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Jd Greear July

Truth Talk / Stu Epperson
The Truth Network Radio
January 20, 2025 6:04 pm

Jd Greear July

Truth Talk / Stu Epperson

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January 20, 2025 6:04 pm

Stu sits down with pastor and author J.D. Greear for an engaging discussion on faith leadership and the challenges of modern ministry. They explore topics from J.D.'s latest book, share personal stories, and offer insights into navigating life with purpose and conviction. Join the conversation for thought-provoking and practical wisdom. 

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He's a pastor, he's an author, he's on the radio, he loves Jesus, and he's J.D.

Greer. And I'm sitting right here in his office, and he's written a bunch of books. I love the 12 Lies and a Truth book. 12 Truths and a Lie. Wait, did I get that wrong? You can't switch that around. 12 Truths and a Lie.

Well, now you might. Some more copies. Yeah, that's exactly right. But just a compelling book. I mean, your books, you say things that maybe some folks wouldn't say or won't say, like gaining by losing. Who fires their leaders, J.D.

Greer? Who fires their leaders? I mean, what are you talking about doing that? We call sending your leaders. That's not a creative way of saying fire them, but you're raising them up so they can multiply by going out and seeing what God has for them. We look at the church like a leadership factory. It's not a group of people gathered around one charismatic leader as much as it is that leader, like Jesus was trying to do, see other leaders anointed, raised up and sent out to do even greater things. Well, I was in here just a couple of years ago, and down the hall I was visiting with a guy who is now my senior pastor in Winston-Salem, who was one of your guys, and another guy who's now running a very large Southern Baptist operation, who was one of your guys. And you just kicked him to the door, man.

What's going on there? Well, I'd be lying to you, Stu, if I didn't say that it was really, really painful to see those guys, because it is, but think about it like giving money. When you give money away, it's painful, but God takes it and he multiplies it. Pastors, a lot of times we'll talk about that with money with their people, but they don't do that with their leadership. And so we've just been committed to sending up. We always say we send out our best leaders. And so, yes, Will Tiberian, pastor of Calvary, where you go, Todd Unzicker, headed up the North Carolina Baptist, those are leaders that I hate.

I wanted to work with these guys for the rest of my life, but I knew that we needed to see greater... Jesus said greater things when you raise up leaders and send them than when you keep them gathered. And it's really a multiplied thing, and if we're going to reach this world with the gospel, we got to get out of our trenches, or I guess our little cliques, and something you talk about a lot. And we talked about it even off the air.

Are we allowed to talk about stuff on the air that we talk about off the air? We want to talk about Christianity. Is it growing?

Is it declining? What's going on? I want you to speak to that, but I want to... We talked about it with you about how could you celebrate if another church does well? I mean, don't you just drift with jealousy when you hear about another church building a building and growing and winning more souls than you guys?

Talk to me about that and that mentality and how that's become, sadly, a Western thing. Yeah, yeah. So, Sue, actually, it was sort of a come to Jesus moment I had a few years, several years ago now, because I was praying for God to send a revival. The church I pastor is in Raleigh and I was like, God, would you send a revival to Raleigh?

The kind that they'd write about in the history books. And I'm not a guy that thought God speaks to me all the time in voices or anything, but it was one of those moments where the Holy Spirit does something in your heart and you know it's him talking. And he said, okay, what if I say yes to that request? And I do send that revival that changes Raleigh from top to bottom. But what if your church didn't get any bigger? And what if the guy down the street, his church, that guy who you're always watching out what's happening, what if his church gets a lot bigger?

And when the history books are written, they talk about him and don't even mention you. Do you still want me to do it? Now, Stu, I know the right answer to that question. The right answer, oh yes, Lord, you must increase and I must decrease. That's the right answer, but that wouldn't have been the real answer.

The real answer is no, I'm not okay with that. And God kind of showed me that in all my prayers for thy kingdom come, for a lot of years, what I kind of meant is my kingdom come. And I can't tell you that I've completely gotten rid of that. My flesh is still my flesh and that jealousy and pride are still a part of it. But I do recognize that ultimately God growing his kingdom and growing mine are not the same. And I've got to be a servant of his kingdom and not my own. Now, I will tell you that just practically speaking, the more churches are in a place, the more new churches, the bigger they get, that raises the spiritual temperature in the entire community.

And it's the old statement that when the water in the harbor rises, all the boats rise. I was talking when we were planting a new campus, I was talking to somebody in my neighborhood and they were talking about what was going on at our church. And the guy literally said to me, he's like, man, I really need to go back to my church. And it was because of the Bible study I'd started in that thing that actually it was about our church, but it actually encouraged him to go back to his church. And I think that's what happens when new churches are in the city.

