J.D. Greear

Pastor of @SummitRDU. Husband to Veronica, dad of Kharis, Allie, Ryah and Adon. @NAMB_SBC National Ambassador. 63rd President of the SBC. Rom 1:16

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

Super excited to be back @summitrdu preaching this weekend for the 1st time in a month. Also important… been back in the good ol’ USA for less than 48 hrs so yesterday I prioritized quintessentially American things I’ve missed, including my favorite @ChickfilA sandwich—the Double Spicy Chicken filet with pepper jack cheese. CFA won’t double it no matter how many times I suggest it on the board, so I just have to order an extra filet and do it myself.

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

I love the sheer audacity and boldness of this prayer request of one of our @SummitRDU members serving overseas through our Summit Daily Revival app: asking God nor nothing less than a new Bible translation and multiplying church in an unreachable group. Audacious. This strikes me as the kind of prayers that get Jesus‘s attention (Mark 7:24-30)

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

I’m really enjoying the World Cup, but the injury play acting… holding your ankle and acting like you’ve been shot in the head and dramatic rolls 10 yards across the field drives me crazy. And I already have to watch Duke basketball.

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

@ProvisionistP Great to meet you and look forward to seeing you in Barcelona!

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

Over here with @IMB_SBC Jesse Snodgrass in Madrid… He took me to a bullfight. Seemed kind of one-sided against the bull. Now listening to him explain to me the metaphorical implications for church planting.

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

@LMozisek This rivals Chris Stapleton’s and even Whitney’s. Incredible.

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

@reformedlearner @BaptistPress If they also believe, yes!

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

Haha, well glad you admitted you had Claude help you write your response.

I think the average time of someone coming forward and actually getting into the tank is about 30 minutes… give or take five minutes? So, yes, a little longer than a song—more like the length of one of your sermon intros. And I don’t know what Hillsong music you’re listening to, but none of that stuff lasts 4 minutes. 4 minutes just gets you to that part of the song you repeat 6-7 more times for a total of 13 minutes.

On a more serious note, the interview itself seeks to discern if the gospel of grace is properly understood and if there is clear understanding of what the Lordship of Jesus is all about.

We ask them to explain the gospel to us, and then do our best to discern if real understanding/regeneration has occurred, as best we can tell. What we don’t take time to do is make sure they can identify the Puritans by flash cards or recite the 9 Marks backwards in koine like I know you love to do.

Love you, too, brother, and missed seeing you at SBC! How much more fun would this be on a 9 Marks panel?

And, I’ve also seen the question of if someone being baptized automatically puts them into our membership. The short answer is both no and yes—no, we don’t believe baptism is synonymous with membership and don’t see any Scriptures that intrinsically connect the two (in fact, in places we see baptism in the book of Acts there is no official discussion of church membership); but “yes,” in that we believe baptism is a local church ordinance and thus should ideally be done at the place where you plan to join, and should lead to immediate engagement in the membership process. After all, if you’re serious about the Lordship of Christ, why wouldn’t you want to become a church member ASAP? It’s hard not to see Paul’s intent to merge the two when he discusses being “baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12). But we’d stop short of saying that baptism must never be done apart from simultaneous joining.

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

For the first time in many years, I will not be at the SBC Annual Meeting. My daughter Ryah just graduated from high school, and I am serving as a chaperone on her senior class trip to Europe, after which the rest of my family will join us over there for some R&R, and then we will be visiting some of our @summitrdu missionaries and summer college missions projects on the field.

It’s different not being at the SBC, and I’ll miss it, but I am where I need to be as a dad.

Even though I won’t personally be in Orlando, our church is sending a full slate of messengers (as always), as are most of our Summit Collaborative churches. We believe an important part of stewarding our cooperative efforts is showing up. I will miss seeing friends and partners, encouraging one another and engaging in the good-faith dialogue that makes us all better. Most of all, I will miss the opportunity to see missionaries commissioned to the ends of the earth in a tangible reminder of why we come together in the first place.

I have been following the conversation, of course, and I pray that as discussions play out on the floor, we do so with a generosity of spirit that believes the best about one another. Our conversations may be robust, but they should be approached in good faith.

My main prayer for #sbc26 is that we would faithfully keep the gospel above all as we seek to reach the nations and that we would honor Christ by bearing even with one another’s weaknesses as we shepherd his church and steward his mission.

[Kevin Ezell @kevezell]

THANK YOU PASTORS. The Annie Armstrong offering is up over 14% from this same time last year. Humbled and grateful for your generosity and faithfulness to support missions.

