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COLLEGE: 20/20: Matt Chandler, David Platt...

Here's an advance promo on the upcoming 20/20 conference at SEBTS. This is always a killer conference for college students, and this year features Matt Chandler, David Platt, Clayton King, Dave Owen, Danny Akin, and yours truly. It was an honor just to be nominated.

The theme this year is "a city within a city", and focuses on finding your part in a radical, Gospel-centered community that brings revolutionary change, in the name of King Jesus, to your world. Get tickets to come here!

J. D. Greear 20/20 2010 from Southeastern Seminary on Vimeo.

What Our Elders Prayed For This Morning, pt 2

Yesterday I told you that on the 3rd Tuesday of every month, our elders gather together for an hour to pray for our congregation and each other. We spend the first few moments speaking out of what God has showed us about our church and our lives, and then pray through those things. I thought it may help to share some of those with you... so yesterday was part 1; here are the other 3:

4. Miracles. We have members in our congregation who need a miracle from God--some physical, some financial, some emotional, some spiritual. Many miracles are not given simply because they are not asked for. I've recently been studying through some of Jesus' extravagant promises about prayer. One of the parables I studied is the one in Luke 18 where Jesus compares our prayers to the requests of a man who has a hungry guest show up at 3 a.m. and so goes to his neighbor to ask to borrow some bread. One often overlooked detail in the story is that the man asks for, and is eventually given, 3 loafs. Why not just ask for 1? Commentators say that according to Jewish custom, he would have needed one for his guest; one to eat together with the guest (as it would be rude to not eat with him); and one to have to offer to the guest when he was done so you looked like you were being generous. One loaf is all he really "needed," but 3 loaves is what abundant provision looked like. It's what he asked for, specifically, persistently, and got. We have a 3-loaf God. We should thus ask boldly and specifically for abundant provision.

5. Fresh inspiration. I realize that I am, at any given point, about 3 weeks from having nothing to say to our church. That is a good thing... God does not give manna that we can store up. He gives it only week by week. We pray that each week I (and our other teachers) will have the "words from God" that we need for this week. I'd love for you to pray that for me. I cannot depend on myself always being close enough to God to know I will just automatically know what He wants for the congregation. I need God to graciously reveal it to me even when I'm not listening. I want you to pray that with me, if you will. Pray that God won't punish the Summit Church for my sin and slowness of heart by not giving them His word each week. Hey, if God used Balaam's donkey, He can use me.

We also pray for fresh inspiration as leaders. I'm reading a pretty scary book right now called How the Mighty Fall. It is the 3rd of Jim Collins' books (first two: Built to Last and Good to Great) in which he explains why some of the "great" companies he identified fell, and fell rapidly. It makes me soberly realize that our past success is no proof we will succeed in the future... God's past provision is not enough. We need God to graciously give us direction this day.

In both these things, the principle we learned Sunday holds true: "Only 2 days on our calendar should matter: this day, and that day" (Martin Luther).

6. More prayer. The greatest answer to prayer is more prayer. We are praying first for the spirit of dependence that would make us a people constant in prayer. "Being constant in prayer is not the result of self-discipline, but the result of being poor in spirit" (Paul Miller).

Secondly, we are praying for some specific times we could gather corporately (as campuses or as one church) to pray together. Prayer is an essential, fundamental characteristic of the people of God.

Please join us in praying for these things!

What Our Elders Prayed For This Morning, pt 1

We see one of our primary roles, as elders of the Summit Church, as praying God's protection over the "flock" God has given us. Each day our elders pray through our covenant membership directory.

On the 3rd Tuesday of every month, our elders gather together for an hour to pray for our congregation and each other. We spend the first few moments speaking out of what God has showed us about our church and our lives, and then pray through those things. I thought it may help to share some of those things with you, so you can be praying with us. I'll give you the first 3 today, and the second 3 tomorrow.

1. That we would be worshippers of God, not users. We pray there would be a spirit of presence and a sense of awe at the Summit. Worship does not come from resolution, it comes from having the eyes our hearts enlightened to see God. We pray that sense of awe comes from the preaching, the worship, the fellowship, and from conversations between Summit members at Starbucks.

2. That we would be unified. In the 7 years we have been "the summit church," we have experienced an unusual unity. Sometimes I think we can take that for granted, as it is all we have known. But it is not. If you've been around churches for any length of time, you know that they are, unfortunately, driven by personal ego and ambition. Unity is a supernatural gift, but one asked for by Jesus in John 17... so we join Him in asking for it. We are one church in 5 campuses. God keep us in a spirit of unity. For whatever it is worth, I have never seen God bless a disunified church.

