Friends,

As you may be aware, this week the entire board had the opportunity to meet for three days and work on some of the pressing issues facing Sovereign Grace Ministries right now. Some of you prayed for our retreat and we thank you for that kindness. (And thank you for your patience as communication here on the blog slowed down, too.) As we walk through this situation together as a family of churches, your partnership and prayers make all the difference for those of us in leadership.

Looking back on our retreat, I’m confident that God answered many of your prayers for us, and the silence on the blog was a stark contrast to some of the ways God seemed to be speaking to us.  Let me add how enriched we are by having the regional leaders contributing on the board level.  We not only are benefitting from their wisdom and experience, but we feel we are getting a much better sense of your thoughts and perspectives from these men, and for that we are very grateful. 

These are some of the other things I’m most grateful for from the past few days:

• Despite a very full agenda, God allowed us to have several extended times of prayer and Scripture study together. Praying for the members of our churches, our pastors, the Mahaneys, and others affected by these events was a great privilege for us as a team.
• We had an exercise of examining just a few of our weaknesses and failures.  Not all of this is new, but it was helpful to discuss these things at greater length and begin discussions of how to respond. Here were some of the major takeaways:
• We need to better define the relationship between SGM and local churches. What are all the contours of the partnership? What does it mean to be an SGM church?
• We lack formal processes for evaluating fitness for and disqualification from ministry. While this responsibility falls first to the local church, what is SGM’s role in serving churches in this regard and what should that look like?
• Many of our churches lack sufficient processes for people to engage with leaders about offenses. What can our role be in improving that situation?
• We need to make significant improvements to our communication, both with pastors and members of SGM churches. What are the most important issues to engage people on? What is our role versus a church’s role in communicating to members?
• We spent a morning with the elders of Covenant Life Church seeking to understand the effects of this season on CLC and to benefit from one another’s counsel.
• We spent several sessions (as a team and individually) with our two evaluators from Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Ted Kober and Ed Keinath. They held preliminary interviews with us, explained to us some different possibilities for their evaluation process, and spent time praying and looking at Scripture with us. As we were in Gaithersburg, they also met with C.J. and some of the elders at CLC.

These discussions are still the beginning of what is shaping up to be a defining moment in our history as a family of churches. God is most certainly at work, and there is much for us still to learn, as well as to apply as a result of the things he is showing us. Please keep praying for us and all the Sovereign Grace churches as we pursue what God has for us in this season.

One other thing: I know a few of you are wondering about the blog post on C.J.’s ministry qualification that we planned to post this week. In short, our senior pastors gave some great feedback on how our approach to the article could improve, and it simply wasn’t possible to get it revised amid everything else we had to do last week. Lord willing, we’ll give an update on that topic soon. 

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