Thanks for joining us today for the Summit Life podcast with J.D. Greer. I'm Molly Vitovich. Lent begins this Wednesday, so prepare your heart for Easter with Walking Through Lent, our brand new 40-day devotional delivered straight to your inbox. This resource is our way of saying thank you for your gift to Summit Life this month.
You can give at jdgreer.com.
Now for today's message. A few years ago, our church, the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, celebrated its 20-year anniversary, a real testament to God's faithfulness in our community. Today, Pastor JD takes us on a march throughout all of church history because the journey of a church doesn't begin when it's planted.
So, let's get started. Or the writer of Hebrews thinking about all those that have preceded him? He says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, so many. and have gone before us. and are waiting now in the presence of Jesus for us.
Let us run now that we've been handed the baton, now that it's our leg of the race. Let us run like they did with patience and faith and endurance the race that is set before us. Let us, he says, look to the same Jesus that they look to. Look to him to do through us what he did through them. If you've been here for any amount of time, you have heard me tell stories of how 20 years ago, There was a group of about 300 brave men and women of God, saints of God who joined me.
in asking God what he wanted to do with this church. We always say that Gideon had his 300 and that 300 was ours. These men and women committed to put the mission of God first. to trust God for the impossible. And then put their money where their mouth was and sacrifice their Comfort, their time, their material possessions for a few of them, even their careers in getting us.
Here. As we come to this point here, our 20 year. anniversary I thought that it might be helpful to look backwards for a moment. To think about how we got here. How all this came to us.
And what that means in light of how we're supposed to go forward with it. You see, our story doesn't start. Here. It doesn't start in 2002. It doesn't even start in 1962.
Our story really starts in 37 AD. Standing atop a hillside outside of Jerusalem, Jesus. Gives what we call the Great Commission to 11 scared men and a few of their friends. Charging them to take the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea. Then to Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.
They had never heard of Durham, North Carolina. It did not exist. But he promised them, or he commanded them to get the gospel there, and then he promised them. That all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, and that his spirit would go with them when they went in obedience to his command. And then, after giving them that command and that promise, he ascended into heaven.
Leaving them all standing there on that hillside, just staring at each other, saying, Now what? 42 AD mark. Takes the gospel to Egypt. 49 AD, the Apostle Paul heads to Asia Minor and then in 51 AD into Europe. 52 AD Thomas takes the gospel to India.
By 54 AD, Paul is on his third missionary journey, reporting great success wherever he goes. Saying that the Gentiles in these new unreached regions are embracing the gospel much more enthusiastically than the Jews. By the end of the first century, the apostles have established three major church planting centers. Antioch. Alexandria and Northern Africa and Rome.
Jerusalem by this point had been destroyed. From those three centers, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome, churches are being planted all over the Roman Empire. By the end of the second century, the church father Irenaeus describes the global church as geographically broad, though still numerically insignificant. These churches know how to multiply, however, and by the end of the third century, nearly half of the Roman Empire confesses Christ. In March of 432, a guy named Patrick responds to a dream and takes the gospel to Ireland.
Which people in our society now commemorate every year by getting smashed and pinching those who don't wear green? In 596, a church planter named Augustine, not Saint Augustine, a different Augustine. He ventures down into what we now call England. Then just an island filled with barbarians. One of the most unreached, uncivilized places in the world at that point.
He settles in Canterbury. where he plants a church. God moves powerfully through his ministry, and in the first two years, he baptizes more than 10,000 converts there. In 650, a monk named Cademan completes the first English translation of the Bible. Sadly, the religious elites there keep it captive, believing that it is too dangerous to put into the hands of common people.
The next 500 or so years are a little sketchy in terms of Christian history. It's why we call them the Dark Ages. But one of the good things that came out of the dark ages was a conviction by many, men like John Huss and John Wycliffe, that the most effective way to spread the gospel is just to put the Bible in the hands of common people. The power is in the word, they said. Let the word do the work.