3. Increased baptisms. Baptisms are reflective of changed lives, and we pray that we would be a church that grows mostly by seeing prodigal sons and daughters come back to God. In the last week I've had some completely random conversations in random places where people tell me how God used our church to bring them to God, or back to God. We pray that our baptismal will be filled with such stories.

Christmas in August Report!

Summit, I am so incredibly happy to tell you that you have taken in over $60,000 to our Christmas in August offering. This goes to support the church planting efforts of the International Mission Board, the agency through whom we send most of our people.

The idea is this: the economic recession is hitting us all, but the LAST thing to suffer should be our efforts in reaching others with the Gospel. I've asked you to sacrifice so that others can continue to hear. What would you be willing to give up so that others can hear the Gospel? If you haven't gotten in on it yet, go here.

Of course, it's not only overseas that we are pursuing new avenues in evangelism, but here through our BELIEVE project. We are starting some new campuses and looking at some more... In every community we are involved in ministering to both body and soul. I can think of NOTHING I'd rather my money go to...

Vote for the New T-Shirt

To get ready for the fall we are launching a new "Summit fashion" line. You have a chance to vote for your favorite design.You have 1) the linus, 2) the paintbrush, 3) the urban vintage, 4) the classic, 5) the grunge motto, and Jason Gaston's favorite, the METROREDNECK.

I am on a campaign for #4.

Choose wisely. There's also a chance to win free ones.

From our front page, it is the first flashing slide. (note: don't vote in the comments below, vote on the site!) Here are two of the five...

Why a Saturday Night Service... and other things changing this fall...

EDITOR'S NOTE: I just got yelled at by our Saturday evening campus pastor, Charlie Dunn, who said that there are a lot more missional reasons why we're doing the Saturday evening campus than some of the ones I noted below. True. At the core, we are adding a Saturday evening service because this is the best step for the fall to reach people. In addition, we are opening the SUMMIT EN ESPANOL campus on Saturday night as well... which will be a service entirely in Spanish with a live, Spanish speaking pastor that will be preaching the message translated into Spanish and contextualized for a Hispanic audience.

So, the word is out... starting August 15-16 we are moving to a new service structure at the Brier Creek campus. Saturday night at 6:00pm; then 3 on Sunday morning: 9:00, 10:45 and 12:30, with a video venue going on in the Bay during the 10:45 service.

Some of you have asked why we are discontinuing the Sunday night service when it was working so well... you're also apprehensive about going to church on Saturday night since currently that serves the slot of connecting socially with friends... furthermore, many of you have gotten used to sleeping in on Sunday, and then coming to a great time of worship later in the day. So why move it? Here are the reasons, not necessarily in order:

1. Having a service on Saturday night saves us a ton of money. We were getting to the place where we were going to have to put in a very expensive satellite uplink in place in order to get the message to our other campuses... currently we send the message by internet to the Cole Mill Road campus (whose 1st service starts at 9:15) and run a DVD over to the West Club Campus, whose 1st service started at 11:15. However, West Club will be adding an earlier service (which means we can't get the DVD in time to them) and the internet feed just kept failing at CMR. The solution was satellite... or to do a Saturday night service here at BCAM where we can record a high quality, reliable version of the sermon and have it in place at our campuses on Sunday morning.
2. Having a Saturday night service will allow us to extend our evening reach to include families and slacker students. Saturday night allows families to come to the evening service... when the service was on Sunday night, many families were trying to get their kids wound down from the weekend and into bed to start school the next day. I also knew college students who on Sunday night had to start cramming in the work they procrastinated on all weekend :) Families and slacker students of all ages can come to church and feel relaxed.
3. We actually haven't discontinued our Sunday night service, we've just moved it to 12:30 on Sunday. One of the "attractions" of the Sunday p.m. service was those people who enjoyed sleeping in on Sunday (or had to work) and then go to church later in the day. Well, you can still sleep in, get up about lunch, and get to church.
4. You're not really "giving up" your Saturday night. Think about it...the service starts at 6 and finishes at 7:30... no college student or young professional I know ever begins their weekend before 7:30 anyway. Now, to be honest... I have a small emotional reaction to this one because I want to say "Build your weekend around God's priorities," but I know that many of you will say, "Well I'll just come on Sunday morning..." And it would really help us for many of you to move to Saturday night. So, I need  you to realize that you can go to church and still go out with your friends that night. In fact, this would be a great way to start your evening... invite some of the friends you are trying to reach to go to church with you, and then go out afterwards!
   
