to show—at the very first sermon—Jeff's video that's on the We Believe website, which we just think is so well done.
And then what Jared has mapped out is really a nine-part series. If you look at the table of contents, the Statement of Faith, and the guys would know this, there are really 13 major sections. So, he's taken some of those major sections and combined them together. So here's what we've got planned or what Jared planned for us for a nine week series. He's going to actually launch the series and just do a message entitled, A Doctrine Driven Life. It's really a message that preaches to our members on why it's important for all of us to be theologians, essentially.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent.
Mark Prater:
And why it's important for members our church to be informed theologically because theology determines how we live. And I think being informed theologically does inform our discernment, as well. And it helps us to discern which is really what we need in today's world is to be theologically astute, theologically discerning. And then from there, the next sermon is the doctrine of the Word of God. And that will come from the Scripture section. The third message is the doctrine of God and that will combine two sections: the triune God, and God's sovereign purposes. And then the fourth message is the doctrines of creation and man, where we'll look at sections: creation, providence and man, as well as another section: man's sin and its affects. The fifth message is the doctrine of Jesus Christ—two sections there: the person of Jesus Christ and the work of Jesus Christ. The next sermon, which I believe is six, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Again, two sections will be combined: the person and work of the Holy Spirit and the empowering ministry of the Spirit. The next message, which I believe is seven is the doctrine of salvation. And that will include the gospel and the application of salvation by the Holy Spirit. The eighth message is the doctrine of the church, which is the section, obviously, on the church and the Statement of Faith. And then we'll end with the doctrine of the last things that looks at that section of the last things, the eschatological section of our Statement of Faith. So that's what we've mapped out for our nine-week series.
I know other guys are thinking a little bit longer. I know Mark Alderton is going to just go more slowly and go through each section, maybe even subsection statement of faith. So I think it really depends on how, you know, your church and what will best serve them. But I wanted to give you just one approach that I'm hearing from one of our pastoral teams.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah, that's helpful. And I understand each one of these sermons as going to be about 14 hours long, right? Is that how it works?
Mark Prater:
[Laughter] Yeah, that’s right. We're doing a 30-minute sermon right now. I don't know how we're going to pull that off.
Benjamin Kreps:
You guys are doing some other things there at Covenant Fellowship, as well, to try to just press this Statement of Faith down into the lives of the folks at your church. Can you describe those?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, these are. We actually just talked about these yesterday in an elders meeting. Obviously, we're going to purchase this booklet and it will be a part of our new member’s class. It will be a part of the packet that prospective new members will receive, and we'll encourage them to read it. We're also going to purchase a supply of these and have them available in our guest reception. We're not going to give them to every guest, but if a guest has questions about our doctrine and theology, we're going to answer those questions, but then give them one of these booklets, which I think would be a great way for a guest to check out a prospective church in Sovereign Grace. Another thing we're going do is we're going to purchase a supply and put them in our bookshop. Amazon sells the for $4. We're going to sell them for $2 and just take a loss. Just making sure that anyone who wants to have one can get it at a reasonable cost. So those are just some of the ideas that we're going to put in place in the next several months.
Benjamin Kreps:
Sounds great. And thanks for sharing what you guys are doing. Hopefully there's some ideas in there that can serve the guys that are watching or reading this podcast. So, thanks, Mark. And thank you everyone for watching. We'll see you here soon. Bye for now.