And so let's talk about that. Cause you know, there's this big question looming. Christianity, is it over or is there going to be a revival? Is it growing?

Is it coming back? You have all these extremes, you have all these entrenchments, you have, you have churches, you have an entire denomination going completely rogue. You know that, you know, we have pastors leaving the United Methodist. There's no secret. Then you have churches kind of going woke and going broke that are like, Hey, I'm not even gonna tell my people to vote pro-life.

I'm not even going to tell my people to vote. It doesn't even matter, but you know, this and that. How do you address all of that? And how do you address where the state of the culture, like if you could put your finger on the pulse of the, of the faith right now?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's even bigger than what you said, because not just churches that are going whoa, but there are a lot of faithful churches that are, have been here for a hundred years that man, they can't find pastors and you go in there and it's like a, you know, a few people scattered around a big auditorium and that's happening everywhere. And it's, it's sad at the same time, you, you know, you see a culture where the one thing that you're not allowed to really do anymore is advocate for what Christians have believed for 2000 years. So it's okay for the, you know, French Olympic committee to, you know, do the Lord's top supper and drag. And that's okay. That's tolerant, but what's not tolerant is to say that we believe that marriage is between a man and a woman for life.

And so it's really easy to look at that and say, man, it's just going, going backwards. I don't want to whitewash that or sugarcoat it. I actually think, yes, we are seeing a tragic loss of Christian influence, assault, and light, and we ought to lament that. But, but in the midst of that one of the verses that God gave me this year is that whole, you know, I'm doing a new thing and you're seeing some new faithfulness to Christ among it a lot right now it's on the individual disciple level. It's people in business that are trying to figure out what it means to be faithful to Christ in the workplace. It's the reason I wrote 12 truths and a lie is helping people engage with those things with people that aren't, that aren't, that don't share all the Christian background that you and I got to grow up with too. And in the midst of maybe the biggest thing is there's, there's been a Renaissance of church planting.

I'll say this real quick. In the last hundred years in the United States, we have seen bigger churches than, than the apostles would have ever dreamed of, you know, 12,000 people on a Sunday morning. Greg Laurie and Billy Graham and Franklin Graham have preached to larger audiences than the apostles could have ever dreamed of.

And at the same time, at the same time, the percentage of Christians in the United States has gone down, not up. And I'm not against mega church. I pastor a mega church. I'm not against big Billy Graham rallies and Greg Laurie.

I love those things. We go to all of them, but I'm saying that it's not as effective at seeing the gospel go forward as church planting. Compare what I just said to this. Rodney Stark, the historian, church historian, he actually died a few years ago, but Rodney Stark said that at the end of the first century, the maximum number of Christians there were in the world, maximum was 7,500. That's all there was at the end of the first hundred years, 7,500. By the end of the second century, one of the early church fathers origin said that, that Christians were geographically broad but numerically insignificant. By the time you get to 312 AD, Christians had the biggest population in the Roman empire, more than half identifies as Christian. And Rodney Stark said, how did you get there?

How did you go from 7,500 and numerically insignificant to there? And he said, it's because they did something that we don't do anymore. We focus on mega churches and big platforms. He said, what they did is every Christian understood it was their responsibility to reproduce and every church knew it was their responsibility to plant. I'm not against mega churches, not against big radio programs. I mean, obviously I'm just saying that the more effective way that we can reach our culture is by raising up leaders in church planting.

And so in the midst of what looks like a decline, we're actually seeing a Renaissance, a growth in the things that really matter. Amen. That's J.D. Greer, pastor of the Summit Church. Do not go to that church if you want to be comfortable. They will put you in a group. They will send you out on mission trips. Your whole family will be discipled.

It's so encouraging. And J.D., you know, it's you know, you're on a panel not too long ago with Pastor Alan Jackson, Eric Bataxas. They honored my dad there. It was kind of cool because you know, we've grown up together and seen a whole lot of cool things. We've both known big student art. You know, I grew up with your folks.

You have my folks. We both had either our folks grab us by the year. We were cutting up and saying the Baptist Church or whatever.

But it was. But here's the question that you guys dealt with. Can a pastor engage in these issues without turning it into a, you know, rally for a politician? But in the church, how can a pastor engage? Because there's a lot on the line here in terms of, you know, I hate to use the word politics, but people are saying, well, abortion, that's a political issue. Well, marriage, gender, mutilating little kids.

