Missional-Life

It is a great pleasure to be able to introduce my next Converse Interviewee. Mark Alderton is one of the Pastors Sovereign Grace Church – Aurora, CO.

Adam Bradley: Please can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Mark Alderton: I was saved at age 19 in college while pursuing a degree in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The university was a very secular environment but God pursued me with his grace and I was regenerated in 1980. For the rest of school I was involved with a campus Christian organization where I grew in the faith. After finishing my degree I moved to Minneapolis where I joined Grace Church of Richfield (years later renamed Sovereign Grace Fellowship). While a member there I married my wife of now 19 years, raised 5 kids aged 16 to 4 years as of today, and spent 15 years as a scientist in a company that made pacemakers and defibrillators. I left that job in 2002 to pursue training with Sovereign Grace Ministries (then still called PDI) to become a pastor. At the end of that 9 month training I was privileged to join the staff at Sovereign Grace Fellowship, where I was associate pastor for the last 5 years. Two months ago we moved to the Denver, CO area to replant (for lack of a better word) a Sovereign Grace church there.

Adam Bradley: Please can you tell me some of the highlights of your testimony?

Mark Alderton: I was raised Catholic, which God used to give me a fear of hell and a conviction that there was a God who had to be dealt with. My senior year in high school I knew I would be leaving my small town to go to the big city and big university and I felt I needed some grounding in what I really believed about God and the world and life. So I read the Bible my senior year. The result was a vague notion that I needed to have God lead my life, but no understanding of the gospel. For the first three semesters of my college life, Christians came witnessing at my door. Finally, I was confronted with the truth that I was a sinner who needed forgiveness, and that Christ died on the cross for my sins, and that if I repented and believed I would be saved. All of grace.

Adam Bradley: What church do you lead/involved in? (background, movement/denomination, philosophy of ministry, etc)

Mark Alderton: For the last 5 years I was pastoring on staff at Sovereign Grace Fellowship, which is one of the churches in Sovereign Grace Ministries, a family of churches based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Now I lead Sovereign Grace Church in Aurora, Colorado. Sovereign Grace is committed to local church planting and church strengthening as the primary means of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. Our understanding of that task includes modern day apostolic oversight, which are those men whose gifting lends itself to serving multiple churches, whose Christ-like character has been confirmed by observation, and whose fruitfulness and wisdom in church planting with the gospel are recognized. There are many more things that could be said, but I would refer you to www.sovgracemin.org for a complete statement of faith and explanation of many of our distinctives.

Adam Bradley: What books are your currently reading?

Mark Alderton: Just finished “In My Place Condemned He Stood” by J.I. Packer and Mark Dever. Now reading “Holiness Day by Day” by Jerry Bridges for personal edification and reminders of the gospel. For preaching I’m consulting the Word Biblical Commentary on Colossians by Peter T. O’Brien, “Colossians & Philemon” by Murray Harris, and “The Hope of Glory” by Sam Storms.  I’m reading aloud to my kids “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens.

Adam Bradley: What’s sermons/preachers are you listening to at the moment (the i-pod question)?

Mark Alderton: No iPod! However, I’ve been downloading the Sovereign Grace leadership podcast series and listening online. Next up is “The Pastor and His Time,” by CJ Mahaney, Jeff Purswell and Joshua Harris. You can find these podcasts at the Sovereign Grace Ministries website.

Adam Bradley: Why is church planting such a passion for you?

Mark Alderton: When the Holy Spirit set aside Barnabas and Saul (Paul) to the work he had prepared for them, the first organized, church-based foray to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth, it was a church planting mission, not merely evangelism. Acts 13 and 14 recall the story of their first missionary journey, and it ended with Paul and Barnabas returning through the cities in which Paul had been stoned and they had been persecuted for the purpose of strengthening the souls of the disciples (Acts 14:22) and appointing elders in every church (Acts 14:23).  Their mission, indeed the Holy Spirit’s work, was to plant churches with identifiable elder leadership. Church planting from local churches under apostolic oversight is the model that brought the gospel from the upper room to the halls of Rome when every nation was an unreached nation. It remains the model that we are passionate about.

Adam Bradley: What would you say are the three most important principles for any young want-to-be church planter?

Mark Alderton:

• Know the gospel (theological ac.
• Love the gospel (passion for Christ and him crucified, not just orthodoxy)
• Preach the gospel (applying it to all of life and founding the church on it)

Adam Bradley: Here’s your opportunity to say anything else you like…

Mark Alderton:

Press on in the good work, fellow soldiers of the cross….

Adam Bradley: Thanks Mark!