“So what Jesus called us to do, he gave us the power of the Spirit to accomplish and he sends us to do it. And that's why our small family of churches gets to play a small part in advancing the gospel throughout the world because we want to see more people come to know our Jesus and know him as Lord and Savior.” ~Mark Prater
Recently on the Mark Prater podcast, Mark gave an update on Sovereign Grace Partnership and gospel advancement throughout the world. Here are a few excerpts from that conversation:
I'm so grateful for how pastors in Sovereign Grace are working to advance the gospel. One of the things that's so interesting to me, anybody that's read Acts knows this, it's nothing brilliant. But as Acts develops, what you see is that partnerships are formed so that they can advance the gospel together. So Jesus gives these words to the 11 that are standing there and they go about advancing the gospel, but they form partnerships with men and other churches who are their coworkers. Paul becomes an apostle and he forms partnerships and churches working together, represented by men who are coworkers with the original 11. And with Paul, they advanced the gospel throughout the world. And that's still happening today. Not in big apostolic ministry. I don't mean that at all, of course, but churches partnering together to advance the gospel throughout the world.
And it's something that we get to enjoy in Sovereign Grace. It makes building relationally only sweeter as we get to know and serve brothers and sisters and churches throughout the world. And what I just said, we've all heard that before, but brothers, we can't take that for granted. What we have is precious, it's biblical, and it allows us to accomplish what Jesus sent his Spirit to do in continuing the mission that he has given us. So it's a glorious mission. It's a glorious cause, and the joy of it all is we get to do it together in Sovereign Grace.
I want to illustrate how partnership in Sovereign Grace is happening. So you may be aware or not aware that recently we've added five churches from Pakistan as candidate churches in Sovereign Grace who are now pursuing a partnership, full partnership, with Sovereign Grace. And those five churches are led by men that we've built relationally with for years. And when I say we, I mean pastors in Sovereign Grace. So through our partnership with TLI Training Leaders International, there've been several Sovereign Grace pastors who traveled to the Middle East to sort of a safe neutral country where the Pakistani brothers joined them. And they went through several years of theological training. Men like Scott Crook made many trips. And then Greg Dirnberger and Dave Quilla and many more guys that are in the Midwest Northwest region. Scott's now in the Mid-Atlantic region, but the Midwest Northwest region, many of the pastors there have made trips to serving those pastors. And Dave Quilla continues to serve the brothers there in Pakistan.
So it's another illustration of how partnership is working in Sovereign Grace to theologically equip pastors in Pakistan. And five of those are now going to pursue ordination as the next step to move from a candidate church to a full partner church. So it's just wonderful that we actually have five candidate churches in Pakistan right now.
