J.D. Greear became the pastor of a church called Homestead Heights Baptist Church in 2002. As a young 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, more than 8,000 worshippers gather weekly, making The Summit Church one of Outreach magazine’s "top 25 fastest-growing churches in America" for several years running.
J.D. completed his Doctorate in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is also a faculty member, writing on the correlations between early church presentations of the gospel and Islamic theology. Having lived serving among Muslims, he has a burden to see them, as well as every nation on earth, come to know and love the salvation of God in Christ. Books by J.D. Greear include,
GOSPEL: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary, Breaking the Islam Code, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart (How to Know You are Saved), and
Jesus Continued.Heath A. Thomas (Ph.D., University of Gloucestershire, UK) is dean of the Herschel H. Hobbs College of Theology and Ministry, Associate Vice President for Church Relations, and Professor of Old Testament at Oklahoma Baptist University. His passion is illumining the world of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, so that others might experience the drama of the Scriptures. He is author of Faith Amid the Ruins: The Book of Habakkuk, Poetry & Theology in Lamentations: The Aesthetics of an Open Text, Until He Looks Down and Sees: The Message and Meaning of the Book of Lamentations, editor of A Manifesto for Theological Interpretation (with Craig Bartholomew), Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem (with Paul Copan and Jeremy Evans), and Great is Thy Faithfulness? Reading Lamentations as Sacred Scripture (with Robin Parry). Dr. Thomas has served churches in Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina and the United Kingdom, and was an elder at the Summit Church in the Raleigh-Durham metroplex prior to his move to Oklahoma.
