J.D. Greear became the lead pastor of a church called Homestead Heights in 2002. As a young “Senior Pastor,” he led this 40 year old, plateaued church of 300 to re-launch itself with a new name and a new vision to reach its community and world with the gospel. Today, well over 6,000 worshippers gather weekly, making the Summit Church one of Outreach magazine’s “top 25 fastest-growing churches in America” for several years running.
Pastor J.D. has led the Summit to make the gospel its central focus. The gospel is the glorious good news that God, in Christ, did for us what we could never do for ourselves. He saved us, not according to our good works, but according to his great mercy, by living the life we could not live and then dying the death we were condemned to die. The “gospel secret” is that we become what God intends us to be when we focus less on what we are to do for Him and more on what He has done for us.
The Summit Church seeks to further the kingdom of God not only by growing its own congregation, but by planting other ones as well. Our goal is to plant 1,000 new churches by the year 2050. In the last ten years, the Summit Church has sent out more than 300 people to serve on church planting teams both domestically and internationally.
J.D. and his beautiful wife Veronica live in Raleigh and are raising four ridiculously cute kids, Kharis, Alethia, Ryah and Adon.
J.D. completed his Doctorate in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, writing on the correlations between early church presentations of the gospel and Islamic theology. Having served among Muslims, he has a burden to see them, as well as peoples from every nation on earth, come to know and love the salvation of God in Christ.
Books by J.D. Greear:
GOSPEL: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary. 2011
Breaking the Islam Code, 2010.
Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart (How to Know You are Saved)