J.D. Greear preaches an uncompromising faith in a straightforward, unapologetic fast-clip monologue.
“Is it possible to be a lukewarm Christian?” he asked his listeners on a recent Sunday morning at The Summit, his North Carolina megachurch.
Standing onstage in gray jeans, a polo shirt and a scruffy stubble, he likens halfhearted Christians to lukewarm coffee. Hot is good, so is cold, he said. But lukewarm coffee makes you want to spit it out.
“There’s no middle ground,” he implores. “You’re either committed to the mission and living all in for Jesus, or you’re not.”
Greear’s sermons draw crowds of nearly 11,000, including an enviable number of college students and young adults, to hear a bracing Christian message he calls a mixture of truth and grace: Sin is real. There’s no salvation outside of faith in Jesus. God’s grace is amazing, but may not last.
It’s the same kind of unvarnished evangelical message he now hopes to parlay into what may be his new role, as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant group.
Southern Baptists meeting in Dallas June 12-13 will pick their next president, and the 45-year-old Greear is widely expected to win. (Ken Hemphill, 70, a former seminary president, has also allowed his name to be placed in the running.)
If he does, Greear will become the youngest SBC leader in nearly…
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