It was announced last week that JD Greear, the Pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh/Durham, NC, will be nominated for President of the Southern Baptist Convention by Jimmy Scroggins, the Pastor of Family Church in south Florida.
We are extremely excited that JD will be nominated for President, and we are also excited to announce that he will be joining us as a panelist for the Baptist21 panel at the Convention.
We are excited that JD will be nominated because he is a leader of great integrity who loves Jesus, loves his family, loves the church, loves the Great Commission and loves the SBC. He was trained in a SBC seminary, served on the field as an IMB missionary among a Muslim people group, pastors a SBC church, and has catalyzed the planting of numerous SBC churches.
Summit Church has certainly seen exponential conversion growth under JD’s leadership, and it has led the way in modeling the diversity of the kingdom in the makeup of its church body. But, even more than Summit’s growth, under JD’s leadership the Summit Church has sent out more folks to NAMB and the IMB than any other church. Summit has sent almost 150 people to work with the IMB, and NAMB has it listed as the top church planting church in the Convention.
In addition to giving at least 10% of their budget to Great Commission giving, JD and the elders of Summit led the church to double their CP giving last November. JD says that his prayers and hopes for the SBC are these:
- True gospel centeredness in theology and mission
- Cultural engagement marked by grace and truth
- A call to prioritize the great commission, which involves a new era of sacrificial giving by churches, the newer generation of Southern Baptists taking personal responsibility for funding the mission – we must take responsibility for our agencies (the missionaries coming home from the field are our responsibility), and the Convention creating more efficient structures for resourcing and sending missionaries
We are pumped about JD’s nomination, and we are pumped that he will join Danny Akin, Matt Chandler, Al Mohler, Russ Moore, and David Platt at this year’s Baptist21 Panel in St. Louis. Registration is coming soon! Circle the date – June 14th, 2016!