JDGreear.com

Why We Do What We Do

What an awesome spectacle on Sunday night! We do monthly baptisms, and this month's was at Falls Lake. We baptized around 30 people that night... pretty awesome, even though it rained for the first time in 60 years during the one hour we were baptizing. Then it quit. I told Danny Franks, our Connections Pastor who coordinates the baptism, that God must have been specifically indicating His unhappiness with Pastor Danny. (That's a joke... He's most unhappy with Pastor David.)

Here is a piece of the story of one of the guys who was baptized (quoted with his permission):

I have been attending Summit Church w/ my girlfriend for the last few months and was really blown away. My previous bad experiences and sinful stereotypes of Christian life melted away. Summit has the type of worship that my soul craved, and the messages were a breath of honest, Gospel-based fresh air that made sense to me in ways I hadn't experienced before. The past month or so, my seeking was reaching a peak, and I decided that I wanted to meet w/ Pastor J.D. privately in person. This meeting was to be a brain-picking session, at least as my original intentions had it, where I could candidly ask for counseling and guidance from a Godly man that knew what he was talking about. As that appointment drew near, the most remarkable thing happened, I felt God telling me to do something -- something that was not my original plan. Then, last Friday, the day had finally come and I knew exactly what I was supposed to do.

I wondered (and still do) about a million things. While seeking those answers and performing some serious introspection, I felt God telling me that "first thing's first" -- I need to surrender fully to Him, and the answers will come. This, combined w/my newfound assuredness that I was sick and tired of living for myself, that life must have some other purpose, and that every attempt of mine to fill the void in my heart w/other people, or things utterly failed, I knew what I was to do.

Things that I "knew" my entire life, but never made sense to me, are all of a sudden clicking. My life is now meaningful b/c of what He has done for me on the cross, and what I can do through Him and for His glory. I put aside all my questions and anxieties, and w/ Pastor J.D.'s guidance, I surrendered my entire life to Christ. This is the only way to live!

And how cool was it when the guy responded to the question, "Why are you coming to be baptized?" by  putting his fist in the air and shouting, "I want to spit in Satan's face and tell him that Jesus is taking back all those years he stole from me." Those are the kinds of people I love.

Those being baptized provided a pretty good cross-section of the people we are reaching... young professionals from the Brier Creek/RTP area, college students, young married people... especially cool were the young teenagers led to Christ by their parents (our students are our first mission field!). As we open our campus in Brier Creek/South Durham, it was a reminder that these kinds of people are why we are going. Brier Creek/South Durham is teeming with people and relatively no churches. God, do more than we ever asked or imagined! (Eph 3:20).

How Do You Know What You are "Called" to as a Christian?

People often ask me how I know I was "called" to be a Pastor. They almost seem a little disappointed when I can't recount a time when God spelled out "Go Pastor the Summit Church" in my Cheerios.

I got conflicting pieces of advice when I was going through the decision-making process of whether to enter the ministry. One pastor told me that since 1 Timothy 3:1 says "If any man desires the office of a bishop, he desires a good thing,"--then, he said, the desire for pastoring was the calling. Another told me, "Don't go into the ministry unless you absolutely have to. There's way, way, way too many 'uncalled' guys out there just taking a paycheck."

What to make of all this? Unfortunately, I never had a Damascus Road experience. What I did have was a clear sense of my spiritual gifts combined with the affirmation of how my gifts benefited the church, and a burning passion to teach the Word and see people meet Christ.