By 1200 AD, the Bible is available in 22 different languages. In 1526, William Tyndale publishes the New Testament into everyday English and then, with the help of his wealthy merchant friend Humphrey Monmouth, ships it to people all over the English-speaking world. Considering this to be an affront to their authority, the state church of England persuades the king of England to imprison Tyndale. William Tyndale is tried for heresy and on October 6, 1536, William Tyndale is burned to the stake. William Tyndo's last words as the flames engulf his body, bystanders say as they listen to him say in a whispered voice, choking through the flames, he prayed, Lord God, please open the King of England's eyes.
Less than a hundred years later, in 1611, That prayer is answered when the king of England, King James, Sponsors the largest Bible project ever commenced, the publication of the King James Version of the Bible. The Bible's availability in English leads not only to a revival, a gospel revival in the English-speaking world, it leads to a wave of missions throughout the rest of the world. The 15th to 18th centuries become known as what we call the golden era of missions. These are the days of William Carey and the Moravians and Adeniram Judson. For the first time, Christians penetrate Central Africa, inland China, and remote countries in Southeast Asia with the gospel.
Many are imprisoned. Most are. or killed. In 1587, the first two people are baptized on the continent. of North America.
Right here in North Carolina, by the way. Two Native Americans are baptized on Roanoke Island in what is now referred to as the Lost Colony. 1609, a man named John Smith plants a new kind of church in England, founded on the belief that the Bible alone is the Christian's authority, that salvation is by faith alone, through grace alone, and that baptism and church membership should come only after conversion to Christ. John Smith says you cannot be born a Christian. He says you have to be born again as one.
This is the first official Baptist church. By 1635, 20 years later, that church has planted 50 others like it in the region surrounding London. Because of the rapid growth of the Baptist movement, the Church of England responds with brutal persecution. One of the new Baptist pastors, a guy named Roger Williams, flees for America and establishes the first Baptist church in America in Providence, Rhode Island in 1638. In 1727, that church plants the first Baptist church in North Carolina, the Shiloh Baptist Church in Chihuahua County.
In 1740, great awakening evangelists come to North Carolina with great response. Crowds of up to 35,000 people come to hear them preach in one setting, and people from all over North Carolina are being baptized. These evangelists go back to Massachusetts where they were from, reporting the great success that they have had in North Carolina. And there, through their reports, God stirs in the heart of a man named Schubal Stearns. To uproot his family, and moved to central North Carolina to plant a church.
Schubel Stearns and his wife have 14 kids.
So in 1751, they planted the Sandy Creek Baptist Church in Liberty, North Carolina, which is just south of what is today Greensboro. with 16 members. That's one benefit of having a large family. You're an automatic church plan wherever you go. In just two years, that church has grown to over 600 weekly attenders and they've planted 42 other churches across North Carolina.
In 1845, they plant a church in Durham, North Carolina, which launches at the Piney Grove School in West Durham. Over the next 40 years, that church moves locations twice and changes its names twice. They go from rows of Sharon Baptist to in 1877 the Durham Baptist Church to finally in 1878 the First Baptist Church of Durham. In 1899, Durham's population swells to 16,000. And the First Baptist Church senses God's call to plant new churches around the rapidly expanding triangle.
They sense a real need in North Durham.
So in 1907, they plant the North Durham Church on Hardy Street. 1921, that church changes its name to Grace Baptist Church. It's just what we do in Baptist churches, we change our name. 1959, Grace Baptist begins praying about planting a church even farther north to reach the new people that are moving into there. 1959.
60, Sam James, Dr. Sam James, a young 28-year-old pastor from Greensboro, North Carolina. feels called by God with his wife Rachel and their two kids to take the gospel to the unreached nation of Vietnam. In preparation to go, however, his newborn develops a heart condition. And he and his wife Rachel have to spend a frustrating year.
at Duke Medical Center. But during that year, someone from Grace Baptist Church Informs him of this burden they have to plant a church up in northern Durham. And so Dr. James volunteers to lead the effort. And in 1961, they open up a mission on Duke Street called the Grace Baptist Mission.
