“As I've traveled throughout Sovereign Grace churches this year, I thank God for the young people in our churches. I see younger generations of people, and I'm thinking particularly the teen years into the twenties, early thirties, who really love Jesus and are excited about the work of the gospel and love their Sovereign Grace church. It really is encouraging to see and maybe an evidence that we might be a multi-generational family of churches by the grace of God. And that's why I'm so encouraged by the Relay Conference that will happen this first week of January where we're going to have between 650 and 700 young adults there who are gathered together. And I think one of the effects of that conference is those young adults are going to leave together realizing, boy, we're not on gospel mission alone. We're doing this with other people of our generation throughout the world in Sovereign Grace Churches. So I'm very grateful to God for the young people in our churches.” ~Mark Prater
“The future of the church is indescribably glorious." ~Jared Mellinger
Mark Prater, Executive Director of Sovereign Grace Churches giving his State of the Union address at the 2023 Council of Elders Meeting preceding the Pastors Conference: The Church of Christ and the Triumph of Truth.
The 2023 Sovereign Grace Churches State of the Union address is posted on the Sovereign Grace website along with all Pastors Conference resources. On his recent podcast, Mark highlighted three key points from his annual State of the Union Address:
Developing Future Pastors
Risk to Plant Churches in the United States
Protecting and Promoting Our Gospel Heritage
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”— Matthew 9:37
A Church Planter is a:
Discipler: A church planter is someone marked by a sense of mission to lead others to follow Jesus. He is a disciple-making disciple.
Pastor: A church planter is also a pastor and must fulfill the biblical requirements for character and teaching. He is a gifted preacher and qualified elder.
Missionary: A church planter will think and live like a missionary, with a heart for a particular place and people, and discernment to proclaim the gospel effectively. He is a Spirit-called missionary.
Equipper: A church planter must equip and position others to participate in the work of ministry. He is a contagious leader and equipper.
Churchman: A church planter will display a heart and skill for building the local church. He is a churchman and community builder.
Pioneer: A church planter must be able to bring into reality something that doesn’t exist yet. He is a visionary architect.
Optimist: A church planter maintains a hope-filled faith in God through the ups and downs of church planting. He is a God-centered optimist.
Get Help in Assessing Your Call to Church Planting
The 7-Traits of a Church Planter assessment tool is aimed at guiding and identifying those the Lord of the harvest is preparing to be sent into the harvest. It’s the result of bringing together biblical principles, practical wisdom, and lessons learned in planting churches for over 30 years as a family of churches in Sovereign Grace. This tool is meant to be profitable for self-assessment, but it is also designed to be part of a larger conversation with your pastors and those around you.
Regardless of what particular role each disciple plays in advancing the mission (as a church planter, pastor, small group leader, etc.) every disciple is part of Jesus’s mission. May this assessment serve to stir your desire to be a faithful disciple of Jesus for the glory of God.
Ephesians 3:10 - “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known…”
Redeemer Fellowship celebrated our five-year anniversary on September 9 this year. God has been very good to us as a young church family in Newark, Delaware. As I think about the past five years and all that God has done, I can’t help but pause and celebrate the gift that church planting is and how powerfully God uses it for his glory.
I don’t even mean to celebrate a particular way of church planting (though I wouldn’t want to do it with any other denomination than Sovereign Grace!). But rather, I want to celebrate the act of church planting in any form. Whether in perceived ‘strength’ or ‘weakness’; whether with 30 or 300; whether near or far; the planting of new Gospel preaching churches is a primary and powerful way that God continues to do his good work in this world and in our lives.
Church planting multiplies the manifold wisdom of God.
Joel Shorey is the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship, Newark, Delaware, USA.
This post originally appeared on September 24, 2023 on the Sovereign Grace Missions blog.
Sunday August 20, 2023 was a historic day for our growing family of churches in Mexico. It had been over 10 years since we had sent out a team to plant a church, but on this Sunday in an unprecedented event we prayed and commissioned two men to plant two churches. Through God's initiation four years ago, he sovereignly sent us 2 men from different parts of the country to be discipled and trained in order to go back to their respective cities to plant churches.
As part of their training, both men went through and participated in all of the ministries of our church in Juárez. They also covered much theological study and preaching workshops as well as participation in a year-long Leadership Discipleship group.
Keep reading to learn more about the church plants in Huajuapan, Oaxaca and Reynosa, Tamaulipa, including photos and more details on the men and their families on the Sovereign Grace Missions blog.
Carlos Contreras is lead pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and key leader for Sovereign Grace Mexico.
The post Church Planting in Mexico first appeared on Aug. 28, 2023 on the Sovereign Grace Missions blog.
Recently on the podcast, Ben and I talked about 1 Corinthians 3: 5-9 with truths that can stir our faith for church planting. Here are some excerpts from the transcript, with the full podcast linked below.
Paul writes in verse 5, "What then is Apollos, what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God gives the growth. He who plants, he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field and God's building."
So just a couple of thoughts; one, in the text he says twice, that it is God that gives the growth. And, we have to have a component of faith to our church planting. That we believe our God will give the growth when we plant churches. And, when we talk about church planting there’s lot about methodology and that's really good and really helpful. So we should study those things and even put some of those methods into practice because we want to plant strong churches, but we also want to believe that God will give the growth.
Second, we are called God's fellow workers. That's stunning to me. That God would involve us in the work of his mission, but then to be called fellow workers with God, is amazing. And so when we church plant, we are laboring with God in his field, planting and watering, knowing that he will give the growth. And so church planting is a privilege because we are laboring with God. We are fellow workers with God. So, just a couple of thoughts from a text that I hope stirs us to think about church planting more and pray about church planting, and the Lord may just lead you to plant a church in the coming year or two, believing that he will give the growth.