That’s domestically. You’re also involved in church planting internationally.
Internationally, 203 of our members live on one of our overseas church planting teams. So that means a current Summit member who right now is living in the Middle East, Central Asia, wherever. Some of them are working like a traditional missionary, raising support; some of them are business people who have hooked up with one of our church planting teams. They’re paying their own way because they are pursuing business, perhaps with a multinational company, or they’ve started their own clothing company or import/export business.
One of the things I tell our business people is, you’ve got to get a job somewhere. Why not choose your job based on where God is doing something strategic. Every college student that graduates—and we have 1,200 or 1,300 college students who are part of this church—we tell them, You’ve got to get a job somewhere, why not let the biggest factor in where you choose to live and pursue your career be where God is doing something strategic?
One of the phrases we use is, Whatever you’re good at, do it well to the glory of God, but then do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God.
We’re trying to transfer the onus of ministry ownership back to the people, so it’s not just a church running a bunch of programs and trying to recruit volunteers.
I notice that you don’t draw much of a distinction between the church’s local and international mission. You don’t seem to treat them as two disconnected realities.
Christopher J.H. Wright said, “It’s not that God has a mission for his church, it’s that he created a church for his mission.” The mission precedes the church in the Bible and the mission was to get the gospel to every people group on earth. A church that is not involved in that larger mission really has no point in existing. And a ministry that is not discipling people to think about that global mission is not really discipling people. God didn’t just save you for you, he chose you because he wants you to be part of what he’s doing all around the world. That doesn’t mean that we all go, but what it means is that we all have a role in the larger mission of the church.
So as you look back on how your ideas have come together and you reflect on your experience as a pastor, obviously it’s not all up-times and happiness. What have you gained and what have you lost in shifting focus?
The first thing that I lost—I had to lose my ambition for building a great name for myself, building as big a church with as big a budget as I can possibly get. Every year we lose again with leaders that are going out. It’s hard to open your hand with these valuable resources.
What have we gained? We’ve gained a whole lot more people for the kingdom. We’ve gained the satisfaction, the joy of knowing that we are investing our resources for God’s greater kingdom purposes.
I think of the parable Jesus told about the master who gave the talents to his people. To one he gave 10, to another five and to another he gave a single talent. It has always intrigued me that Jesus calls the guy who just sat on his money wicked. He didn’t spend it on prostitutes or gambling. He just didn’t invest it. He held it.
I wonder, is a church that never sends out its best leaders and resources, never risks for the kingdom of God, just plays it safe—are they like the servant who never invests his talent out in the harvest? Will Jesus come back one day and call them wicked?
There’s more than one way to be wicked. You can be wicked by breaking the 10 commandments or you can be wicked by failing to risk and invest what God has given you for the kingdom.
You say the future belongs to churches that send. In what sense?<?strong>
Everybody’s been talking about the survey that came out on the rise of the nones—people that check “None” for their religious affiliation. The thing to understand about nones is that they are much less likely to just make their way back into a church or make their way to an evangelistic crusade.
There’s a survey I cite where 70 percent of British people say they don’t anticipate going into a church for any reason. It’s not that they are boycotting the church. It’s just that their rhythm of life would never take them in. They don’t go for a marriage, they don’t go for a funeral, they wouldn’t go on a national tragedy. If you’re going to reach the nones you’re going to have to get good at taking the gospel outside of the church.
When I lived overseas in a Muslim country, there was a mosque right down the street. I never went to the mosque. I would not have gone if the imam, their pastor, was doing a helpful series on relationships. I wouldn’t have gone if I felt lonely. I wouldn’t have gone if they added a kickin’ drum loop and a bass guitar to the prayer chant. It wasn’t about that. It was just a different world. A different religion.
That’s how the nones are beginning to think of the church. And we’re spending all our time trying to make our guest services Disney-esque and make our pastor funny and relevant. As pastors all we’re doing is fighting for a bigger piece of a rapidly shrinking pie—dechurched and bored Christians.
Those of us who want to reach the rest of the culture have got to figure out how to grow the pie. And the way to grow the pie is not by improving the quality of the product on Sunday morning but by empowering our people to carry the gospel outside the church intro the community.
THE SUMMIT CHURCH
Durham, North Carolina
Pastor: J.D. Greear
Twitter: @JDGreear
Website: SummitRDu.com
Founded: 1962
Affiliation: Southern Baptist
Locations: 8
Attendance: 8,275
Growth in 2014: +993 (14%)
Fastest-Growing: 28
Largest: 47