5. You can pretty much guarantee I'll be speaking live on Saturday night. It will be the first service of the weekend. As the Brier Creek 9:00 am service will tell you (currently the 1st service), you can also look forward to awkward jokes that I make only in whatever is the 1st service (i.e. flopped jokes I subsequently realize don't work and then cut out for the remaining services). The first sermon is always kind of "the lab" sermon.
   
6. Pastor Charlie and the pm worship team will be leading our Saturday night service. Charlie has some new uber-fashionable clothes straight from the runways of France he'll be modeling (think purple and fuschia), and the p.m. worship team has some disgustingly good musicians. In all seriousness, Pastor Charlie, Jonathan, and their team of leaders is an incredibly dedicated and motivated team. You would find it a great place to serve and a great team to serve with. They get it done, there's no doubt!

As it stands now, Awana and other current Sunday night stuff will STILL continue happening on SUNDAY night.

More information to come... you can keep up to date here, at our new site (if you haven't seen it yet, check out our new site... all the bugs aren't worked out, but we're pretty pleased with the new look and navigation.) Also, you can get your daily Proverbs devotional there... to do as we go through this Still Standing series.

REMEMBER: This doesn't start till mid-August (Aug 15-16, to be exact)... so don't start showing up now on Saturday night.

Summit, this is your time to do, again, what you've always done... time for some of you to choose the hard path, sacrifice your convenience and preference, and do what is best for reaching people. For many of you, that will be moving out of our Sunday morning Brier Creek campus to our Saturday night one (or one of our others on Sunday morning!)

Do pray for us...we are greatly depending on God to meet our needs for these services, as we continue to allow God to expand the borders of our tent. We need leaders of all kinds to step up. In case you didn't count it... that will mean, counting the video venue in the Bay at the Brier Creek morning campus and the En Espanol Campus, we will have 10 services on the weekend... in addition to that, our Church Planting Center is in full swing preparing those who are feeling a call to be sent out to plant churches in RDU, the US, and around the world...

The Week of Hope

Starting Sunday, we are in a full scale operation to serve our city, called the Week of Hope. God willing, we will put 2000 volunteers onto the streets to serve our city in Jesus' name. It is huge. If you haven't heard about it yet, you are deaf.

I want to remind you that the purpose we do this for the purpose of the Gospel. Every weed we pluck, every wall we paint, every homeless person we comfort--it's all for the purpose of making Jesus famous. We want to show, in a tangible way, what Jesus' love is like. Jesus SERVED us by pouring out His life for us when He died on a cross as a substitute for our sins. Now we will pour out our lives for others.

Every person is made in the image of God. They all have value. They all matter. And no one is less deserving of God's love than we ourselves were when Jesus died for us. As we have been loved, we will love; as we have been served, we will serve. It is our response to the Gospel. We don't just serve to convert; we serve because we're converted.

One thing we have STRONGLY encouraged you to do that week is INVITE SOMEONE you work or live with to serve WITH you, especially if they are not a Christian. Let them serve with you, and let that service provide a chance for you to explain why you live the way we do.

Peter says to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within is. We demonstrate our hope when we have great joy in the midst of persecution and when we sacrifice generously for others. Live radically, so that your life begs a question... and then be ready to answer it.

Same Kind of Different as Me

Went to a great event in downtown Durham today sponsored by our friends at Durham Cares called Same Kind of Different as Me with the authors of the book by the same name.

Remarkable story... a rich, white snob (Ron) and a homeless black guy (Denver), both profoundly divided by race and racist in their own right, end up in a friendship that changes both of their lives. Denver has been so mistreated by white people in Louisiana that he vows never to speak to one again, and the white guy is so into making money that he has no time for anyone but himself.

The book is the story of that unlikely friendship and how Jesus Christ made it happen. It is a powerful testimony to the power of the Gospel.

The book has been on the NYT bestseller list for 61 straight weeks now... a first for any book by Thomas Nelson publishers (the largest Christian publishing house). I haven't read all of it, but the parts I have read are profoundly moving.

The guys are now on a "campaign" to end homelessness in America... which is where Durham Cares and the Summit Church come in.

