The Sovereign Grace Board recently asked Mark Prater to be our acting director of church planting and church care. We are very pleased to announce that Mark accepted.

This acting role will allow us to benefit from Mark’s leadership as we make further progress in our mission, to plant and build churches with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Mark will serve in this key role until a new Leadership Team is selected and confirmed, assuming ratification of the proposed polity. 

Mark brings to this role church planting, church care, senior & executive pastoral experience. Mark has served as an elder at Covenant Fellowship Church since 2002. In 1996, he led a church-planting team to Pittsburgh in order to begin Providence Church, where he served as senior pastor until 2002. Mark has also served as the director for the Sovereign Grace Ministries Church Planting Group and regional representative overseeing the Northeast region of churches in the United States.

Please join us in welcoming Mark Prater as our acting director of church planting and church care.

As we work together in our mission to plant and build churches with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to inform you of a change in Sovereign Grace Ministries’ Leadership Team. Dave Harvey has made the decision to resign from our Leadership Team so that he can resume his full-time role as an elder at Covenant Fellowship Church. Dave made a public statement yesterday explaining this change on the Covenant Fellowship Church blog.

As Dave communicates in his post, this change does not reflect any lack of support for the direction or leadership of Sovereign Grace Ministries. Dave is, in fact, excited about our future mission and the benefits our new polity will bring to this work. He has expressed hopes of possibly returning to SGM service someday in the future. As Dave states, “…the story on this is not about what SGM lacks but what one pastor needs right now…It is one of those times where local and family needs must take priority over extra-local relationships/ministry.”   

This brief update provides insufficient space to adequately thank Dave for his outstanding contributions leading us in church care, church planting, and international expansion since 1995. These past 17 years Dave has played a vital role in keeping Sovereign Grace’s mission to plant and build churches with the gospel of Jesus Christ at the forefront of all we do both domestically and internationally. His proactive development of an SGM church planting group served to prepare future church planters for their calling. His model of church care in the Northeast region both strengthened individual churches and SGM as a whole. Covenant Fellowship Church, where Dave served as senior pastor for 18 years, has influenced SGM in countless ways through its example, teaching, and generosity. And Dave’s vision to further equip church planters through his focused writing and preaching on the topic will serve pastors for years to come. Please join us in thanking Dave for the unique role he has played serving us as a family of churches.   

We are grateful that his influence and service do not end here. Though transitioning from our Leadership Team, we look forward to Dave’s continued investment in the mission of SGM through his service as an elder at Covenant Fellowship Church this year. Please join us in praying for Dave and his family during this transition.  

Finally, we want to you know that the SGM Board looks forward to communicating the plan to cover Dave’s responsibilities as part of our transition to the new polity, pending ratification.