Because Jimmy grabs a pink crayon instead of a blue crayon in California. It's against the law to call his parents. Yeah, they go they go right into the they will pay and for his for a medical procedure. But how did so how can a pastor how would you exhort pastors to again, this whole woke broke thing because there's this movement says all we're getting out of that.

Well, we're gonna get out of that. But But what about believers in office? And what about believers running for office? And what about a believe a pastor?

How do you exhort your people in that whole area? Yeah, I mean, if Jesus meant anything by the whole salt and light admonition, he meant that we have to be out in government and it misses and we have to be bringing his blessing to those areas. And blessing means more than just feeding the poor.

It means certainly means that. But it also means advocating for righteousness exalts a nation. And that means righteousness when it comes to things like protecting the unborn. It means righteousness when it comes to protecting the sanctity of marriage.

Ultimately, those two things, you know, the free that just being able to abortion on demand, and gender confusion, those are wreaking havoc in our society. And if I love my neighbors, then I will be speaking out about that. And I'm responsible to teach the whole counsel of God.

I'm not responsible for how people respond to it. So wisdom, you know, stew, we often say this is found by holding two things intention. They're not contradictory. There are two things intention, the two things I have to hold here are, I have to speak the whole counsel of God and speak the unpopular truth, right where our culture is, is sinning and confused the most have to speak clearly there. At the same time, I've also got to be nonpartisan. And I've got to be I've got to do something that doesn't tie me into the political machinations of the world. Those sometimes things feel like they're pulling me two different directions.

And the faithful Christian witness has to navigate them. There are a lot of things I say here that get interpreted as you're being political because I'm warning I just called out our governor for just a truly atrocious response to a pro life question. And I named him and I named his party. And I called him out. So we have to do that. At the same time. You know what, I don't want to be known as the republican church, right? Because 57% of our city identifies or they claim to be democrats. And I don't want to write off half my mission field by associating something with our church that cuts off half the people I'm supposed to reach.

So I got to do both of those. And sometimes they're hard to hold in balance, but you have to keep in the gospel of priority, and not putting all your faith in. But the challenge is, and we have friends in this, like this is real personal that we're emailing and texting with these pastors that they go so hardcore on the right, that it's like a political rally. And they're not even preaching the word like they should, you know, and that sort of thing. But then we have pastors on the other side that were saying, hold on a second, they're saying get out of there.

Don't you know, don't. And they're pushing this agenda to the left. It's horrible in their attempt to, you know, this, this dumbed down version of social justice and things that isn't really social justice at all. And so it's kind of like, you know, you know, it's a tough one, but it's what would you challenge pastors dealing with that? And what would you challenge pastors on keeping that eye on the ball of church planting like we started the conversation and growing? Yeah, so there's an old Scottish proverb that says for every one mile of road, there's two miles of ditch. And there's two ditches here for pastors to fall and neither of them are faithful to the great commission.

One ditch would be, I'm failing to speak out. I mean, John the Baptist called out the sexual immorality of Herod and had his head cut off. And Jesus did not say, John, John, you lost the, you lost the focus. You should have been about the gospel and the kingdom. He said, that's the greatest prophet ever to live, right? On the other side, on the other side, there were numerous, numerous places that were broken in the Roman empire and in the Corinth, the city of Corinth. And what did Paul say? I knew nothing among you about Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And that didn't mean that's all he talked about, but it means that that was so large and it was such his focus that you have to do that. I don't want to tell a long story here, but there was a young lady who recently came to faith in Christ at our church. She sent me a picture of her being baptized and she got baptized at one of our campuses. The first time I got to know her was on social media because I'd said something about the importance of the pro-life position and she fired back at me on Twitter. I had no idea she went to our church. She was from the University of California, Berkeley.

She was out here doing a grad degree and she fires back at me and we go back and forth cause she was very pro-choice at the time. And make a long story short, as she'd been at her church, she came to faith in Christ and she was being discipled and of course changing a lot of her positions on some of these things. But she said to me, she said, Hey, I realize, you know, that what you believe goes against what the Bible teaches goes against a lot what I believe, but I want to thank you that you didn't make this church known as the Republican banner-waving church because she said, I would have never come and I would have never found Christ or Christ would have never found me. And so you pastor, we've got to say, I got to speak truth and I got to be faithful to the great commission. And that includes, that includes adopting the primary strategy for reaching the world, which is, which is raising up leaders and sending them out because Jesus promised John 14, 12, the greater works, the greater works would happen when the spirit came upon multiple believers than when he stayed concentrated on one anointed individual.

