God's Faithfulness through 300 Episodes
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.
Hey Mark, here we are again.
MARK PRATER:
We are.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
You know, it just feels like we've done this hundreds of times.
MARK PRATER:
It does for some reason.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
So the reason is that we indeed have, and this is our 300th episode.
MARK PRATER:
Wow! Who knew?
BENJAMIN KREPS:
We didn't.
MARK PRATER:
Yeah, we don't keep track of numbers at all. We don't know how many people follow, listen, or read the transcript of this podcast.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
We really don't.
MARK PRATER:
The only way we found out this was our 300th episode was when Jay Corrigan, who helps edit and produce the podcast for us, let us know. We were actually shocked. We were surprised. Like really?
BENJAMIN KREPS:
It has been almost six years since we started recording the podcast. So much has happened since we started doing this podcast. We started the podcast at the beginning of a global pandemic. That was how we got going. Over the last few years, this podcast has spanned three presidential administrations.
We’ve seen all kinds of wonderful things, God working in wonderful ways throughout our family of churches.
While recording this podcast over the years, we adopted a new statement of faith. We officially shifted to describing ourselves as a global family of churches. We’ve recorded this podcast all over the country. We've recorded at the Pastors Conference, at RAE’s. I remember early on, just a few weeks into this podcast, recording one in California. I was with Eric Turbedsky and we were setting up his phone out back of a restaurant. Ron Boomsma and Lynn Baird were there and I think we recorded it in the restaurant or something. I don't even remember what we did, it was so long ago.
And furthermore, I had a beard and your hair wasn't gray yet. Wait that’s not true…Yeah, it was already.
MARK PRATER:
It was gray, and it's just grayer now.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
And we have grown slightly in our technological prowess and our podcasting ability.
MARK PRATER:
Have we really, slightly?
BENJAMIN KREPS:
Yes, slightly. Because those who would seek to rightfully criticize the podcast for its very low production value don't understand where we started. I remember early, before I started hosting the podcast and we actually started sending it out. There was a focus group, and I think Eric began, and he was recording some sort of test episodes with you, and the main feedback that I was able to give was, "Mark, we are looking straight up your nose with the camera.”
MARK PRATER:
Please stop! (laughter)
BENJAMIN KREPS:
So we've come a long way since then, and so we have much to be thankful for when it comes to our podcasting ability. And people should know that we have also reached the apex of our technological ability, because when things go wrong, this is the extent of what we do to fix them.
We turn Zoom off and we turn it back on.
MARK PRATER:
That's it. Or unplug something.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
Hang up the phone and call back. Turn things off and turn them back on is all we got.
MARK PRATER:
It's amazing this thing gets produced.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
It is amazing. But God has been faithful to us. And somehow or another, we're at 300 episodes.
Mark, that sort of begs a question - 300 episodes in, almost six years into this podcast - why do we do this podcast, Mark?
MARK PRATER:
Yeah, it's something I was thinking about when I heard that we're hitting our 300th episode. But the reason that we do it is to serve the pastors and members of our churches.
We just have a heart to keep them informed, updated, equipped, and encouraged. And I think that's occurred just based on sort of the anecdotal encouragement both you and I receive from people who listen to the podcast or read the transcript.
In fact, just this week, I got an email from a Sovereign Grace-ordained pastor who's a missionary in Lebanon.
And his hope is to obviously share the gospel there and to plant Sovereign Grace churches in that nation.
This is what he said in his email: "Mark, thanks for the weekly podcast. They make me feel so close to everyone, even though we are a long way away."
That's one piece of evidence that, okay, this keeps him connected to his family of churches.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
Yes, I mean, we've just kind of thrown these things on together and we hope that it serves. And so it is very meaningful when we hear from folks who are helped by the podcast. It is our heart's desire‚ to serve our family of churches that we love so much. I’m so grateful for the encouragement you received last week and for all the encouragement we've received over the last six years.
So let's go behind the scenes a little bit here. So people just see, we hit record and that's what people see.
