A Small Church. A Great Big God.
An update from Billy Raies, Senior Pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Midland, Texas, USA...
Like many small churches, we had sadly adopted a belief that while we needed to be faithful in making disciples locally, we had to be a larger church to play a part in making disciples globally. We could not be more thankful for how God has used our family of churches and men like Rich Richardson and Dave Taylor to help us understand and believe that God can and does use small churches in global disciple making. As we sought the Lord in prayer, God was so kind to have our paths cross with a pastor with a passion to plant churches among unreached people groups in Nepal.
Over the last 9 years, we have had the privilege of building a strong relationship, friendship, and partnership with this pastor. Until covid, Allen Dicharry and myself (Pastors of Sovereign Grace Church in Midland, Texas) together with Aaron Mayfield (Elder at Redemption Hill Church in Round Rock, Texas), went once a year to work with this pastor doing pastors conferences throughout the nation with a focus on our Seven Shared Values. The pastor we are working with absolutely loves our Seven Shared Values and wants the 160+ pastors and churches he knows and cares for to be equipped and encouraged by this gospel centered, mission minded, and God glorifying vision for ministry. We are so excited and humbled that he is now expressing an interest in becoming a part of the Sovereign Grace family of churches and hopes to be an instrument of God’s grace in planting, adopting and caring for other Sovereign Grace Churches throughout his nation in the future.
In February, we took a small team to Nepal to focus on what it would mean for this church to become a Sovereign Grace Church and how the process might look for this to happen. As such, our goal for this trip was to spend time with not only the lead pastor but to minister, care for and encourage his entire elder team; believing that a healthy plurality of elders would play such a significant role in cultivating a healthy church and guiding it through change.
Our team included Philip Estrada (Lead Pastor at Mission City Fellowship, San Antonio, Texas) and Allen Dicharry, Erik Schmaltz and myself from Sovereign Grace Church in Midland, Texas. Our teaching sessions included the vision and mission of Biblical eldership, the elder and humility, the joy of the Lord as the strength of the elder, and the present and future reward of God’s glory through faithful eldership. We were strengthened and unified by God’s presence in prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit through prophetic ministry. We were privileged to carry one another’s burdens for both personal and ministry needs. These were humble men who opened their hearts to the teaching of God’s Word and to us. As our time together drew to a close, one elder even said, “Woe to us if we do not apply the things we have learned.”
We learned much from their devotion to Christ and His mission. They live with constant thankfulness for the presence, power, faithfulness, and sovereignty of God in salvation. They celebrate the abiding love of our risen Savior preserving them through pain and persecution. They depend upon the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit to empower their mission. They wear well the armor of God in waging war against sin’s temptations and the tactics of the devil. They live with a passion for God’s glory, a loving burden for their church to grow in the character and mission of Christ and a desire to see every people group in their nation reached with the gospel.
The challenges are great. Laws are in place that seek to limit the growth of the churches. Spiritual warfare is constant as each day finds thousands of people seeking hope and help at the Hindu and Buddhist temples and shrines. Adam’s sin brought spiritual blindness to all mankind but it seems that Satan loves to use religious idolatry to put mud on already blind eyes in hopes of making people doubly blind. Yet in spite of the appearance of hopelessness all around them, these elders have dependant delight and happy hope in the gospel being the power of God unto salvation!
Philip, Allen and I were privileged to be invited to preach at three different churches. The worship of the precious believers there is passionate and grateful! Their hunger for the Word is exemplary and enviable. Their love of their local churches and for the lost tell all those around them that Jesus is their greatest treasure.
On our last night there, God filled us with gospel hope for the future of these churches and this nation when we met with four younger men who are elder candidates. Many of these men are former Hindus or Buddhists that God has radically saved and who now value Christ centered teaching, sound doctrine, gospel partnerships and making disciples for Christ.
Please keep this pastoral team in prayer as they seek to not merely become a Sovereign Grace Church one day but a Sovereign Grace Church that can be instrumental in reaching the nation and all its people groups through caring for and planting local churches. Please pray for us as to how God would want to best use our efforts in the future to serve them.