The small mission grows rapidly and within a year over 100 people are attending and they officially relaunch themselves as the Homestead Heights Baptist Church on March 4th, 1962. Dr. Sam Jane preaches only one sermon at this new church, only one official sermon at the organized church, and that sermon is from Isaiah 54, 2, and 3, which is William Carey's famous missionary text, where God commands Israel to expand the borders of its tents to make room for the nations. And Dr. James prophesies to the Homestead Heights Baptist Church that God is going to use them to bring the gospel to the nations.
And he challenges them not just to exist for themselves, but to expand. The borders of their tents, so that people of all nations would find salvation there through them. That afternoon. He and his wife Rachel leave for Vietnam. 1962, Vietnam, one of the most unreached.
And 1962, one of the most dangerous places in the world. Especially for an American. where they're going to spend the next 40 years. 1994, God speaks to a college kid at Campbell University. As he's studying for a pre-law exam, telling him that he is done with law.
To finish the exam, yes, but after that, no more law. And that the focus of his life is to be on getting the gospel to people overseas. And so in 1997, he leaves. for Indonesia, having just met the love of his life and Commencing a vigorous two-year letter-writing campaign where he will cajole, sued, persuade. pressure, manipulate her into marrying him.
He leaves for Indonesia for what he assumes is a lifelong assignment, and that kid was me. 1999, I returned home from Indonesia to complete my PhD in Islamic and Christian theology. While stateside, I attend the Homestead Heights Baptist Church, believing. But I'm headed back to Southeast Asia. December 2001, Homestead Heights Baptist Church extends a call to me to be their pastor.
At first, Veronica and I think that God is playing a joke on us. I've never even had a full-time job. And we're supposed to be overseas. But God makes clear that he has called us here. And not my role in missions, at least for the time being, is to lead a church that is devoted to sending.
March 2002, we changed the name of the Homestead Heights Baptist Church to the Summit Church. Why, you ask, there are no mountains in Durham? True. But the name sounded cool. And our property did happen to be located at the highest point in Durham County, which is why it was called Homestead Heights.
So some of it seemed like a fit. April 2002, Summit baptizes its first two African American believers, and I marry them a week later. August 2002, college students discover our church and start to make up a sizable portion of our attendance every weekend. At this point, we know that we're never going to have a lot of money. Because college students bring a lot of wonderful things to a church, but money is not one of them.
Amen. But we also know that we're going to have a lot of young, eager believers trying to figure out what to do with their lives. November 2002, after service, an usher approaches me with an offering bucket that contains a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit in it from McDonald's from a college student. With a little note on it that says, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I unto you. November 7th, 2003, we receive a check.
from a man in Arizona who had visited our church only one time. but was so moved. But the amount of college students that he saw on that Sunday that that Weekend, he pledged to give us $200,000.
So the next weekend, November 14th, 2003, I stand up at the Summit Church and tell the college students they can put all the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits they want to in the offering. A man from Arizona has paid their offerings forward for them for many years to come. Through stories like this one and many, many others, God teaches our church that if we'll put his mission first, They'll take care of all of our needs. November 19th, 2004. Nicholas Cage debuts in the first National Treasure movie.
Which forever changes not only the history of cinematography, but it also changes every illustration I've told at the Summit Church. December 2004. God burdens the summit church for the city of Durham. You see, we realize that God has put us here not just to reach it for Jesus, but also to bless it, to love it, to better it, to make it, we said, a better place to live. And so I meet with the mayor, Bill Bell.
and ask him what the biggest needs of our city are. And he tells me the biggest needs of our city are the homeless population, the orphan, prisoner rehabilitation, the crisis of single mothers, and the growing number of high school dropouts. And so out of this grows what we called the Hope HUD strategy, which just stood for homeless, orphan, prisoner, unwed mother, and high school dropout. We say that we want our city not just to know that we stand for Jesus, but we start to say that we want people in our city to say, we may not believe what those crazy people at Summit believe, but thank God they're here, because if not, we'd all have to raise our taxes. 2005, we've outgrown our property on Holt School Road, so we sell it and move into Riverside High School.
