It’s Not (Only) About You Glorifying God and Caring for the Church in Transitions
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, since the last conference or so, you’ve talked a lot about the reality of a needed intergenerational transfer when it comes to raising up the next generation of pastors. There are lots of churches in Sovereign Grace that are hard at work beginning to think carefully (deliberately) about what that might look like when it comes to seeing the next generation raised up. That also involves older guys moving off the scene - pastoral transitions. In order to serve us - as you always do - you and the leadership team have worked on developing some breakout sessions at the Pastor's conference this year. You're teaching a breakout session and you want to talk about that. What's your breakout session that you're teaching at the pastor's conference?
Mark Prater:
We’ve got a number of really good breakout sessions this year. All have been chosen very specifically by the leadership team to serve our pastors and churches and to speak into issues and areas they're walking through. My breakout has to do with transitions. The title of the breakout is this - It’s Not (Only) About You Glorifying God and Caring for the Church in Transitions.
Someone might hear that title and think “Oh, this is for the older guys.” That's not the approach I'm going to take - although I will talk about men that are in my season of life. But I want to use this breakout to speak into transition at any age or season of ministry life because by implication, those often happen over the course of ministry for most guys. Whether you're on a team and you need to shift responsibilities to best serve the church. Or there is a guy that leaves and plants a church so there's some transitioning with responsibilities on the team.
Transitions are somewhat common. They're not just at the end of your ministry life, so to speak. That's the approach I'm going to take. It's going to be very broad in nature and present principles that I hope can apply to any transition regardless of the pastor's age. I'm really looking forward to it and it's something I've been studying for and getting pretty excited about teaching it.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, you are a pastor who over the course of your life in ministry have personally experienced many transitions - church planting, executive pastor, executive director. You’ve been across the gambit and so from experience and from many years of study and reflection, take us into your study. Let us in on your preparation and share with us some of what you're reading about and thinking about as you prepare for this breakout.
Mark Prater:
I thought I'd share something for this episode, an article that Don Carson has written. This was published in the Themelios Journal (The Gospel Coalition), volume 42 published in 2017. In this particular journal, he has an article entitled “On Knowing When to Resign.” He's talking about resignation, but he's really talking about transitions. Many of the principles that I'm going to read focus on someone that's more in my season of life, but I think they apply to all seasons of life.
D.A. Carson maps out a biblical case for doing them well, and towards the end of the article he highlights seven important conditions. He says, “When one or more of the following conditions are met, it becomes more clear to you that it's time to resign - or time to transition.” I'm going to go through some of these rather quickly but I’m also going to park on a couple and just talk through them.
The first condition - One has to leave ministry for moral reasons. That unfortunately happens in ministry and that makes it very clear.
Second condition - Serious health issues means that you can no longer discharge your pastoral duties faithfully. That can happen for any of us, at any point, not just in the older years - that could happen to a younger guy as well.
Third condition - One is clearly called by God to some other ministry. He's writing this for a broader evangelical world, but you put that in the Sovereign Grace world, maybe one's called to go plant a church or one is called to go serve on another pastoral team because of some sort of need, and they feel called by God to do that.
Fourth condition (I'm going to park on this one) - One judges that it would be a good thing for this ministry for the church if the baton were passed to a younger leader in an orderly way. And then he writes this (I thought this was very insightful), “There is no absolute rule, but the rule of thumb is that the longer a person has stayed in one ministry, and the more faithful that person has been, the wiser it is for that pastor to help arrange the transition to a successor before bowing out.” That’s really well said. He's speaking to men who have been faithful pastors - let's say 40 years - and they've been fruitful in their ministry, and the church is in a good place - it'd be nice just to cruise for a while longer. I could understand that, but it's wise to begin to initiate and prepare a younger man for the transition so that the church can be led well through it. I thought that was very, very insightful.
Fifth condition (this is speaking to guys more in my season of life) - One senses that his energy levels are declining and it seems wise to let some of his responsibilities go so they can be faithfully discharged by someone else. So, you just got decreasing energy levels - that happens when you get old. That's just a thing that happens to most of us anyway.
Benjamin Kreps:
You don't even have to be that old.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, that's true. That's true. You feel his pain, right?
Sixth condition - Sometimes one must relinquish one’s position and work because of the declining health of a spouse. We've seen wonderful examples in ministry where men have done that and faithfully cared for their wives.
Seventh condition (this is an interesting one that I've read through a couple of different times and I would dem the toughest one) – the final condition may justify leaving one's ministry or transitioning is precipitated by a developing crisis. And of course, there's no absolute rule, and where he begins in a lot of instances, it's best to remain in your role and to try to lead through the crisis and work through the crisis for the good of the church - that's essentially what he's saying. But again, there's no absolute rule. There may be a crisis where it's best for you to transition out. He says, “but in other instances, one should step down, conscious of the fact that the differences of opinion, while deep, are not about orthodoxy or morality, and the strong action that would be necessary to restore unanimity among the elders is likely to split the church for little if any gospel gain.”
He's saying it's a crisis you've worked at; you can't get it resolved, there is still a dispute, and it may be best at that moment - even though you've tried - to transition out and do that for the good of the church. I had to think about this one a little bit and I'm still thinking through. But I thought: Carson's not afraid to address tough issues. I really appreciate him addressing it - whether you agree with him or not. The council he gave was very, very wise and the conditions found in his article, you don't see a lot written about it, which is another reason I'm grateful for Don Carson for writing this and I hope it serves our pastors.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. You don't have to look far in Sovereign Grace to see transitions happening all the time. It was just at an RAE a month or two ago, where a guy went from serving on a team becoming a senior pastor of another church. This kind of stuff happens regularly and will happen all the more as we continue to grow and expand globally. This is definitely the kind of material that we will serve us and I am looking forward to hearing it. Perhaps it's embedded in the title - but what is your hope for us? What do you hope the effect of this is as we consider and work through all of the different transitions that are inevitable in Sovereign Grace?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, I think you're right - it's embedded in the title. There's two hopes I have and that we have as a leadership team. Whatever transitions we need to make, at whatever season of ministry life you're in, we want to do them in a way that is Christlike. We want to do them in a way that serves the church because it is the dearest place on earth. That's who we're called to serve – Christ, his church and his people. Let me sneak in a third one - to give God glory in it. May we do these in a way that are God glorifying because that's best going to serve the church. And I believe for the guy making a transition, that's where you're going to find your greatest joy, knowing that you pleased God and glorified him.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, looking forward to hearing about the other breakout sessions. I likely will have the same quandary that many of us have every year, which is picking one.
Mark Prater:
Yeah, they're good.
Benjamin Kreps:
The good news is that these are being recorded and we'll get to hear all of them. But this sounds like an important breakout for us, and so looking forward to listening to it.
So thank you, Mark for the update and your thoughts and encouragement. Thank you everybody for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.