Let me draw an analogy from Jim Colllins' Good to Great... Collins says that great companies live by the "the Hedgehog principle," whereby they find the confluence of 3 spheres that combine to make them a success... (1) what they're good at, (2) what they're passionate about, and (3) what there's a market for. I think this model works for knowing how to know what you're called to spiritually as well: (1) identify where you are gifted, (2) what you're passionate about, and (3) where there's a need in the church (or the world) for that gift. Without any one of the three spheres, you probably aren't called... for example, if I think I'm good at singing and I'm passionate about it, but it seems to benefit no one as evidenced by the fact that no one seeks me out to sing, then I'm probably not called. I say this because it seems there are a lot of people who love to teach and preach, but no one seems to be as blessed by their handling of the Word as they themselves are. If the church doesn't affirm your supposed gift, then you should probably pursue something else. Unless your Jeremiah or Isaiah or something. Otherwise, let the church call you out. God will put in their hearts that you are to be "separated unto Him for a special task." I love how Martin Luther said this (my paraphrase): Don't seek to lead the church; when God has put His hand on you for a special task, the church will come to you."

With that said, realize that there is so much more to do in the body of Christ than just preach or pastor in a professional role. In fact, the exercise of God's gifts should be more rife within the "marketplace" than they are in professional ministry.

And there's always 10,000 completely unreached people groups in the world with no Christian witness. You would always be invaluable there.

Why We Must Preach the Gospel EVERY week

One thing that has become increasingly important to me in the last few months is preaching the Gospel every single time I open the Bible. And by that I don't mean that I never deal with anything else the Bible says and that my only point in each message is "get saved"... nor does it mean I just "tack on" a "4 spiritual laws" discussion at the end of each topic. It means that I am beginning to understand that the thing we must be reminded of over and over is God's acceptance of us in the Gospel and our utter unworthiness of that love. Understanding that and believing it more deeply is the only way to grow.

Most of our spiritual problems spring from the fact that we have "forgotten" or failed to believe some truth of the Gospel. When our lives are filled with anxiety and stress, it is usually because we have forgotten the cross--where we see God's acceptance of us and are reminded that that's really all that matters.

Peter Jensen says is well in The Cross and Faith. He points out that Galatians 2:20 Paul does not say that his assurance comes from the fact that “Christ loves me” but that Christ “loved” me… “Paul could not graduate beyond the Cross of Jesus as the source and power of His religion; as the place where he gained assurance, as the demonstration beyond any other need of proof of the grace and love of God.” As Sinclair Ferguson says in Grow in Grace, many lack the assurance of the personal love of Jesus “because we fail to focus on that spot where He has revealed it.”

Peter says in 2 Peter 1 that the reason we fail to grow in grace, and to develop self-control, kindness, love, etc... is because we forget "that we were cleansed from our first sins..." In other words, he is saying our failure to grow comes from the fact that we forget the Gospel.

It is because we forget (or refuse to believe) what the Gospel teaches us that we begin to be bitter about the bad things in our lives. We believe that we deserve better... and the problem of evil in the world is one of the most common causes people lose their faith. (I recently heard Professor Bart Ehrman over at UNC say that the reason he lost his faith was not because of supposed contradictions he found in the Bible, but because of the problem of evil in the world: How could a good, loving God allow all this evil?)

Most people, like Ehrman, who can't understand why a good God would allow evil in the world start with the premise that this BAD world is worse than we GOOD people deserve. The Bible starts with the opposite assumption: This world is BETTER than we BAD people deserve. What we deserve is shown to us at the cross. If I got what I deserved, I'd be in hell. Every breath of air I take then, is grace. (Christians don't see the problem of evil, they see the problem of grace!) Yet, the cross shows me that though I am more wicked and deserve more punishment than I could possibly imagine, yet I am more loved and accepted than I ever dreamed hope. When I understand that, I will quit complaining and start worshipping. I love it how Puritan Thomas Watson said it in The Art of Divine Contentment, “Your sufferings are not so great as your sins: put these two in the balance, and see which one weighs the heaviest.”

We must never cease preaching the Gospel, at all times and in every way. Martin Luther wrote that he taught the Gospel “again and again, because I greatly fear that after we have laid our head to rest, it will soon be forgotten and will again disappear.” We must meditate on it daily. It must always be before us. It is the only way to continue to believe. It is the only way to grow.

Vision, squirt guns and look out, hell

Last week our pastoral team went on an incredible retreat together at Fort Caswell, NC. I think we (at least I did) came back more energized than I've been in a long time, with a renewed sense of what God has called us to and the opportunities that lie ahead of us.

