The Beauty of Gospel Partnership Down Under
An update from Riley Spring, Lead Pastor of Sovereign Grace Church Parramatta and National Leader for Australia…
In April, we had the privilege of having Pastor Rob Flood out from Covenant Fellowship Church, Pennsylvania to teach at our first SG Australia Marriage Retreat and facilitate the Judicial Review Committee (JRC) training for our Pastors and Interns, as well as Jeffrey Jo, National Leader of SGC Philippines.
Marriage Retreat
The hope for our Marriage Retreat was to hit pause on life for a night and a day in order to strengthen and refresh our most significant relationship on earth! We had the joy of doing this with our two sister churches, enjoying fellowship, playing silly games, worshipping together and sitting under some excellent teaching from Rob.
Across the four talks Rob reminded us of God’s glorious purpose for marriage and how we can live in the good of it by running hard after Jesus and pursuing what is best for our spouse. In a world where equality has removed any distinction between men and women, it was a fresh reminder of the beauty of our differences as husbands and wives – equal in dignity and worth, yet with distinct roles. We ended our time together with Rob giving us some practical applications and tools for communication, as we were reminded that words have power and a God-given purpose.
It was a sweet couple of days with time spent reflecting and being reminded of God’s glorious purpose for our marriages in a fallen world. If you are interested you can access the talks and outlines here.
Judicial Review Committee Training
During the week Rob gathered with our pastors and interns so that we could think biblically and practically about our church polity, especially the pointy end of polity, our JRC. At first, it sounded like it could be a bit dull and boring but not only was the training vital, Rob made it very engaging, interesting, and practical.
After the principles were taught we ended the training with two mock trial situations in which we had to act out and judge two difficult fictional pastoral situations. This helped us realise how difficult and necessary this process is. Rob helped us think through what it would look like to make this a reality here in Australia as we plant more churches. It was a very useful and fruitful time.
We are so thankful to Rob for making it all the way down under to serve our family of churches. It’s a beautiful picture of gospel partnership, we truly couldn’t do this alone, and wouldn’t want to!