Wow. And I'd love for you to share a quick word about that foundation of God's word that you're studying hours a week, you and your team of pastors and all the church plants that have come out of here, that that foundation of a sufficient word that's, that's driven with the gospel in it and how important that is as we get out of here for pastors to really anchor there. And of course the word speaks to all these things that we're talking about. I just got back from Germany, Stu, and I visited, it was a reformation tour and there's a famous story from the reformation where Martin Luther, after the famous, here I stand and you know, my conscience is captive to the word of God, where through circumstances, he had to be holed up in a castle, non-communicating for eight months. And Luther, when he came out, he said that the reformation happened during those eight months that he was absent. And he said this famous statement, he goes, I didn't do anything except sit back.

And the word did it all. I understand that the greatest thing that I can do as a pastor is get the word of God out there because the word of God does everything. And that's my role. It's not to be a charismatic leader. It's not to sell books. It's just to put the word out there. Well, friends, listeners to Truth Talk and all of our awesome affiliates, who many of you carry the program, JD Greer's program, JD Greer Ministry Summit Life, listen to him preach and encourage others and pass it along. And really a lot of pastors are using your resources, your books, and your commentaries, your messages to inspire them. How can folks learn more that haven't heard you preach? What's a good website central to them finding your content, Pastor JD, and more about your church too, if they want to connect and do some planting with you? Well, our program on Truth and other radio stations is called Summit Life.

But probably the easiest place for you to look into it is just go to jdgreer.com, and you can find everything there. You'll find them there. And there's probably some parody JD Greer sites. There are lots of those. There are lots of those, and I do not take responsibility for them.

But the messages and your passion at this stage in your ministry, I mean, God's done amazing things here. I mean, I met with you in a coffee shop at some mall over here. I don't know if it was a Crabtree Mall.

I don't know where the mall was, but it might have been a Durham Mall. And you had a laptop, and I remember that because they had just come out with laptops. I mean, this was early 2000s, you know, and like, I didn't know a lot of pastors in Durham, Truth Network was coming here. And I said, I know JD because we grew up together and all this. And so we met, and you were just coming in. I don't even know if you changed the name yet, you know, but give us a little snapshot of what God, you're not bragging, just celebrating.

This is all applause to God. Give us a snapshot of kind of where God's taken you since then. And then where you want to go next, and you feel God's calling it, you know, as a Little Seer, as a Big Sea Church, too. Yeah, so great question. When I came here, it was 2002. And it was a sort of a sleepy little Baptist Church called Homestead Heights Baptist Church, plateaued, been without a pastor for a year and a half.

The only reason they called me was because they were desperate. I like just anybody to please come and fill the pulpit. And it was one of those things I'm always, as Stu said, it felt like we're a little bit like a kite in a hurricane, you know, like, it's got nothing to do with us.

It's just a mighty wind. And we put the sail up. And so yeah, so now every Sunday that we gather, there's about 12,000 each weekend, we have campuses around the triangle. That's the only place we do campuses in the triangle anything outside of that we plan as independent churches, but there are 14 campuses in the triangle area. And our goal now I mean, we want to keep planning campuses and grow and reach in our community. But our goal now is to plant 1000 churches around the nation. So far, we've planted it's right at about 90 domestic churches, about 400 international churches. But some of those churches are in Greensboro, North Carolina, you know, at Mercy Hill and Mercy Church in Charlotte and two cities and Winston Salem and, and places all around the nation that that are places that the gospel is growing and multiplying.

So that's hopefully what our future is, is more of that. Praise the Lord. Well, shout out to Eric, who is kind of been good friends that seeing my niece, who goes to the Blue Ridge campus, which is one of your campuses. And he told me that he had family he's from Dayton, Ohio. I said, Oh, he said he started texting his family. I told him about the the station and Dayton is carrying this show right now 106.5 FM.

He immediately said his parents immediately texted back and says, I had no idea that that was connected to your friends. We listen to JD there all the time. We was wondering we were wondering how JD's program got on in Dayton, Ohio. So shout out to them. What do you say to all the listeners out there that listen to your program all the time?

Give a little give a little love. Yeah, we have no desire to replace your local church. That's the most important thing you do is be a member of a local church. But if we can come along and help fan the flame of what God is doing, we really do have a vision of playing 1000 churches and maybe in your city, there's a need for another or maybe a first really gospel preaching one.

If so, start praying, reach out to us and let's plan on seeing God cover this nation with churches and we're on the same team of following Jesus in the word, right? Yep. Amen.

Amen to that. That's right. Thank you, JD Greer. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me, Stu.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-20 21:02:32 / 2025-01-20 21:12:10 / 10

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