Sovereign Grace Global Updates
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone. 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 back in our natural recording environments because last weekend we were at the Regional Assembly in the Northeast, and recorded a couple of podcasts with some church planners. Those are going to drop later this year. So look for that. That's coming. I think over the summer. But here we are recording another one on Zoom, not in person, as is our typical practice. You have a number of encouraging updates about what God's doing globally in Sovereign Grace. Anybody following along with the podcast or just the updates from Sovereign Grace knows God's at work across the globe. We get to be a part of what God's doing in the advance of the gospel globally. You have a bunch of updates for us, so let's get right into it. First, take us to the Asia Pacific.
Mark Prater:
Let's go there first. These are updates that I'm aware of just because of my role serving Sovereign Grace, and I want to share those with others. I can't believe I get to do what I do, Ben, in serving our family of churches for a number of reasons. One is that I get a perspective on Sovereign Grace that not everyone can enjoy. So I just want to share that perspective. There's a number of things that are just recent events of what God is doing throughout the world through our small family of churches. Let's start in the Asia Pacific. We are right now in the process of forming a Korean ordination committee.
Benjamin Kreps:
Let's go!
Mark Prater:
We have one ordained elder in Seoul, South Korea, Songhwan Kang, who is the senior pastor of Lord's Grace Church. But there's another man now stepping into the ordination process and we've found three ordained Sovereign Grace elders who speak Korean that can form this committee. Should he do well in his exams, we’ll have another Sovereign Grace elder in South Korea.
When this podcast drops, we're recording on a Thursday, six pastoral candidates will officially start their first exams in the Philippines in the ordination process. Please be praying for those men.
Another thing happening in the Asia Pacific World is that Cornerstone Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, is sending a mission team to Sydney, Australia, to serve Dave Taylor and his church and Riley Spring in Parramatta. Please pray for that mission trip. It's another expression of how we do partnership in Sovereign Grace, even across the globe. Those are a few quick recent events happening in the Asia Pacific part of the world.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. Every time we do a Philippines update, it seems like somebody else is getting ordained or on the track. God's doing wonderful things in the Philippines, Korea, and Australia. Take us to Europe because there was a significant gathering there actually last week, and there's a bunch of stuff going on there.
Mark Prater:
Yes, a wonderful gathering in Europe. It was the Sovereign Grace Europe Pastors and Wives retreat. The Sovereign Grace Europe pastors have been meeting for a couple of years, but this was a purposeful effort to include all the wives who could be there. It included both partner churches and candidate churches from Galway, Ireland, Bristol, England, London, England, Santander, Spain, Antalya, Turkey, and Torino, Italy. So that's just a representative of the churches that were there. And it was just a wonderful time where they invested in their marriages. The theme was gospel centrality and marriage. And that's so important in building Sovereign Grace Europe and building Sovereign Grace overall because a pastor's marriage is very important. Not only in terms of glorifying God, but also in building healthy churches that have marriages that reflect how Jesus Christ relates to his bride.
I wanted to mention it because I want to commend the leadership of Ed O’Mara, who's our area leader there, who led all of this and put it together, but also thank people who have given to the Europe Development Fund. That's one of our global development funds because some of the funds were used to help make that retreat happen. So thank you for your giving to that fund. A few things happening in Europe and some of those candidate churches may be full partner churches in Europe before too long.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. My buddy, Kyle Huber, is over there in Belarus right now. I saw pictures on Facebook at that European gathering. Shout out to Kyle! Wonderful to hear that the work in Europe we are a part of is growing exponentially. But we're not done because you're going to take us to Africa.
Mark Prater:
We're going to go to Africa next. Lets go south to Africa. I've mentioned this before, but I wanted to briefly mention again, church plants happening right now in Nairobi, Kenya and in Windhoek, Namibia. The lead pastor in Nairobi, Kenya is Brian Kiama, who is a graduate of our pastor's college in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That plant is going well. Josh Kruger Jr. is the lead pastor of Sovereign Grace's Church in Windhoek, Namibia. And that plant has gone well. They've begun to grow some and they've had to find a different meeting location, so keep praying for those church plants.
Let's go to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They are taking applications for their next PC class beginning in the fall. And it's interesting that they're getting applications not only from Ethiopians, but I talked to Josh Pennell and Michael Granger a couple of weeks ago. They have one application from Ghana and another one from Uganda. So there can be other countries on the continent that can send men there to be trained through that pastor's college should they meet their admission requirements. And I mentioned all of that in Ethiopia because those men are just doing really good work.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes, they are.
Mark Prater:
And they're also facing a unique challenge right now. Inflation in Ethiopia is at 80%. That's pretty much happened since the first of the year. The government made a decision to move its currency from government controlled to the free market.
And there's a long-term strategy on that in that initially the currency drops, but over time it'll go back up and it'll be strong and solid. That's the plan. Actually, Josh was telling me they did this several years ago in Kenya and Ethiopia has taken a similar response. So I mentioned all of that because all of their costs to rent a facility where they meet as a church, but also for all the pastor's college expenses, all of that has increased by 80%. And so if you're interested in supporting them, please give to the Africa Development Fund and mention the Pastor's College and Trinity Fellowship in Addis Ababa, because we want to do all we can to keep them in business. They're just facing this unplanned, unique challenge right now, and so thank you for praying about that.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes, certainly challenges and wonderful reports of God at work in Africa. But before we're done with the updates, we of course have to go to Latin America,
Mark Prater:
We must go to Latin America. So much is happening in Latin America. The week this episode drops, this will be, I believe the second or third meeting of the Mexico National Assembly. Mexico is its nation now.
