Galveston Island Convention Center

J.D. Greear is the lead pastor of The Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, NC, and author of \”Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary\” (2011) and \”Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved\” (2013). Two main things characterize The Summit Church: its Gospel focus and sending culture. The Gospel is not merely the diving board off of which we jump into the pool of Christianity; it’s also the pool itself. Joy, reckless generosity and audacious faith all come by learning more about God’s extravagant love found in Christ.

God has blessed The Summit Church with tremendous growth. Under J.D.’s leadership, the Summit has grown from a plateaued church of 300 to one of nearly 8,000, making it one of Outreach magazine’s “top 25 fastest-growing churches in America” for several years running.

J.D. has also led the Summit to further the kingdom of God by pursuing a bold vision to plant one thousand new churches by the year 2050. In the last 10 years, the church has sent out more than 300 people to serve on church planting teams, both domestically and internationally. J.D. completed his Ph.D. 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 and served 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.

He and his beautiful wife, Veronica, live in Raleigh, NC and are raising four ridiculously cute kids: Kharis, Alethia, Ryah and Adon.

For over 16 years D.A. used the medium of Rap music as a tool to help educate the people of God on the precepts of Scripture as well as how to evangelize to the lost by presenting them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

D.A. serves as Pastor of Reach Fellowship, a church plant in North Long Beach, CA and as Chief Evangelist for the Urban Youth Workers Institute. Prior to his current roles, he served as an Adjunct Professor at Calvary Bible College teaching systematic and contemporary theology courses, an urban church planter/pastor in Kansas City, MO, a National Coordinator of Urban Student Ministries at the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and the Executive Director at ReachLife Ministries, the non-profit ministry of Reach Records.

D.A. earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies at Calvary Bible College and his Master’s Degree in Christian Studies from Calvary Theological Seminary. D.A. is currently working towards his PhD in Applied Theology with a North American Missions emphasis at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

With a heart to provide local churches with quality Bible-centered tools and resources for evangelism and discipleship, D.A. wrote three books; G.O.S.P.E.L., DNA: Foundations of the Faith both published through Moody Publishers; his third book, Bound to Be Free: Escaping Performance to be Captured by Grace, was published through NavPress.

He and his wife Elicia have two daughters, Izabelle and Lola and one son, D.A. Jr. (aka Duce).

Judd Harris is a worship leader, songwriter and vocalist who splits his time between coaching and mentoring student worship leaders at Liberty University and traveling as an itinerant worship leader.

Based in Lynchburg, Virginia, Judd spends his weekdays at Liberty University as an artist-in-residence helping train and shepherd the students of the Liberty Worship Collective, the university’s main campus worship team. He is a mentor and coach to student worship leaders as well as chief songwriter for the LWC. In both positions he is passionate about the wholistic ministry of worship leading and creativity, where worship leadership is just as prevalent off-stage as on, and where art is participation with God in blessing His church as well as bringing the creative heart closer to Himself.