Sovereign Grace Prayer Initiative
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 have a guest.
Mark Prater:
We do. THE Joel Shorey is with us!
Benjamin Kreps:
Our friend and senior pastor of Redeemer Fellowship in Newark, Delaware. Joel, you planted that church seven years ago, but Joel's been in pastoral ministry for 20 years, starting to accumulate some time, my friend.
Joel Shorey:
That's true.
Benjamin Kreps:
And furthermore, last year you became the director of church planning for our family of churches, which so many of us we're grateful to hear and grateful for the work that you're already doing, that we're beginning to experience your leadership. So thank you, Joel, for your faithfulness in serving us in this way. But another way that you are serving our family of churches is in a prayer initiative that you started a couple of years ago. I've been on a couple of these Zoom calls where Sovereign Grace pastors get together to pray for an hour. It's a wonderful time. But we want to talk about that prayer initiative so anybody who doesn't know about it can learn about it. Tell us what the prayer initiative is and why you started it.
Joel Shorey:
Yeah, started about two years ago. Ben, you've been on several calls, which has been great. The initiative is a burden for and a pursuit of more prayer in Sovereign Graces Churches and for us as leaders of our churches. We definitely are a praying denomination. Men are constantly, regularly referencing prayerfulness and dependence upon the Lord, and this is really just a pursuit of more. And the Lord says that he opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And so we want to be humble. We want to be dependent. The call for prayer in scripture is just so loud. It's consistent and it is loud. I think of Isaiah 62 where the Lord says that he has set watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem and the phrasing there about him calling those watchmen to put the Lord in remembrance and to give him no rest.
Now, that might be the verse that sparks prayerfulness in me more than anything. The fact that he would call us to put him into remembrance, it's quite amazing. We're in the book of Acts right now as a local church in Delaware, and prayer is just, it's everywhere in the Book of Acts, and it marks all major transitions and significant moves of the spirit. And so we see that. And then I think of Jesus as well, and him praying all night long before he made a big decision for his apostles, his disciples. The prayerfulness of scripture ought to lead us to be prayerful men as leaders of the church. And so I was talking to Mark, I was talking to John, I was thinking about it with guys like Tim Kerr, a dear friend who's kind of beat this drum for a long time.
He is one of the most prayerful men in all of Sovereign Grace, maybe that any of us know. Philip Estrada, Joshua Earl, all these men are really earnest for prayer. And we were just talking and thinking about what are ways that we can bring some leadership, simple leadership. We're not doing much by way of leading in this. We're just saying, “Hey, let's provide an opportunity for prayerfulness.”
That's what it is and we started it almost two years ago. We meet quarterly because we thought that it was too much to go monthly. Guys' schedules are busy. Mark sends out the prayer requests the bullet points on a quarterly basis. And so it's exactly a week after those come out. We gather on a Wednesday afternoon, pray and lift these things before the Lord and ask for his spirit to bless them.
Mark Prater:
Thank you so much for starting it. I'm so grateful that you want to gather pastors in Sovereign Grace to pray. We desperately need the Lord's help, guidance and wisdom in all that we do. Through starting this, what do you hope will be the effect in Sovereign Grace as a result of this prayer initiative?
Joel Shorey:
More prayer. You just can't have enough prayer. You can't have enough attendance. You can't have enough humility before the Lord. And so, if we can just have set times in our schedules and in our calendar where we as leaders and as partners in the gospel are just going before the Lord. The list of prayer bullets Mark sends out, they're big prayer bullets. These are significant things to be asking the Lord for his help on. Let's not just see them and then move quickly beyond them. Let's pause, let's stop. Let's go before the throne of grace. Ask for grace and mercy to help in time of need, and let's do it together. Let's help each other. And one of the effects, Mark, I hope and pray - because this is the effect that hanging out with men like Tim Kerr, Philip Estrada, and Joshua Earls has that on me - is it has increased my prayerfulness the rest of the time as well. I find that to be the result of intentional prayer time is more prayerfulness the rest of my life as well. And so I would love very much if the Lord used these times to deepen our fellowship with him, increase our communion with him, and if Sovereign Grace would become even a prayerful denomination, it would be a wonderful fruit from these times.
Two weeks ago, we actually had a prayer retreat, a few of us together, and the effect of spending two days just on our faces before the Lord asking for his help for Sovereign Grace, it was just wonderful way to spend time together. But the effect since I came back, my prayer times has just ratcheted up even more. I've been more intentional to find time to step away from the busyness and the chaos just to pray. And I think that these quarterly meetings can have that effect on us as well. They've been good so far. We've loved the amount of people who have attended. Jace Hudson joins the team with his entire pastoral staff around him. They're all in one room on the screen and just seeing their desire for it - I was with them a few weeks ago - them speaking about the effect it's had on them. It's all just really encouraging. I want that across the board. I want it in my life and I want in all of our lives by God's grace.