And they will meet for a National Assembly next week, in Guadalajara, Mexico. It's so encouraging that at this meeting, there'll be 19 churches and 55 pastors that are now a part of that nation. Whether that is a candidate church or a partner church in Mexico. So please pray for that. Pray for Carlos Contreras, who's the director in Mexico. Just pray for him as he leads through that time. Rich Richardson will be there as well. Please pray for Rich. Also, Jacobis Aldana, who is the senior pastor of Sovereign Grace candidate church in Santa Marta, Colombia. He will soon be taking a trip to Medellin, Colombia, where he'll lead a marriage retreat with a church there. And that church in Medellin is considering partnership in Sovereign Grace. So part of the trip is not just to serve the married couples in that church, but to again explore should this church pursue formal partnership in Sovereign Grace.
Mark Prater:
Pray for Jacobis and for that trip. The church in Barranquilla, Columbia has really grown and done well. I just got an email recently from Alejandro, who is the senior pastor of that church and they've grown so much. They've had to look for a different meeting space because they can't fit everybody in and it looks like they found a place. It looks like God has provided the funds to be able to get it, and so pray for their move and that God would continue to bless them, not just in terms of numerical growth, but really seeing conversions happening there in Barranquilla, Columbia. One other thing, Trinity College is sending some of their students on a mission trip to Playa Azul, Costa Rica where we have a candidate church. That'll be coming up this month or next. So pray for that as well. Those are just some recent things that are happening not only Latin America, but each of the areas of the world that I just mentioned.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. You mentioned a couple different times, the different global development funds in case someone doesn't know and is checking out the podcast, where do you find those at?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, you can find those on our give page. So if you go to the Sovereign Grace website, sovereigngrace.com, you click on give, and there'll be a little menu that drops down. It'll say development funds. You can read a description of each of the funds there, and if you’d like to give, you can choose where to direct your money in a number of ways. But each of the development funds, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Africa development funds you can give to. And that's the way to go about that.
Benjamin Kreps:
Wonderful. It's a beautiful thing to be able to bear one another's burdens even globally, even with people maybe we haven't met before, but that we are as close to as family in Christ. And so of course, one way to bear burdens is that financial kind of help, but the greatest way we can bear one another's burdens is through prayer. And this is not a throwaway line as you're encouraging us to pray for what God's doing. It's really at the end of the day, certainly we're grateful for the leadership of the men who are involved in all of these different wonderful updates. Many faces come to mind, and we thank God for the men who lead in this area. We are not attempting to take credit for what's happening globally in Sovereign Grace. This is the Lord's doing. It's marvelous in our eyes. And before we conclude this podcast, you want to talk about that as well?
Mark Prater:
I do. I just want to remind us that this is the Lord's doing, as you said, Ben, and that we're only able to participate globally because the spirit of God has led us.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes.
Mark Prater:
And it's a reminder that we need to continue to have the Spirit of God lead us. In other words, this is not some big strategy that the leadership team came up with. These are spirit led opportunities. And I want to remind all of us, whether you're a pastor or a member of one of our churches, to be people who pursue the work of the spirit in our lives and that we are led by him, influenced by him.
There's a wonderful quote that Spurgeon has that he gave in one of the lectures to his students, and he says this, we should be delicately sensitive to his mean, the spirit's faintest movement, and then we may expect his abiding presence. But if we are as the horse and as the mule, which have no understanding, we shall feel the whip, but we shall not enjoy the tender influence of the Comforter. That's who we want to be, men who are spirit led in our mission and in gospel ministry. And we've agreed to this confessionally. It's in our statement of faith.
And our statement of faith exists not just as words on paper, as any good theology, it's intended to function in our lives. I just want to remind all of us of what we have committed to and agreed to confessionally. In one section of our statement of faith, it says this, the spirit also desires to fill God's people continually with increased power for Christian life and witness to be filled with the spirit is to be more fully under his influence, more aware of his presence and more effective in his service. All Christians, therefore, must continually seek to be filled with the spirit by living and praying in such a way that invites the spirit's work among us actively longing for God to accomplish his gracious purposes in us and through us. And so for God to do that in Sovereign Grace, to accomplish his gracious and good purposes in and through us, we need to be led by him. We want to serve him, and we want to give him glory in all that we do. And that will be accomplished, at least in part, by praying, fill us with your spirit and lead us, influence us as we go about advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, thank you for the updates. Thanks for your encouragement and by pointing us to our statement of faith. Every time I read the statement of faith, hear it read, I’m struck by how easily one feels their heart being drawn toward worship. Just by remembering the glorious truths captured in our statement of faith. So much to be grateful for, but more than anything, how grateful we are for what God is doing among us. We need to press into that. So thank you, Mark. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.