Partnership is biblical, and it is a gift! Until 1 year ago, my regular experience was being meaningfully partnered with other Sovereign Grace local churches. Having moved to Europe in July 2023 we came to a continent where interdependency is lacking. In my country, Italy, churches battle for turf rather than serve one another. The gospel witness is so lacking in some countries that the nearest like-minded, theologically-grounded church could be in a country where a different language is spoken. The result is that pastors in Europe often feel alone and are tempted to think their work is futile. Europe needs rich gospel partnership.

That is one reason I am so grateful for Sovereign Grace: the leaders and members of Sovereign Grace across the globe are making an investment in Europe for the glory of God, the good of pastors, and for local churches. A recent expression of this was our first Sovereign Grace Europe retreat. Pastors from Belarus, Poland, Italy, the UK, Turkey, and Czech Republic gathered in Warsaw from 21-23 June to receive refreshment from God’s Word, build relational connections, and begin dreaming about what SGC-Europe could be. We were joined by Mark Prater and Dave Taylor, who invested care and teaching as well as Kyle Huber who has significantly invested in the Belarussian pastors and connected them to SGC.

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Ed O'Mara is a Sovereign Grace Church Planter in Italy and Area Leader for Europe.

The post first appeared on the SGC Missions blog on July 5, 2023.

More than a few women have asked us how we should view a woman's role in leading music on Sundays in light of Scriptures like 1 Corinthians 11:33-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15. So recently on the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast, we invited Jeff Purswell, dean of the Sovereign Grace Pastors College, to join us for a conversation on how we can think about this topic in a way that seeks to honor God's Word as well as the significant role women play in our gatherings.

If you’d like to know more, listen to the podcast below with additional recommended resources.

Recently on the podcast, I recommended Tony Reinke’s book: God, Technology, and the Christian Life. We all interact with technology as it pushes into our lives raising both theological and even ethical questions. Tony does an excellent job answering these questions and develops a theology of technology. I highly recommend this book. If you’d like to learn more about the book recorded on the podcast, watch, listen or read the transcript below.

In the Spring 2023 Sovereign Grace Journal article, The Value of Women in the Mission of the Church, Jace Hudson, Lead Pastor, Covenant of Grace Church (Copley, OH), holds out a biblical vision of manhood and womanhood, equally made in his image, and positions us to honor the equality and value of women in the highest way possible.

While Scripture clearly teaches that God has given men the responsibility to lead in the home and church, this does not mean that in all other matters men and women are interchangeable. They are not. To assume so is a very egalitarian idea.

The project of egalitarianism has been to file down the uniqueness of the sexes. Equality for all has become equality of all. Our culture argues that men and women are equal in worth and in every other way. Women can go to war while men stay home and raise the kids. The two sexes are interchangeable. But think about that. If men and women are interchangeable, neither is indispensable. Said another way, if the two are interchangeable, either is dispensable.

This is where egalitarianism leads, but complementarianism goes somewhere altogether different.

Please join us in praying for incoming Pastors College students and their families as they'll start arriving in Louisville in a few weeks.  Thank you!

The 2023 Pastors Conference scheduled for November 14-16 in Orlando, FL is now open for registration.

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.

We live in a culture that turns the truth upside down, which can bring pressures upon the church, and create challenges for pastors to lead through. Therefore, the theme of our conference, “The Church of Christ and the Triumph of the Truth” couldn’t be more timely because we need to be reminded that we are the church of Jesus Christ that is built upon the sure foundation of God’s infallible word. With a desire to serve you, we have designed our five main sessions to equip you to continue to hold fast to the word of life so that you can protect and strengthen your church in a way that it remains as a beacon of light in a crooked and twisted generation (Philippians 2:15-16).