Actually‚ not even exactly. After Erin and Jay are done editing. But we have a process that we work through before the podcast officially starts, and it's a bit infuriating to some who have helped us with the podcast.
It includes something that you call "title time." Tell us about the title time.
MARK PRATER:
Yes, title time! What we do, we start recording and this is the part you don't see. And by the way, a shout out to Erin Radano, who is my assistant and basically runs Sovereign Grace, and Jay Corrigan who both work for Sovereign Grace and edit and produce this podcast. They work hard and I'll credit them that if anything looks good on this podcast, it's because of them, not because of us‚ let's put it that way.
So, we started to realize we've got to have titles for these episodes and we just started throwing out titles and we just got into this rhythm of submitting ideas every time we record for every week and we called it "title time" and mostly it just provided fodder for laughter because my title submissions were just so, so bad, so poor, so subpar.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
I think the word you're looking for is "lame."
MARK PRATER:
Lame, okay, lame, that's a good term as well, and caused a lot of laughter more than anything else. But there was one time when you had a title, the epic title of titles of all podcasts. And because of that title, we gave you a trophy. With a goat on top, the Greatest of All Time of title podcasts the world has ever known.
Do you remember that?
BENJAMIN KREPS:
I do. It's a treasured possession. If people look closely when I'm recording this at my office, they might even see it, hidden up on the top shelves, sort of tucked away but visible. And that was the episode where you, for the first time, I think you were having the leadership team retreat not only with‚ including the executive committee, but also all the regional leaders and I think maybe the global‚ leadership folks.
And so the name, I suggested and it was used, the name, the title was "One Retreat to Rule Them All."
MARK PRATER:
That was it.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
So I then unexpectedly received this honor, this high honor, this new trophy, and then immediately retired. That was in 2023, so for the past two years, I have not participated in Title Time. Everyone needs to know.
Mark now is the only one who offers lame title ideas and Erin ignores them.
MARK PRATER:
She always comes up with something better.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
And we're grateful for that.
MARK PRATER:
Yes, we are.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
But Mark remains undeterred. There is still title time each time that we record a podcast.
MARK PRATER:
Confidence hasn't been my issue, although that really is a problem. (laughter)
BENJAMIN KREPS:
It's been wonderful to record this podcast with you. I've enjoyed it so much. It's been a gift to me personally to spend time with you every week, recording together. We've literally spent hundreds of hours together working on the podcast‚ recording the podcast. So what do you think are some things we've learned over the last few, or six, years of doing the podcast?
MARK PRATER:
I mean, beyond the fact that we've learned that we have no technical skills at all, like you used to joke with the show. I think I was thinking about this. I think the biggest lesson I've learned is that recording a podcast has only heightened my awareness and desperate need for God's help. It's deepened my dependence upon God and for the Spirit of God to lead us. Because it's trying to think of different episodes that would serve pastors and members of Sovereign Grace churches over the course of six years, 300 episodes. And I just need God's help to do that effectively. And I think that's illustrated: some of my favorite episodes are those where you and I had a plan going in, and then just felt like the Spirit of God changed it. Almost spontaneously in the moment and we would sort of rework things and then record it. And those are actually some of the episodes where we got the most feedback.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
That's right.
MARK PRATER:
Because it either spoke into someone's life, some pastor's life, or a member's life, in a way that really served them and strengthened their soul, or that spoke to a topic that guys had been thinking about, or that they said to me, "We really needed to hear that one." So, thank you. I'm grateful for those episodes, and it's just another reminder that all that we do is out of dependence upon God. He gets all the glory and all the credit.
Yes, I've loved those episodes. It's always fun. I know we're in for something good when you show up on the Zoom call and you inform me, you know, you had an idea, but you feel, just moments ago, the Holy Spirit has nudged or led you in a different direction.
You see that confirmed so many times when that's happened, with guys saying how God actually helped them very specifically through the podcast. I've loved doing the interviews over the years. We've done church planters, leadership team members, and executive committee members. It has been a wonderful ride. And we're not done yet because the plan is to keep going for the time being. We are always aware that we could be canceled at any time, and so we live on the edge. We're going to keep plugging ahead.