One of the things that the guys said today that really struck me was this: most Christian people deal with homelessness by giving money or by volunteering to serve a meal at the homeless shelter (not to mention the hideous idea of depending on the government to do it). Sprinkling money and volunteering to serve meals does, he said, "little" good for the homeless... it is mainly good only for the conscience of the person who is doing the serving. We drive in our expensive cars down to the Rescue Mission, serve soup, and then rush back to our cars and squirt Purell Germ-X on our hands and mutter to ourselves about swine flu...

The way to really change a homeless person's life? Get to know one. Develop a relationship. Take the same homeless guy on your corner meals repeatedly. If available, open up your home.

Summit Church, I hope that as we serve our city we will do so like Jesus did it... not by foraying into the community and sprinkling blessing in neat, hermetically sealed packages, but by incarnating ourselves in their lives. We'll never go as far with someone else as Jesus did for us.

I hope our coming week of hope begins relationships for you that will last a lifetime.

Win Tickets to Advance09

Guest Blogger: Mike McDaniel, Director of SendRDU

Advance09 is just around the corner, and because we don't want anyone to miss out on this amazing opportunity to hear from some gifted teachers, for the next couple of days we're offering tickets for half-price ($50). To get tickets, go to Ticketmaster, select the special half price offer, and use the promo code ADV09.

We wish we could offer this event for free. Unfortunately, the Durham Performing Arts Center didn't go for that idea. But we've come up with a couple of contests to give away free tickets. Here are two ways that you can win tickets:

1) Write J.D. a Haiku. Yep, a Haiku. It can be about anything - a little pastor appreciation, your favorite thing about the Summit - the door is wide open. Submit your entry as a comment to this post. We'll pick our favorites and hook them up with tickets. If you're a little rusty on your Haiku skills or you have no idea what a Haiku is, go here for instructions and here for an example from our StudentLIFE pastor, Jason Gaston.

2) Follow SendRDU on Twitter. Everyone who follows us in the next couple of days will be entered in a drawing for tickets.

Advance is a conference committed to the resurgence of the local church. The church is in decline across the United States and has yet to advance in many parts of the world. At this conference, some of the country’s most respected teachers will encourage people like you to invest your life in the local church.

5:18 on 5/18

Yesterday (Sunday) I asked the church to spend at least 10 minutes praying today... to help us all get on schedule to do it together, I asked that we do it at 5:18 on 5/18 (and, in case you're calendar-challenged, like me... that's today's date:))

The "big request" is that we, as a church, have wisdom to decide which steps to take, specifically, in expanding our campuses as we prepare for the fall. 

The quick and dirty is that, due to the recession, our mission expansion project did not bring in all we "needed" in order to do all that we had planned... had we gotten all that we needed, we would have (1) expanded our Brier Creek morning venue (since already at the end of the spring, people were having to sit in the lobby), (2) enhanced some of our other campuses, (3) launched some new campuses (most likely the first two being in Raleigh or Chapel Hill), and (4) get to work on the piece of property we own on TW Alexander road.

As it stands now, we just can't do all of those things, at least simultaneously. We need to know which one(s) we should do immediately. We need to know which things to just say "no" to. We need new, creative ideas we haven't thought of. We also need to know where to simply trust that God will provide the needed resources in time.

You know that our mission, of course, is not buildings, but people. Our goal is not to build a monument, but birth a movement of community-blessing churches filled with believers ready to live incarnationally in their neighborhoods and schools--here, and around the world. We want only the resources necessary to foment that. I BELIEVE! So, here's what you can pray with me for at 5:18!

• Start by believing that the Gospel tells us God's intentions for our community... the cross shows us God's compassion for our city, and the resurrection shows us the power He will unleash. Let's "pray out" His compassion and power. (Matthew 13:58)
• Wisdom to follow God's leading (James 1:5)
• That all our needs will be supplied (Matthew 6:11)
• That God would open new doors of ministry in RDU and Chapel Hill (1 Cor 16:9)
• That we would bring joy to the city by meeting both soul and social needs in the city (Acts 8:5-8)
• That our community would awaken to the Gospel (Isaiah 59:1-2)
• That individual members would have boldness in sharing Christ with their neighbors (Luke 10:2)
• That God would continue an EXODUS from our church of people going overseas to plant churches (Acts 1:8)
• That we, as a church, would have a hunger to know God, and a hatred of sin (Heb 12:14)

Look forward to praying with you at 5:18 today!

WARNING...Though we're into the whole 5:18 thing, do NOT pray Acts 5:18 for your pastoral team.

P.S. If you'd like to be part of the ongoing prayer teams here at the Summit, leave your info in the comments below and we'll follow up with you.