We sense that God has called us not only to reach North Durham, but all of the triangle. At first, we looked to purchase a 100-acre piece of property on Coal Mill Road onto which we plan to build this six flags over Jesus facility that people from all over the triangle can drive to. But God shuts that door decisively. And God instead reveals to us that instead of developing one large property, we should seek to establish smaller locations throughout the triangle where believers can stay in their communities and invite their neighbors. We move our host campus to Briar Creek, leaving behind a community of believers in North Durham.
That's our first multi-site location led now by the inimitable Gus Pacheco. In January 2006, we searched for land. We start to search for land to build a new permanent facility for our North Durham campus. Since we had sold there. Uh initial Homestead Heights location out from under them.
In May 2007, God leads us to adopt the goal of planting 1,000 churches out of our church within our generation. Nobody is quite sure, by the way, where that number came from. We have asked. We think I spontaneously threw it out in a sermon, it's not in any transcript. But it starts to feel like a God thing, so we just embrace it.
February 2009, we launched Summit in Espanol to reach the growing Hispanic population in Durham. This is going to be followed by Summit Mandarin. And some in Arabic, as well as campuses in our local women's and men's prison facilities. September 2015, the Summit Church leads the state of North Carolina in both yearly baptisms and missions giving. August 2016 Summit celebrates the planting of its first granddaughter church as Summit Denver plants the heights in the suburbs of Denver.
Each year, more granddaughter churches are gonna be added to our family. Currently, 14 of our 78 domestic plants are granddaughter churches, churches that have been planted by churches that we planted. Also in 2016, we launched the Summit Institute, which is committed to training up men and women for full-time ministry. November 2017, we're recognized as the top sending church in the nation by both the International Mission Board for sending overseas missionaries and the North American Mission Board for planting domestic churches. December 2018, we celebrate the sending out of our 1,000th member on a church planting team and our 250th church planted.
November 2021, the largest attendance and fastest growing churches in both Greensboro and Winston-Salem are now summit plants. Mercy Hill in two cities. Both count representatives to the U.S. Congress among their membership. Each weekend, more than twice as many people attend summit plants in North America as come to the summit church in the triangle.
For every one member that we have sent out, there are 20 new people worshiping in the kingdom somewhere in the world. In December of 2021, the summit's offering is $10 million in a single month. That is by far the largest month of giving in the history of the Summit Church, $10 million in one month, which is 20 times more than our annual budget in 2001. We believe that symbolizes God's commitment to us for the next 20 years. January 30th, 2022.
The Summit Church, now a church of more than 12,000 weekly attenders in 12 campuses around the triangle, celebrates its 20th anniversary, marveling at all that God has done in two decades. In 20 years, they've welcomed in over 92,000 first-time guests through their doors. They've seen 8,172 people baptized. They've planted 492 churches around the world. Each weekend, more than 26,000 people worship in churches planted by the summit.
And our church planters are now telling us stories that we find hard to believe. Like Nathan Rostenport. who will be baptizing 30 new believers in Iran this year. and planting 14 new churches there. This is the beginning of a church planting movement in Iran.
Or Samantha. A summit member. who leads a team in the slums in the Red Light District in one of the biggest cities in South Asia. She reports to us that in 2021, 186 people profess faith in Christ through her ministry. A tiny A tiny new church was planted there in the Red Light District.
Think of that summit church. This weekend, as we gather and we celebrate 492 churches around the world, one of those. One of those is made up of women. who previously were victims of the sex trade in South Asia. Right now, it feels like the world is asking us to choose sides when what we really need is gospel clarity.
That's why this month, Summit Life is offering a free booklet called Transcend the Culture War and Transform the World. It's a two-chapter preview from Pastor JD's latest book, Everyday Revolutionary, and it offers a gospel-centered way forward through some of today's most divisive conversations. It grounds the discussion in truth, shapes it by love, and focuses on real transformation in the end. And here's something special: we'll send you two physical copies: one for you, and one to share with a friend, neighbor, or small group. because this is the kind of message that's meant to multiply.
There's no donation required. Just visit jdgreer.com to request your free copies today. January 30th, 2022, Summit now has. 300 members. that are serving overseas.
