One of the things we say all the time at the Summit is that the church is God’s demonstration community. The church exists to share the gospel, and a large part of how we demonstrate the gospel is through local outreach. As we preach the announcement of Jesus’ finished work on the cross verbally, we have to tangibly display the love of the gospel through the work of our hands.
We love to serve our city, especially those areas where the need is the greatest, because we love to follow Jesus, who gravitated toward the places where the need was the greatest. So it thrills me to hear about some of the things that God is doing among our members in terms of local outreach:
- There are now 29 new members of our GoUrban teams—people who will move into under-resourced neighborhoods in Durham and Raleigh to incarnate the gospel there. With our current team, that makes a total of 46!
- We have 63 adoptive families at the Summit, representing 67 adopted children. And 32 more families (that we know of!) are in the process of adopting. I love this!
- Wake County Correctional facility has identified 31 prisoners in need of mentors and has asked us specifically to step up to that task. Just last week, we had 85 people come to an interest meeting for our prison ministry, and 36 people filled out applications to begin volunteering—on the spot.
Summit, the gospel has changed our lives, and that is what propels us to love and serve others. As God has been to us, so we will be to others.