I don't know if I’ll get another 300, but we're going to see how far we can go with all of this.
As we look into the future and keep recording podcasts and seeking to be faithful as pastors and as a family of churches, give us some thoughts about the future.
MARK PRATER:
I've been thinking about this, and I think our name, Sovereign Grace, helps us. As we think about the future, we are desperate BENJAMIN KREPS:
for and dependent upon the sovereign grace of God. And I'm going to be announcing something‚ actually, this will be sent out after the Pastor's Conference. So if you were at the Pastor's Conference, you heard this. This is really the work of Ricky Alcantar, who is our editor of digital and online resources for Sovereign Grace. He's doing a great job. And he was saying, I'm trying to find a phrase that would succinctly capture our family of churches. And he said, I found it in history because Charles Spurgeon started a pastor's college almost 200 years ago. And there was a motto that he had for that pastor's college.
It was four words in Latin. I'll probably read the Latin wrongly, but I'll read it.
“Et Teneo, Et Teneor, which means "I hold and I am held"
And Spurgeon writes this in his autobiography:
"We hold forth the cross of Christ with a bold hand. We preach because the cross holds us fast by its attractive power. Our desire is that every man both hold the truth and be held by it, especially the truth of Christ crucified."
And I thought, yeah, that does describe us, and we can broaden that a little bit more, but that phrase, which Ricky's kind of just changed a bit to this: Hold fast, Held fast. Hold fast, held fast is really the heartbeat of our churches, I think, is a way to say it. We're not aiming to be the most cutting-edge, you know, family of churches, or the most innovative, or the slickest. We're aiming to be faithful over the course of time.
And we're aiming to hold on to the right things, which is why I like that phrase. And our hope and comfort has always been that as we do that, it's actually God who's got a hold of us, and that gives us a lot of faith for the future. Think of hold fast, held fast as, again, the heartbeat of our family of churches. And I think it's kind of at the center of what we do, but it's kind of built around some key distinctives. We hold fast to these things - the statement of faith that contains the sound doctrine that we agree to and build our churches on, and that we hold on to when doctrine seems to change.
We're hanging onto our statement of faith. We have a sturdy partnership that's defined in our book of church order and polity that we hold onto to give us definition and to build a partnership together.
We have a legacy of planting churches. And the reason that we do that is not to grow Sovereign Grace, as we've said before, but to advance the mission of the gospel and reach people who don't know Jesus. We're going to hold onto that mission. We have a Pastor's College that aims to train and equip pastors, including future pastors, who will help us hold on to the things we have, hold so dear, as outlined in our statement of faith.
We have Sovereign Grace Music that writes songs where we can sing our sound doctrine, sing truth, and the glories of the gospel together. We're going to keep doing that, hold on to that. And we produce resources, both in print and digitally, that really help our churches hold onto our confession together.
So "hold fast, held fast" is a phrase that you're going to be hearing more in Sovereign Grace. Thanks to Ricky's hard work. And I like it because it encourages us to keep preaching Christ and Him crucified, knowing that we are all held by that truth.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
Excellent.
I'll bring some of my own spiritual illustration. I remember reading a familiar one for a lot of guys where he talks about how a mother holds a baby and the baby holds the mom as well, but it's the mother's hold that matters most. And so yes, we hold fast to God, but it's His holding us fast that makes all the difference in our lives and our family of churches. So thank you, Ricky. Excellent stuff and I’m looking forward to hearing more about this at the conference, and I think this is dropping the day of the Council of Elders, actually‚
MARK PRATER:
It'll be the week after the conference, actually.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
The week after the conference, all right, so we'll have been through the conference, and we'll have some stuff to talk about after that as well. So, because our plan is to keep going.
MARK PRATER:
Thanks for doing this with me, Ben.
BENJAMIN KREPS:
Oh, I love it. It's such a gift to me personally, and I'm so grateful for all the folks who watch the podcast, who encourage us, and who receive encouragement even more from the podcast.
So thanks, Mark, for your thoughts. Happy 300th episode. And thank you all for checking out the podcast.
We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.