North Carolina pastor J.D. Greear will be nominated by Florida pastor Ken Whitten for the SBC presidency this summer at the SBC Annual Meeting in Dallas, TX.

Greear was nominated for the post in 2016 in St. Louis but ultimately withdrew his candidacy after two inconclusive votes. Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN, has served as president of the SBC the past two years. Many of us remember Dr. Greear’s withdrawal and Dr. Gaines’ acceptance as one of the highlights in recent convention history.

We will update this story as more information is made available.


About J.D. Greear

J.D. Greear is the pastor of The Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

The Summit is characterized by its gospel focus and sending culture. As Pastor J.D. often says, “The gospel is not merely the diving board off of which we jump into the pool of Christianity, it’s also the pool itself.” The deeper we dive into the extravagant love of Christ, the more our lives will be filled with unquenchable joy, reckless generosity, and audacious faith.

Depth in the gospel also leads to width in the mission. Under Pastor J.D.’s leadership, the Summit has grown from a plateaued church of 300 to one of nearly 10,000, making it one of Outreach magazine’s “top 25 fastest-growing churches in America” for many years running.

Seating capacity, however, is not the church’s primary metric for success. Sending capacity is. Pastor J.D. has led the Summit in a bold vision to plant one thousand new churches by the year 2050. In the last ten years, the church has sent out nearly 1,000 people to live on church planting teams—in North Carolina, across the United States, and around the world.

Pastor J.D. Greear has authored several books, including Gaining by Losing:  Why the Future Belongs to Churches That Send (2015), Gospel:  Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary (2011), Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart:  How to Know for Sure You Are Saved (2013), and Jesus, Continued … Why the Spirit Inside You Is Better Than Jesus Beside You (2014).

Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, writing on the correlations between early church presentations of the gospel and Islamic theology. Seeing Muslims come to faith in Christ has long been a burden of his, a burden that led him to serve in Southeast Asia with the International Mission Board.

Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica live in Raleigh. Together they are raising four ridiculously cute kids: Kharis, Alethia, Ryah, and Adon.

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