Highlights from the Leadership Retreat
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. Mark, we are recording this on a Saturday. Normally it's on a Thursday, but when we record, but it's Saturday because you just got back from the most recent leadership team retreat. And so people who check out the podcast will be aware that they happen several times a year, you get away with the leadership team. You guys sacrifice your time and resources in order to make that happen a few times a year. So, remind us again, or perhaps if someone isn't familiar with leadership team retreats, why do you have a leadership team retreat a few times a year?
Mark Prater:
We get together three times a year. We've got it scheduled typically in February, June and September is our retreat schedule rhythm. This year, we were in Los Angeles because Dave Taylor is coming from Sydney and we didn't want him to fly deeper into the States. But actually, after the retreat, Dave flew to and is now in Seoul, South Korea, to spend time with our church there, who is celebrating their 15th anniversary as a church - Lord's Grace Church, Seoul, South Korea, and the faithful pastor Songhwan Kang who has done a wonderful job.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful.
Mark Prater:
It is. Dave is there for that celebration before He flies back home. We did it in LA and we do it three times a year, which I don't think is excessive. We talked about doing it just twice a year, but we found that we've needed three times a year for these reasons. First of all, it just gives us a chance to be together. I mean, we're spread out geographically. The guys that were there, not all the leadership team was there at this one. There were five of us, four plus me and two of us are in the Philadelphia area. Jon Payne's in Austin, Jeff's in Louisville. Dave is obviously in Sydney, as I mentioned, and we do a lot over Zoom, but doing team ministry over Zoom, any team knows, is not ideal.
And so we pull together three times a year just to be together, first of all. And that allows us, secondly, to just have longer strategic conversations, which are harder to do over Zoom because you don't see everybody's body language. You're jumping in and interrupting one another. It's just the joys of doing meetings over Zoom. And so we've had some, we had really good conversation on this retreat. We typically do, and it happened again this week, which we're so, so grateful for. And we're also, as I mentioned, we're a team. We work together. We want to build together as a team and build relationally like any eldership does. And so being together three times a year is important in doing that. And I say all that even though that's why we have retreats, because the primary reason we have them is because the leadership team exists to serve our churches and pastors, and that's always on our mind. When I plan the agenda, when we're going through the agenda at the retreat, we take time to pray every morning. This week we did pray for the pastors and churches in Sovereign Grace as an expression of that. It's not only our heart to do so it's a reminder of why we exist. So those are just some of the reasons that we do these leadership team retreats.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, I think it certainly makes sense that it would be preferable to get together. I think some of us are still even five years later walking around a little bit of flinching at Zoom meetings after 2020.
Mark Prater:
That's right.
Benjamin Kreps:
Even though we thank God for technology.
Mark Prater:
Oh, we do!
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah. It doesn't replace being together. And so you guys got together in Los Angeles, pretty sweet place to have a retreat. What did you do there over the course of the several days you were together?
Mark Prater:
We had a full agenda. We got a lot done and we didn't get through all the agenda as usual.
Benjamin Kreps:
As usual!
Mark Prater:
And I devote a podcast to this because one of the things we're committed to in our podcast, Ben, as you know, is to really give information that is not easily accessible.
It is sort of the inside baseball information, if you can say it that way. So it's why we just want our podcast followers, which I think are mostly pastors and members of our churches, just to be up to speed on what the leadership team is thinking and working on. So I actually began this retreat taking extensive time to encourage the guys on the leadership team. I just was coming off the executive committee retreat and just going through all the leadership team accomplished and what these men accomplished over the last year. And I thought, let me just take time to just, I want to remind them of what they accomplished and what we accomplished as a team collectively in serving our churches. It really gave me a chance to thank them for their hard work. This is a team of men who work very hard to serve our pastors and our churches, and I wanted them to be encouraged and to know my appreciation. Jared presented a publishing plan for the next year that we reviewed and approved and very exciting. I won't jump into the details, but we have some exciting publications
That are on the verge of being in your hands and more that are in development that I think are really going to serve the pastors and churches of Sovereign Grace. Some of those you'll receive as gifts at the pastor's conference, that lack of reveal what those are. But just to build your anticipation for the conference, we also just talked about the future of Sovereign Grace departments. Just as we think about the next 20 years, for example, what will those departments look like? And I'm not going to drop it into the details of that, but we had to spend a lot of time on this retreat just thinking about our future and planning. And that just takes longer discussion and conversation, but it was very fruitful and very good. We also took time to plan our February leadership team retreat where we invite our regional leaders and some of our other influential leaders, non-leadership team directors for example, because that's a very important strategic retreat and we want to hit the right topics. And so John presented a plan for that. We made some tweaks to it and we came away thinking, oh, we'd like what we have now. So we spent some time doing that. As I mentioned, I was at the executive committee retreat. We devoted a podcast to that a few weeks ago. I just kind of gave the leadership team a debrief of that time just because they don't as often interact with the executive committee as directly as I do.
It important that you build that working relationship between the leadership team and the executive committee. And one of the things that I updated them on is, I mentioned this in a previous podcast, but we're trying to find ways to build wisely as we expand globally. That's real, real important. And it's really important as we do it right now, early in some sort of expansion it seems that God has given us. So one expression of that is the Global Pastor's College certification plan that if we want to encourage the establishment of theological training centers outside of the United States, if some of those want to be called a Sovereign Grace Pastor's College, there's certain criteria that they have to meet. And the executive committee loved it. They affirmed the direction of it. And so we as a leadership team went over it, again, approved it. I think we made a tweak or two, and they'll now become a part of Sovereign Grace policy that we will be able to reference. And I'm thinking about future leadership teams. That's something that they can reference as they continue to build Sovereign Grace. We talked about that. We mapped out, because it's the September retreat we mapped out The Council of Elders meeting, approved the agenda.
Benjamin Kreps:
Its coming soon.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, its actually only a couple months away. In fact, I think this week we hit the 60 day mark and Council of Elder Delegates will get some information for the Council of Elders. We plan the 2025 Pastors Conference a little bit more in detail, and we're excited about that conference. If you haven't registered yet, please do. John Piper is obviously speaking and reminder of the pre-conference for pastors on Tuesday from 3:30 - 5pm, and we're going to do a Q&A with Dr. Piper. Jeff will lead that. You won't want to miss that.
Benjamin Kreps:
No you don't.
Mark Prater:
It'll be really John Piper and his element, so to speak, outside the pulpit. And then we also plan the 2026 Pastors and Leaders Conference in more detail. And again, we've got some really good breakout sessions that we've already got established and I can't wait for that conference and how the leaders of our churches will benefit from that. And then, let's see. Let me hit one other thing. We spent some time just talking about Global Missions not only in terms of Dave giving us an update, but just clarifying for everyone, our belief about missionaries and even how someone can become a Sovereign Grace missionary.
You'll hear more about that at the Council of Elders meeting. I'm going to give Dave some time in our Council of Elders, a Council of Elders agenda to talk about that. So those are just some of the things that we did on the leadership team retreat. It was rich relationally, it was very productive. We got a lot done. I'm tired after this week and I want to come home tired from those retreats. And I just thank God for how good he was to us, and I thank God that we get to serve the pastors and churches of Sovereign Grace who we carry on our heart.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. Well, we thank God for you, Mark, and the rest of the leadership team and the time and dedication and energy that you guys put into your roles on this team. I think anybody that checks out these podcasts and hears these kinds of updates can easily see that your heart is to serve us. And we can also see how you're effectively doing that as you're addressing a range of topics that are important to us, including free books at the conference, which is only a couple months away. Looking forward to that. So thank you, mark, for the update. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.