Whats Happening At The Leaders Retreat
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone, and welcome to the podcast, where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our Executive Director. Mark, on the last episode, we talked about the Global Leaders Retreat in Sydney, Australia, that you're heading to soon. But you are going to stay beyond the Global Leaders Retreat for another retreat. Talk to us about that.
Mark Prater:
The Leadership Team Retreat will happen after the Global Leaders Retreat. This is our schedule and our thinking in doing that. We're gathering global leaders there in Sydney — the leadership team and I can't wait to be with them — and that will end on Friday or Saturday, I can't remember which. Then that weekend, the leadership team will spend time with both churches. We're going to do a combined service on Sunday with both churches there in Sydney — Wahroonga and Parramatta. And then on Monday, the leadership team is staying, as you mentioned, Ben, and we are doing our retreat from Monday through Wednesday.
Not all the guys on the leadership team will be there. It'll be myself, Jeff Purswell, Jon Payne, Jared Mellinger, and of course Dave Taylor, who lives in Sydney. We decided to do it this way because we have our leadership team retreat in June, and we thought: Dave always comes to us — we're there, let's just stay and go to him. So we hope it serves our brother and friend Dave Taylor. But we're really looking forward to the time we'll have together.
Just a reminder of why we do these retreats. All those names I mentioned — we're spread out geographically. Jared and I are both here at Covenant Fellowship, but all the rest of the guys on the team are just spread out geographically. So just being together and continuing to build relationally as a team is important. And then we choose topics that are either in the category of longer strategic conversations, or that are timely as we map out the rest of this year and the first part of 2027. That's what's on the agenda. I've been working on it and I can't wait to be with the guys on the leadership team during the retreat. Again, that'll be June 15th through the 18th, so we would really appreciate your prayers for us during that time.
Benjamin Kreps:
Well, like you said, you're working on your agenda. I imagine it will be the kind of agenda you typically bring to the leadership team retreat — one that could never possibly be completely fulfilled. And in this ambitious agenda you're developing, what's the plan? What will you guys be spending time talking about and praying about together?
Mark Prater:
Yeah, we've got a number of things on the agenda. We'll do a debrief from our time with the global leaders, because we'll learn things from them that will help us in leading Sovereign Grace as a global family of churches. But we've got a number of other things planned as well.
We've got some global issues we want to work through. One example: we've at least defined and established in our thinking, as a leadership team and as part of our strategic plan to expand globally, the concept of establishing strategic global centers outside of the United States. Right now those centers are Mexico City, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Manila in the Philippines, and Sydney, Australia. These are places where theological training for pastors can occur or is already occurring; where conferences and retreats can be held; where it can serve as a base for church planting in that part of the world and other global missions; and where one of our global leaders is based. So we want to talk about a ten-year plan for our strategic centers. That will be a longer — I think good — strategic conversation. Those centers I mentioned may not be the only ones; there may be others added in the future. We don't know how God is going to grow us, but those are the ones we've identified.
I also mentioned last year to the Council of Elders a plan we have in place to certify global Pastors Colleges that want to be called Sovereign Grace Pastors Colleges — we'll be getting an update on that. We're also going to discuss some standards we want to put in place for the money we give from our development funds to our global partners, to strengthen what we've already got there. We already have a number of guidelines we want them to follow, but there are certain standards we're thinking about as it relates to the giving of money that people give to Sovereign Grace so sacrificially. I'm also going to give a brief update on my time with the Mexico leadership team, which was wonderful.
So those are some of the categories under global. We're also going to work through — this will start more philosophically — a conversation about our counsel as a leadership team to regional leaders and to elderships and churches in our regions. How effective are we, and how can we grow? Can we be even more effective in serving them with our input and counsel?
I'm going to bring a plan for the February 2027 Leadership Team and Regional Leader Retreat. That has become an annual event for us, where the leadership team invites all the U.S. regional leaders along with our non-leadership-team directors — people like Joel, Director of Church Planting; Bob Kauflin, Director of Sovereign Grace Music; Eric Turbedsky, Director of West Coast Development; Jim Donohue, newly named Director of Evangelism; Walt Alexander, Director of Leadership Development. And we've got Ricky Alcantar on that list, Josh Blount, and probably Brian Chesemore. We sort of expanded it because we found that retreat is really important in setting the leadership tone for the year. So I'll be bringing a plan for that, specifically around how we want to use our time with the regional leaders and directors.
And then we're going to spend some time — we've got a lot of work to do regarding the Pastors and Leaders Conference. We've got a good plan in place for this year, but we've got some decisions to make there. We'll also begin planning the 2027 conference — believe it or not, we've got to work that far ahead — and maybe kick around some thoughts and ideas related to the 2028 conference. We do think and talk that far ahead.
I'll be bringing a plan for the Council of Elders meeting — just a reminder to our guys, that will be a virtual elders meeting this year. I believe it's October 30th, from 6 to 9PM EST. Just a number of things to get ready for that. And we're doing it virtually this year because of the Pastors and Leaders Conference, so that pastors who are Council of Elders delegates can travel with the leaders they're bringing to the conference.
And then just a reminder to the guys on the Council of Elders: we'll do the vote for the Executive Director during the conference, specifically on Thursday. The conference starts Wednesday night, and the vote will be Thursday afternoon between 3 and 4 PM in a special Council of Elders meeting that's already been approved.
We've got Jared doing a publishing update, and then I'm going to give the guys an update on our fundraising efforts — some new thoughts I've been working through as we look to develop even more what I call gospel patrons in Sovereign Grace.
One other one I'm really looking forward to is a strategic conversation about our development in the United States. We often talk about our strategic expansion outside the United States, but we want to have a specific conversation about our strategic expansion and development here at home. We've taken a step in that direction with Eric being the Director of West Coast Development — and Eric is doing a wonderful job, producing a lot of good fruit. So the question is: should we have that kind of role or person in other parts of the country? And if so, where?
And then I've asked Jeff to give a current theological and evangelical update on trends that he's seen — and that's always the highlight, at least for me, and I think for all the guys on the leadership team. So that's a little bit of all of it. It's an ambitious agenda — we've got more — and we never always get all the way through it. But that's what we've got planned. We really would appreciate your prayers.
Benjamin Kreps:
Excellent. Well, thanks for all your hard work, and thank you to the leadership team — all the guys who are heading out to Sydney to serve us as you spend unhurried time discussing and praying together. Mark, is this your last leadership team retreat before the vote in November, or do you know?
Mark Prater:
We have one in September. That'll be my last one before the vote.
Benjamin Kreps:
All right. Well, the clock continues to tick.
Mark Prater:
It does.
Benjamin Kreps:
But in the meantime, thank you, Mark, and thanks for the update. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week, Lord willing. Bye for now.