Benjamin Kreps:
Amen. Excellent. I think in a church world where there's all kinds of metrics that are supposed to help us understand whether a church or denomination is being successful, I mean, how beautiful would it be for us to increasingly be known as a family of churches that praise.
Joel Shorey:
Amen.
Benjamin Kreps:
Maybe it doesn't get the headlines, but it certainly is pleasing to the Lord and in the end will strengthen our denomination. The emails have been going out inviting guys to join the quarterly prayer meeting calls. Maybe some guys have seen those emails and are somewhat curious or haven't stepped into one of those Zoom calls, just unsure of what that all entails. Tell us about what that zoom call is like? What goes on in that quarterly zoom prayer meeting? What do guys do in these meetings, that sort of thing?
Joel Shorey:
They happen a week after Mark sends out his prayer bullets so that we can use those to structure the time. We open up with a passage of scripture, usually a psalm, and allow that to guide our prayers because we love praying God's word back to him, putting him in remembrance as Isaiah says. And then it's very efficient because we just want to respect guys' time. We don't want to steal the whole afternoon. So it's very tightly kept to one hour.
It used to be around two in the afternoon, and then some of our Australian brothers said, Hey, can we move it later? So it's not quite as early in the morning. And we were happy to accommodate them. So now it's at 4PM EST on that Wednesday. We gather together, we greet each other very quickly, and then we read the psalm, we share the prayer bullets on the screen or guys have them up on their screens, and then we just start praying. The first 30 or so minutes is just praying out loud and guys just praying out for everybody to hear. And it's wonderful hearing different guys go before the Lord in that way. And about 30 minutes in, I transition us towards smaller groups. And so we go into these zoom breakout rooms and there's probably three to five guys in each room and there's a quick sharing of prayer requests or burdens or needs.
And then the remainder of the time is praying for each other, but also continuing to pray in smaller groups through Mark's prayer bullets. And so it just allows more people to pray. So I love the dynamics there of being all together and then going in smaller groups to allow more guys to participate. Some guys are suggesting that we just spend the entire time in the breakout rooms, and we might try that at one of these meetings. But for now, I think the combination of both is good. And then about four minutes before the end of the hour, we pull everybody back together. I ask somebody to close us in prayer and then we sign off. So that's it.
Mark Prater:
That's great. Ben, you've been in some of these. What was your experience?
Benjamin Kreps:
There are a few different things that impressed me - one of them is how this, our calling as pastors is ministry of word and prayer and so for us to exert that aspiration to live a life of prayer to our family of churches is a really wonderful thing to just another opportunity to get on a call, see familiar faces and new ones, and further strengthen the partnership we have by together approaching God with our requests and our worship. Like Joel said, guys are busy. This is an efficient hour. There's not wasted time. We spend the whole time praying. I have enjoyed the couple of times I've been on calls when I've been able to make it. I'm looking forward to being on more of them.
Mark Prater:
That's great. So, Joel, a Sovereign Grace pastor is listening to this episode and his interest is peaked about participating. How can a pastor get involved in one of your quarterly Zoom prayer initiative meetings?
Joel Shorey:
Very easy. Just email me. My email is jshorey@redeemerde.org
Just say, “Hey, I'd like to be added to the prayer initiative”. I'll add you to the list and I won't inundate you with a lot of emails. It really is just one, a week in advance and then one the day of with the actual zoom link. So we'd love guys to just let me know and I'll add them to the list.
Mark Prater:
That's great. I am remembering a quote from John Piper from his book - Brothers We Are Not Professionals - I'm going to butcher the quote, but this is essentially what he said.
He said, “Any pastor who is laboring for eternal fruit, which is the only kind that matters, but doesn't know the rhythm of desperation and deliverance, will not produce that kind of eternal fruit.”
And what he means by that is desperation, meaning expressed in prayer and delivered as God answers those prayers to do work that we can't do as men, we need God's help. And that begins with asking him, it's just one of the reasons I thank God for you, Joel, thank you for starting this prayer initiative and serving our family of churches that way. Thank you for being our director of church planting. We've experienced the effect of your leadership already in just a year. You are a gift to our denomination from the risen Christ, and we want you to know our appreciation.
Joel Shorey:
Thank you, Mark. It's all a joy to do.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yeah, we do thank God for you, Joel. And I mean everything of eternal significance we want to see happen in our churches and in Sovereign Grace completely depends on God. And so it's only appropriate that we do pray and we make time to pray. And may God increasingly make us a more prayerful family of churches in the days ahead, this being one part that will help us to grow. So thank you, Joel. Thank you everybody checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.