This is not only, as far as we know, more than any other church. has, it's more than were in our initial congregation when we began. They serve in 65 different cities around the world outside the United States. The International Mission Board tells us that we have six times more missionaries than their second closest partner. We average sending out 25 new long-term missionaries every year.
107 men and women have been trained here for full-time ministry through the Summit Institute, with 60 more entering the program next year. Several hundred are involved in our fostering and adoption ministries, or serve local refugees, or in our local prison ministries. And so, on January 30th, 2022, I asked the church to recommit to its original vision, trusting that the God who has brought us this far. Is gonna lead us the rest of the way. And the summit church responds enthusiastically, and we become a part of this huge movement through history, right?
That's today, by the way. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? That's pretty amazing, isn't it? But dream with me for a second, would you? March 2022.
More than 20,000 People from around the triangle gather. and the Walnut Creek Amphitheater, a strategic place in the triangle to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. June 2022, we finally get the North Durham campus completed. And for the first time in almost 20 years, some members in North Durham have a new permanent home. March 2024, the Summit Church realizes that its 1,000 churches goal is too small.
The movement in Iran alone has grown to 140 congregations with 1,000 new Iranian believers baptized in three years. January 2025 summit surpasses its goal of being 25% multi-ethnic by 2025. 40% of its staff and pastors are now leaders of color. July 2026, a couple who is on the cusp of divorce begins attending the Chapel Hill campus. Through the faithful love of their small group at our G4 ministry, not only are they brought back to faith in Christ in 2041, they celebrate their 30th anniversary.
Their son, who watches this redemption story unfold firsthand, grows up to plan a church for us in Columbia, South Carolina in 2038. August 2028, the church planting movement that Nathan Rostenpoor has led in Iran now spreads into the United Arab Emirates and then into Turkey and Afghanistan. More than 800 Muslim background believers are being baptized every year. July 2029, a woman who was saved in our prison campus in 2022 this month becomes the 1,000th international church planter sent out by the summit church. November 2030, the summit is recognized by the state of North Carolina for its work in rehabilitating prisoners.
using its holistic method of healing and reintegration and faith to inspire other churches across North Carolina to do the same. March 2031 Summit has so many families involved in foster care and adoption ministry that for the first time in the Triangle's history, there are more foster families waiting for placement than there are foster children in Wake Durham or Orange County. August 2031, the Summit Institute now trains more than 500 men and women for ministry every year. September 2035, the Triangle's population has swelled to 3.5 million people. We launched our 25th campus in the Triangle, having completed our goal of having a campus 15-minute driving time from everybody in the Triangle.
Since 2002, the Summit Church has baptized over 17,000 people in the Triangle. Every weekend, more than 1.2 million worship in churches around the world that Summit has planted. These churches baptize a combined 100,000 every year. November 2036, Nicholas Cage releases his 444th movie, National Treasure 13, and I am invited to the global premiere. April 2037.
A former summit college student who'd gone to live in Serbia in 2024. is listening right now. got a stirring in his or her heart for the mission field reports That he's seen 264 churches planted there in Serbia in a single year. And we've seen the launch of a seminary to train young men and women there for ministry. January 2038, the child of a family who was saved at the Garner campus grows up to translate the Bible into the language of the final unreached people group in North Africa.
October 2041, a girl who was adopted by a Summit family through their foster ministry, who grew up in Summit kids and students, is appointed to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Let me dream, okay? Let me dream. November 2041, Summit College commemorates its 5,000th students sent out on a church planning team. 47 of the churches that we have planted have been planted with vibrant college ministries in college towns.
Together, those churches baptize more than 3,000 students every year, and together they send out more than 1,000 on church planning teams around the world. January 2042, we gather for our 40th anniversary. Or for some of us, it's our children or our grandchildren who gather marveling at what God has done with a small mustard seed of faith planted many years ago. That seed is now grown into a mighty tree whose branches cover the earth. We stand on that day overwhelmed by the faithfulness of God, and we can only put our hands on our mouths and say, look at what the Lord has done.