We didn't establish a lot of "goals." We set a handful of large, big-picture ones... but primarily we prayed about and embraced vision. Why? Let me borrow the words of somebody else to explain...

Goals can be energizing… when you win. But a vision is more powerful than a goal. A vision is enlivening, it’s spirit giving, it’s the guiding force behind all great human endeavors. Vision is about shared energy, a sense of awe, a sense of responsibility.

I'm not sure what exactly God is about to do with this church, but I think it might feel a little like a lost kite in Hurricane Dean.

We are committed to LOVING GOD, LOVING EACH OTHER, and LOVING OUR WORLD. We know that's what we're supposed to do because it is a summary of the Great Commandment (Matt 22:38) and Great Commission.

We are committed to LOVING GOD by focusing on ORGANIC change through GOSPEL-CENTERED preaching and living... not on mechanical, religious, numbers and activity inflated growth. Gospel-saturated people become Spirit-filled people... and we want to be so Spirit-filled that when mosquitoes bite us they fly off humming "there is power in the blood."

We are committed to LOVING EACH OTHER by growing SMALLER as a church at the same time we grow BIGGER. We calculate the size of our church NOT by how many people show up on Sundays, but by how many people we have in Summit Life Groups. That is where discipleship happens, because "Discipleship happens in Relationships."

We are committed to LOVING OUR WORLD by serving and loving our community. We do not want to be a church that preaches the love of Jesus without physically showing it as well. We are committed to planting churches in America and around the world. Church planting IS the most effective way to evangelize, period. I am asking God to let us be a part of planting 1000 in my lifetime. We are committed to doing WHATEVER IT TAKES, like going multi-site, to reach people. We are committed to ministering to all parts of RDU so that our church membership reflects the DIVERSITY that is our community.

We'd love for you to join us. Bring your faith, your zeal, and your heart and soul.

Oh yeah... the subject line is a spin off of the old "I feel like I could charge hell with a squirt gun" bit. I wasn't cussing, so you don't need to forward the link to my mom.

The Leadership Pipeline and a Growing Church

Recently our pastoral team read the book The Leadership Pipeline by Ram Charan, et al. What an incredible look at how leadership has to change in a growing organization. When we first start out we are managing only ourselves, but as we grow we have to begin to manage others. And that requires a whole different set of skills... what made you productive and valuable at first may not be as helpful when you succeed "through" other people. From there you grow into being a manager of managers, which requires a lot of different skills... primarily learning how to cast vision and establish goals for others to rally around. From there you become a "functional manager," which has to see the big picture of what the entire organization is trying to do as you manage the managers of managers of departments that have quite distinct agendas. As the Summit continues to grow, we as a staff are learning where we need to grow in order to effectively administrate, manage, and lead God's people

At any rate, it's a great book and I'd thoroughly recommend it.

The church is not a place where sloppy leadership can be tolerated. There's just too much at stake, and Jesus deserves more.

Summit College Life Back with a Vengeance

I've just got to applaud our hard-working, Gospel-driven, sky-high dreaming College Life staff. Check out what they have done for our returning students. Click here.

Dang, I wish these guys had been around when I was in college.

One of the first real ministry experiences I had was on a college campus when we started a Bible study of 7 people that grew to be several hundred. Tons of students got saved, and many ended up going into international church planting. It was the closest thing to a genuine, book-of-Acts move of God I've ever been a part of. Since that time I have known that college ministry would be a part of my life... and at the Summit we are praying for an awakening among students like the ones you read about in history. (My friend Alvin Reid, evangelism professor at SEBTS, has written a good bit about them. His book Join the Movement is great and will totally light you up.)

We believe it will happen again... thousands of students who encounter the living Christ that shatters skepticism and materialism and who go around the world the finish the great commission. There are almost 16 million college students in America. If less than .5% of them went to the nations, we would have a church planted in each unreached place within 5 years.

