Registration is Open

This conference is for pastors and their wives, church leaders, and anyone who hopes to someday be a pastor or church planter. It’s a time for both teaching and fellowship. Most of all, we gather as pastors around God’s Word to celebrate the glorious gospel and better apply it to the churches we love and serve.

The Apostle Peter writes, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:10). Because we have received mercy through the gospel of Jesus Christ, the local church is no ordinary community—it is the very community of God’s people, a colony of heaven on earth. As such, we’re called to live God-centered lives, shining as lights in the midst of a fallen world. Pastors have the great privilege of leading their churches to live lives centered on God: delighting in his presence, joyfully pursuing godliness, and doing all things for his glory. We do this by our example, and through our preaching, pastoring, discipleship, and leadership. Our 2024 Pastors Conference is intended to equip pastors, their wives, and local church leaders to more fully delight in God and equip their churches to be a God-centered people.

On March 5th on the Mark Prater Podcast, Mark and Benjamin Kreps chatted about God’s work in growing and testing our faith for planting churches. Here’s an excerpt, and the full transcript, video and audio are linked below.

God loves us, and because of Christ, we are also his children. And that love is expressed in so many different ways, so many good ways. But one of those is he tests our faith because he loves us. He wants us to have our faith strengthened in him, which not only builds your relationship with him, but it helps you accomplish the things that he's called you to do as a pastor or as a member of a church or as a church community. And we need faith to trust God to do those things.

And so I've been thinking a little bit about that as it relates to church planting. Anybody that was at the pastor's conference last year heard me share my heart and burden that we would take risks to plant more churches here in the States. And those are the kinds of testing of faith that I want to talk about. He tests our faith in trials. James 1 talks about that, but he also tests our faith for the purpose of growing our faith by taking thoughtful risks to advance the gospel. And that includes church planting. And when it comes to church planting, we begin to think about planting a church. Maybe an eldership does or maybe a church begins to talk about it. We can go to the practicals and that's not a wrong thing to do. Many of the practicals are important. Like do we have a person to plant the church? Do we have a guy who can do it? Do we have a location? Is that a viable location? Do we have the finances? Those kind of questions are important to do, but we sometimes miss things that we see in scripture that we're to do. And those things in particular I think strengthen our faith. They test our faith and strengthen our faith.

So the first one is prayer. And I think a great example is in Acts 13, many people know this passage. In Acts 13:1 it says, "Now there were in the church at Antioch Prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who's called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manean, and a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrach, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting", so they're together, they're worshiping, they're praying, they're fasting, "the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off." So that missionary journey that Barnabas and Paul took, the very first one was initiated through the process of prayer and the Spirit made it clear to them what they were to do.

So what did that do to their faith?

We’re thrilled to share with you this conversation with well-known theologian Dr. Steve Wellum, addressed to Sovereign Grace pastors. Listen in as Jeff Purswell interviews Dr. Wellum on a variety of topics, including his personal theological development, his new Systematic Theology, and concerns about the state of evangelicalism.

Steve Wellum is Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of many books, including Systematic Theology, Volume 1: From Canon to Concept. He teaches two Systematic Theology classes at the Pastors College.

In March, Bob Kauflin, Devon Kauflin & David Zimmer of Sovereign Grace Music, travelled to the Philippines for a night of Gathering Around the Gospel in song, Scripture, and prayer at the Philippines International Convention Center. They also led a conference for 250 Sovereign Grace leaders and musicians from the Philippines, Australia, Pakistan, Nepal, and Korea, and led a seminar for over 1000 musicians. On Sunday they led a combined gathering of four Sovereign Grace churches. Watch the video recap or read the SGC Missions blog post to learn more.

Video by: Art Love Life Photography

Song: Behold Our God (Live at WorshipGod). Music and words by Jonathan Baird, Meghan Baird, Ryan Baird, and Stephen Altrogge © 2011 Sovereign Grace Worship/ASCAP, Sovereign Grace Praise/BMI (adm. by Integrity Music) Sovereign Grace Music, a division of Sovereign Grace Churches. All rights reserved.

From Sovereign Grace Music:

In preparation for Holy Week, we wanted to share a Spotify playlist of songs we have compiled that will help you reflect on Jesus's life and death and deepen your affection for our beautiful Savior.
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Without a word You faced the accusations
And joyfully You bore the bitter cross
The Innocent received our condemnation
And paid for the rebel’s cost.

Recently on the Mark Prater podcast, Mark encouraged listeners to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts as an expression of loving others. Here is a clip from that conversation with Ben Kreps. The full podcast is linked below.

We don't want to just be in name continuation, we want to be it in name and in practice as well. And the New Testament speaks about our pursuit of the gifts in particular. In 1 Corinthians 14 verse 1, "Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts especially that you may prophesy". And then in second Timothy chapter one, Paul is writing to Timothy. And in chapter one verse five, he's reminding Timothy of his sincere faith. And then he says to Timothy in the next verse, verse six, "For this reason (or because of your sincere faith), for this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God..."

So that language of earnestly desiring and fanning into flame, that is active language that exhorts us to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. In other words, they need our intentional pursuit and we need to be reminded of that. That's what Paul is doing in 2 Timothy 1, he's reminding him of his sincere faith and then he's reminding him to fan into flame the gifts that God has given him. And that's so important to us because we need the work and the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the members of our churches and the pastors of our churches because it's the Spirit that empowers our gospel ministry and gospel mission. And we will do that best when all of the gifts that God has given every member of a Sovereign Grace church are being used for the common good as it says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, to serve others. And it is an expression of loving others because we are pursuing love. So it's just something that I want to remind our pastors of, that you would be intentional to remind the members of your church to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.