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

Few people are as helpful as nucelar-submarine-engineer turned church planting calayst @toddwilson in understanding how the road that brought us here helps us better discern where to go. I’ve personally benefited from Todd’s analysis and writing! You can download a free pdf copy of Todd's latest book “How Did We Get Here” https://t.co/YFzymMhspj

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

Whenever the church has confused political influence with spiritual power, we’ve lost our way. The mission of Jesus moves forward through humility, sacrifice, and love. Thank you @annaclaire0618 @thecbjournal for this important conversation: https://t.co/qPeK6WucLM

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

Today Mercy Hill Collab held their first annual retreat with churches they have planted. @mercyhillnc is a church we planted a decade ago when we sent out one our best pastors, Andrew Hopper, and a team. They now run several thousand. This past year we helped them launch their own Collaborative, because our vision is to not just plant churches but multiplying movements. MHCollab goal is 100,000 worshipers in 100 churches by 2032. (70 of them being church plants)

Our goal is (in addition to planting 1000 churches out of our church) to plant 25 such Collaboratives in strategic cities around the nation (and in international cities worldwide) in the next decade. Please pray we reach that objective, and if you’re interested in learning more or becoming a part, reach out to us at https://t.co/A85MUYhA0e

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

Great insight here!

[Neil Shenvi @NeilShenvi]

For evidence of Paul Pressler's repeated sexual abuse of young men, read this thread.

But I'd like to underline @RobertDownen_'s point: this is the rotten fruit of "no enemies to the right" (NETTR).

Pressler was fighting actual theological liberalism. He was a conservative. 1/

[Neil Shenvi @NeilShenvi]

For evidence of Paul Pressler's repeated sexual abuse of young men, read this thread.

But I'd like to underline @RobertDownen_'s point: this is the rotten fruit of "no enemies to the right" (NETTR).

Pressler was fighting actual theological liberalism. He was a conservative. 1/

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

So apparently I’m embroiled in some sort of controversy. Let me set a few things strait:

1. I don’t know Sam Allberry personally. We've met in-person a total of once — back in January while I was in Nashville when I did the Shawn Ryan Podcast, where I ran into and took a picture with Sam. When I saw the news initially about his removal from leadership I took that picture down. I had already started to see people commenting that by keeping it up I was implicating myself in his sin. I do not think they were correct. But ironically, said comments were then replaced with ones telling me that by taking it down… I was hiding something and implicating myself in his sin. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

2. I believe the language in the current public statements to be potentially unhelpfully vague. From my (brief though not uninformed) understanding of the details of the situation, what Sam did that disqualified him from leadership was not due to sexual or even a romantic impropriety, but what could best be described as a sinful emotional attachment. This is not to justify it or say that it wasn't disqualifying (I think it probably was). But the lack of clarity has left room for those who desire to gossip, defame, and sinfully speculate online to run wild — which they have.

3. I am genuinely saddened with the internet’s desire to tear down and jump to harsh judgements regarding another Christian’s failing. When someone falls into sin, those who are spiritually mature should work toward their restoration, approaching them with a spirit of gentleness (Gal. 6:1-2). The motivation for restoration carries spiritual weight. Bringing someone back who has wandered from truth saves their soul from death and covers a multitude of sins (James 5:19–20). This isn’t merely about correcting behaviour, it’s about spiritual rescue. The desire to gossip and breed quarrels, which is so obviously warned against in scripture (Proverbs 17:19; 26:17; 2 Timothy 2:14, 23-24; Titus 3:9-11; James 4:1-2) is, to say the least, lamentable and disappointing to see.

4. Sam Allberry is being labelled as “Side B,” this is genuinely confusing to me. To quote Sam in his own words: “Same sex attraction is not a good thing. It is... a consequence of the fall. ...This kind of attraction is not something God designed for us, and it contradicts his design” (Is God Anti Gay, 63). Sam has expressed in multiple places throughout his written work and public talks that he holds to the biblical position of marriage, that homosexual relationships are sinful, and that identifying as a “gay Christian” is incompatible with scripture. To be clear, I don't agree with Sam on all the nuances of how he discusses the issue. But I can only conclude that this attempt to make him into an LBGT advocate comes from either shear ignorance of his public work or some sort of internet-level frothing of the mouth to jump on whoever “we don’t like this week.”

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. - Heb 3:13.

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

@SamFerg_UTTyler Thank you, Sam!

[Lacey Villasenor @laceyeloisa]

Such a great day being commissioned by @SummitCollab!

[J.D. Greear @jdgreear]

@SummitCollab Retreat commissions its new class of church planters for this year, planting all over the nation, many on or near college campuses. Makes our 113th plant. Every week, more than 86,000 worship weekly in one of these plants. Pray for gospel-focus, growth, balance and multiplication, the 4 values of our movement. Big thanks to @sendnetwork for their help—these are all partnering with Send.