RDU is home to well over 100K college students--the best and the brightest from around the world. Has there ever been a church with the opportunity before it quite like the one that we have? Believe with me for an awakening that rocks the world!

I Can't Believe We Pulled It Off...

Today it happened. The Summit went live at two locations... Riverside High School and the Cole Mill campus. And we survived. And I preached 5 times. I did 3, and my buddy "video preacher" did the other 2 for me.

We had a couple of minor glitches, but for the most part it came together. To God be the glory. Seriously. We all had ulcers last week hoping this was going to fly. And people didn't seem to be bothered having a 12x9 larger-than-life version of me on the stage at Cole Mill. Some said they actually preferred video-preacher to live-pastor. They said it was like all the good things of the sermon minus the spitting and the constant wondering if I was looking at right at them and thinking of their sin when I said something.

The Cole Mill Rd campus had a great crowd at both services, as did the two later services at Riverside (we still have plenty of room to grow at the 8am Riverside service! :)) And Pastor Rick (the campus pastor at Cole Mill) told me the excitement at Cole Mill was contagious. I am thankful for the team of visionary, missional people who have dedicated themselves to establishing that campus. Your first week was a HUGE success. If you haven't been the Cole Mill campus in a while, you won't believe your eyes when you see it. Special thanks to a couple of guys... Doug Martelon and Kevin Cates (and their teams), who have worked around the clock the last two weeks to get it ready. They are like Bezalel and Oholiab... whom God has sent to us. What' they've done is IMPRESSIVE. You have to see it for yourself.

The next few weeks are going to be exciting. God has poised us to reach more people than ever. Sometime in mid-September, we are going to be shutting down the Riverside campus and moving to the new warehouse on T.W. Alexander in the Brier Creek/South Durham area. (Click here for details.) A lot of our college students came back today, and more will come next week. I'm hearing stories of people coming to Christ all over the place.

God has really been good to you, Summit Church. He is gracious and powerful. And don't forget that we don't deserve one second of this. But His passion for the glory of His name on His compassion for the people of RDU are unquenchable. Keep believing. He is smiling in grace through you on the people of RDU.

OK, as my friend Steven says, me and video preacher are tired. We're both going to take a nap.

Why Local Church Pastors Hold the Key to Finishing the Great Commission in Our Lifetime

Here's some great news put out by the US Center for World Mission that shows you just how close we could be to fulfilling the Great Commission--i.e. Jesus' command to take the Gospel to every unreached people group on earth.

First, a quick definition: an "unreached people group" is a group of people who share the same cultural heritage and speak the same language. It is not the same as the "nation-state" or the geo-political divisions of countries. For example, Indonesia, which is 1 country, has well over 200 people groups. Each of these groups has a cultural identity and their own linguistic dialect. The "people groups" are what Jesus is referring to with his use of the word "ethne" when He said, "Go make disciples of all the (ethne)." Jesus said the Gospel would be preached to all the "ethne" before the end would come (Matt 24:14).

The good news is this: In 100 A.D., with the death of the Apostle Paul, there were 12 unreached people groups (UPG's) per every 1 church. That means that each church would have to plant a church in 12 different UPG's to fulfill Jesus' command. However, today, there are a little over 680 churches to every 1 UPG. That means that if only 1 in 680 churches would commit to planting a church in just 1 UPG during their lifetime, the great commission would be fulfilled!

So I plead with other pastors... HAS YOUR CHURCH IDENTIFIED AT LEAST ONE UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUP, ADOPTED IT, AND MARSHALLED ITS EFFORTS TO SEEING A CHURCH PLANTED THERE????? Our church is praying about planting 1000 churches over the next 50 years.

First, set out to discover which UPG you should adopt. If you are Southern Baptist, call the IMB and let them consult with you. If you're not, then access the US Center for World Mission site and let them assist you in identifying which international church planting group is a good fit for your church. Make sure it is an organization committed to CHURCH PLANTING and starting CHURCH PLANTING MOVEMENTS.