Our children on that day recommit themselves to God and they say, as you have been with my fathers, may you now be with me. And Lord, let it also be unto me according to your word. Of course, some at church, I don't know exactly what God is going to do in the next 20 years. I'm just. dreaming based on the last 20 years.
What I do know is that God promises to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we'd ask or imagine. That was a promise we believed at the beginning. It's a promise we're going to believe now. And see, I've seen what he's done in the last 20 years, which means now I can imagine that. which means that what I dream for the future has to be greater than what I've seen.
Which brings us back to today. Martin Luther, Martin Luther, the great reformer of the 16th century, said that on God's calendar, only two days matter. That day. And this deck. That day means where we know history is headed.
a vast multitude of people. Revelation tells us from every tribe and tongue and nation and people under heaven rejoicing together in the salvation of Jesus. That day and this day. this day, what we're doing now in anticipation of that day. Which is what Jesus said to those scared 11 guys on the hillside outside of Jerusalem.
He said, guys, you don't know anything, but all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
So go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You teach them to observe all that I've commanded you, and just know that I am with you always to the end of the age. That is my command, and that is my promise. It's of a church in truth. I don't know what the future holds.
I can't even guarantee that I will wake up tomorrow. What I do know. What I do know is that we still serve a Savior who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, a Savior whose finished cross and empty tomb guarantees that we will be successful in uniting the nations to fear his name, who has yielded us his authority and imparted to us his spirit to guarantee the completion of that mission. And now we know that even in suffering and in setback, he promises to make us always walk in triumph. Why?
Because all authority is his. And that means that even what the enemy means for evil, he overrules for good. This is not our history, you see. It is his story. He is the author and finisher of our faith, the writer of Hebrews says, which means that what stirs in our hearts today is the power he released into the world 2,000 years ago in an empty tomb.
And as sure as he walked out of that grave 2,000 years ago, we're going to finish our mission. Because what he started with an empty tomb, he will complete with people of every tribe and tongue and nation around his throne in heaven. And even the gates of hell will not be able to stop us. That day. That day.
And so on this day, I pledge. Don't walk forward in anticipation of that day. expecting great things of him and attempting great things for him. This is where me and my house are going. And I would really, really love for you.
to go with me. Summit, is that where you want to go? Is that where you want to go? When I was installed as pastor here 20 years ago, Some time in January, second week of January, my childhood pastor. Dr.
E. C. Sheehan, who led my mother and father to Christ. He led the service that morning.
Now he has since gone on to be with Jesus. He was in his 70s. In January of 2002. But I'll never forget during that service, somewhere in the middle, he just leaned over to me. He just tapped me on the shoulder and he just said, he said, son.
He's here. Easier. That's all I said. What we've got long enough to recognize that Jesus. was here.
with us. We didn't have any secrets of success. We didn't have any strategy. We didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have any experience.
What we did have was the presence of Jesus and the awareness. that we needed to go with him. That's why the first part of our mission statement says: following the Holy Spirit. It's never been about our plans for this church. We don't want to be anywhere without him.
His plans are always better than ours. Where he is is where we want to go. If you're not in it, I don't want it. But if you say it, I'll believe it. Where you are is where I want to be.
Is that where you want to go, Summit Church?
So, could I just ask you right now at all of our campuses, would you bow your heads? With me. Could I just ask you personally to recommit yourself? Would you say, God? What do you want to do here?
Have thine own way, Lord. Have thine own way. And then I want you to personalize it. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?
Listen, for some of you, I believe this right now. God's going to pull it in your heart. You don't even know where it's coming from. A vision for some ministry in the triangle. For some of you, it's a strange stirring about people around the world that have never heard about Jesus or a church planning team.
It's happening right now. And I just want you to say yes, Lord. My yes is on the table. For some of you, what just popped in your mind was the face of someone. Who doesn't know Jesus?
And you're just going to share Christ with them. Would you just listen to the Holy Spirit for just a minute? Listen to the Holy Spirit for just a moment. If today's message stirred something in you, our team would be honored to pray with you. You can send us a prayer request at requests at jdgreer.com.
That's it for today. We'll see you soon. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Yeah.
