The Church: God's Gospel Family

As you consider whether God is leading you to join our movement of disciple-making disciples by becoming a member of The Summit Church family, we want to help you better understand what the church is and what the church does. 

We’ll explain the church’s nature and practice in three parts: 1) the church as God’s gospel family, 2) the church’s gospel practices, and 3) how the church is sent.

The Church—God’s Gospel Family 

The gospel is the good news that God the Father sent his only begotten Son to live the life we could never live, die the death we deserved, and raise us to new life through his resurrection so that we have a place in his family forever. 

Around The Summit Church, we summarize this good news by saying, “Jesus in my place.” Jesus is God, who took our place by becoming a human, just like us (Hebrews 2:17). He took our place by living a life of perfect obedience to God (Philippians 2:7–8). He took our place by taking the punishment of death for our sin, even though he never sinned and didn’t deserve it (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Then, he rose from the dead and gave us his place. In Christ, we have his life—free from sin and death. We have his life, ascended and “seated with him in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6 ESV). We have his life, so that we await our own resurrection from the dead when he returns in glory.

Through this gospel of Jesus Christ, God created his gospel family—the church. When we believe the gospel, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us so that we are united with Christ. His life is our life. His death is our death. His resurrection is our resurrection. When we are united to Jesus Christ the Son, then his Father is our Father too. 

All who have faith in Christ have God as Father and are brothers and sisters with one another. We are forever family—united to one another for all eternity. This gospel family of God isn’t something we choose to be a part of. Everyone who is born again in Christ is born into the family of God. We’re all brothers and sisters (whether we like it or not 😀). 

The Bible teaches that the church is God’s gospel family in two different senses—the universal church (or the whole family of God) and the local church (or immediate family). 

The universal church is the whole family of God from every nation, tribe, and tongue across all ages. This family includes everyone who has ever believed the gospel and has life in Christ—that means every Christian who has ever lived, from Peter, James, and John to Augustine, Martin Luther, and Lottie Moon. It also includes all Christians all over the world worshiping God, from Timbuktu to Thailand and from Machu Picchu to London. The universal church includes all Christians, who, all together, make up our extended gospel family. 

But this whole family of God is incomplete. It’s still growing! Many more of our brothers and sisters haven’t joined God’s gospel family because they haven’t yet heard the good news of Jesus Christ. God will grow his church to its fullness by sending us to preach the gospel across the street and around the world, and he will keep sending us until his family is complete.

The Bible also teaches about the church as a local body, or an immediate gospel family. These are the Christians you live your life with—the ones you gather together with consistently and with whom you share a mutual commitment to care for one another. While we always want to care for our extended family, we bear a responsibility to care for those in our immediate family in a unique way. 

As members of a local church, we link arms together in mission. The local church is God’s “Plan A” to reach the world and grow his family. So as we gather together every week, we worship our God and Father and are then sent as an army, committed to do whatever it takes to reach all people.

If you move forward in becoming a member, you are joining the immediate family of The Summit Church—you’re saying, “I’m in!” to join our family and join the movement of disciple-making disciples. You are ours, and we are yours in Christ, and we are sent to make disciples of all nations.

The Church's Gospel Practices

The church is God’s gospel family, and just like every family, we have family traditions—regular practices that define our family. Jesus commanded three gospel practices for his family to grow together as disciples: 1) preaching, 2) baptism, and 3) the Lord’s Supper (a.k.a. communion). All Christians in the universal, whole family of God observe these practices, but we observe these traditions with our immediate local church family.

Our first family tradition is preaching the Bible—gospel teaching. We became Christians by hearing the gospel preached and believing. Now, we continue to grow in Christ through the weekly preaching of the gospel from the whole Bible. 

That’s why the preaching of the Bible sits at the very center of the Summit’s weekend worship services. In the main event of our time together, we hear the gospel preached so that week in and week out, we receive a steady diet of the Word of God. The Bible gives our family nourishment. It fills us up and permeates every fiber of our being so that when life cuts us, we bleed God’s Word. 

Our second family tradition is baptism—our gospel picture. Baptism is where new family members publicly profess that they believe the gospel of Jesus Christ and make a public commitment to obey him. Christians being baptized embody the gospel as they are buried in the water just like Jesus was buried, then raised out of the water just like Jesus was resurrected from the dead (Romans 6:3–4). Because the gospel is an act of God, we are baptized in his name—the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18–20).

In our Summit Church family, we ask people to answer two questions to profess their faith in Christ and his gospel as they are baptized. First, we ask, “Do you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary for your salvation?” After the person being baptized confesses faith in Christ, we then ask, “Will you go wherever he tells you to go and do whatever he tells you to do?” Upon hearing a person’s belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ and commitment to a life of obedience, we baptize them as our brother or sister and welcome them into God’s gospel family.

At The Summit Church, we believe baptism is a step of obedience to be taken after someone has become a Christian. Baptism is a confession of faith. For those who were baptized as a baby, the faith confessed in their baptism is their parents’ faith, not theirs. 

Having faithful Christian parents who desire their children to believe the gospel and obey Christ is nothing to be ashamed of. But we believe God’s command is to be baptized by confessing your own faith in Christ, so we invite people who were baptized as infants to fulfill their parents’ hopes and enter the baptismal waters to make their own confession of faith. 

At The Summit Church, we only practice believer’s baptism by immersion. This is where the person’s body goes fully under the water and comes up out of the water, representing identification with the Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection—the intended gospel picture of baptism. If you want to be a member, you must be baptized by immersion as a believer. 

The third and final family tradition is the Lord’s Supper (also called “communion”)—our gospel meal. The Lord’s Supper is where God’s gospel family remembers the gospel by eating and drinking. The bread signifies Jesus’ broken body, and as we eat it, we look to Christ as the bread of life who nourishes our souls. The wine (fruit of the vine) signifies Jesus’ blood poured out for us, and as we drink it, we look to Christ’s sacrificial death to remember that he has done everything necessary for our salvation.

The Bible tells us that as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). Jesus commanded this to be a regular practice in his family so that as we participate in the Lord’s Supper, we remember and proclaim the gospel, finding our sustenance in him. At the Summit, we take the Lord’s Supper once a month. 

The Church Is Sent

The God of the gospel is a sending God. As the Father sent Jesus Christ the Son to be our Savior, the Son sends the church to proclaim and demonstrate his gospel in word and deed (John 20:21). To be a member of God’s gospel family means being sent to invite others into our family.

Because our God is a sending God, The Summit Church sends every member. For all who are in the family of God, the question is no longer if you’re called to be sent; it’s only where and how. That’s why we end every service with “You are sent!”—because God has already sent you to make the good news about Jesus known to everyone, so the church joins in sending you to your homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces for gospel ministry.

God sends his church with this commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). We are commanded to make disciples, not just converts. As we preach the gospel across the street and around the world, we invite people to join God’s gospel family, to be a part of our family traditions, and to be disciple-making disciples with us. By God’s grace and through his power, as we live sent, our gospel family will multiply and fill the earth with brothers and sisters who are disciples of Christ.

That’s why The Summit Church’s mission statement says that we follow the Holy Spirit to create a movement of disciple-making disciples—because God commissioned his church to do just that! Our mission as a church is the mission God sent his church to do. 

Will you join The Summit Church family and say “I’m in!” to the movement of disciple-making disciples in RDU and around the world?