Then, put that vision before your people and call them to give, pray and go on short term trips. Ask God to raise up at least one family from your church who will go to live there long-term. It is within our grasp!

I plead with you to ask the Lord of the Harvest to send laborers to His field from your own church!

I'll leave you with a prayer by my all time hero, Adoniram Judson, arguably the first true American missionary:

"… Have mercy on the churches in the United States; …continue and perpetuate the heavenly revivals of religion which they have begun to enjoy; and may the time soon come when no church shall dare to sit under Sabbath and sanctuary privileges without having one of their number to represent them on heathen ground.  Have mercy on the theological seminaries, and hasten the time when one half of all who yearly enter the ministry shall be taken by thine Holy Spirit, and driven into the wilderness, feeling a sweet necessity laid on them, and the precious love of Christ and of souls constraining them.  Hear, O Lord, all the prayers which are this day presented in all the monthly concerts throughout the habitable globe, and hasten the millennial glory, for which we are all longing, and praying, and laboring…. Come, O our Bridegroom; come, Lord Jesus; come quickly.  Amen and Amen.”

 

When It Is A Sin to Not be Angry

As I said on Sunday, rarely when I get angry do I do so righteously. The evangelical community on the whole, seems pretty angry... but when you look more closely, it is not righteous anger toward sin. It is frustration that comes from loss of power, public shame, and sometimes xenophobia.

But that does not mean we can cease to be angry. Check out this great paragraph from Peter Kreeft's Back to Virtue:

"John Chrysostom says, “He who is not angry when he has cause to be, sins.  For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices.”  As a more contemporary source has it, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  To be angry at the lawyer who got the drug pusher free on a technicality is not sinful, especially when your son is lying in a coffin after an overdose from that pusher.  Not to be angry in this case would be more sinful than almost any conceivable anger.  To be angry at the religious huckster and hypocrite who uses God’s name to sucker naïve young people, their money, their loyalty, and perhaps their souls, into his power-hungry cult is not a sin.  It is holy.  To be angry at a doctor who makes a fortune running an abortion clinic and pressuring distraught mothers to let him kill their unborn babies is not a sin.  It is a crusade.  To see a crippled or retarded child and not to be angry at the doctor whose gross negligence was responsible is not a sin.  It is godlike."

It is a necessity that we be angry at the right things. But our anger must be born out of love, not self-protective instincts. That's why Paul gives us the (seemingly) conflicting commands... he commands us to "be angry" (Eph 4:26) and then tells us to tells us to put away all wrath (Eph 4:31). That's because our natural, reflexive anger is very likely self-driven and fleshly. But God-anointed, Spirit-filled, love driven anger is in desperate need today!

 

The Cole Mill Train is Coming

I have really been praying that we would have a group of people who “own” Cole Mill Road, rather than simply "participate." It is clear after our training meetings that there is a group that exceeds even my expectations. I am very, very encouraged by the faith, sense of calling, and vision of those going to Cole Mill.

Prayer requests the Cole Mill team has come up with:

• That they might have their own vision for their area, and not be just a “b” campus or “overflow seating for lazy people who don’t want to drive”
• That Summit members might come with a missional vs. a consumer mindset
• That they would see that God has given this campus for "just such a time as this." (Curtis Crutchfield really brought some definition to how God had worked at Cole Mill from the beginning… in our thoughts that it was where we were supposed to be at first, then how he called us away, then brought us back, etc. He pointed out that had we known from the beginning we’d only get 11 acres, we would never have bought it, but then would have missed out on what he was wanting to do.)
• For quality, committed volunteers
• That Kevin Cates would be able to finish construction in time, and that God would provide the finances necessary to pull this off.
• For unity between the campuses

I am VERY encouraged. We have a great team. The path is clear… let’s pray this thing into existence now.

We do feel like the kid flying down a hill on his bike without breaks on gravel. But we know that perhaps God will give us this. We know that the fame of His name and the salvation of people are worth it.