Backpacks and Promises
If you’ve been around Summit for more than a year, you’ve likely seen our Backpack Drive promoted as we near the end of summer. Over the years, we’ve promoted the drive with fun videos and even heard firsthand testimony of how the drive has benefited lives. Most of us associate the mountains of backpacks that pile in the lobby with local schools and our ongoing commitment to supporting vulnerable children in Central Florida. What many people don’t know, though, is that some of these backpacks go to AFCO (Africans Family and Community Outreach)!
Growing Through Service
Recently, we caught up with some of our Student Ministry volunteers, Nathan and Alexis Meeks, two dedicated volunteers in our Student Ministry, who shared their stories of growth and impact. Over the years, they’ve poured their hearts into mentoring students, and this time has been particularly meaningful for them. Along the way, they got married and started a family, welcoming two daughters into the world, but their commitment to serving never wavered. Nathan and Alexis's journey is a testament to the transformative power of investing in others and the profound impact it can have in our lives.
Living out B.L.E.S.S
The Great Commission is daunting, but B.L.E.S.S. gave us some basic pathways to follow Jesus’ leading in our modern context. Now, summer is almost here, and we’re hearing story after story about how these practices are changing Summit for the better. Angela is a Connect Group leader who, after reading through B.L.E.S.S., was inspired to make some changes in her life, but one was just a subtle change in how she attended Sunday services...
Dreaming of Prayer
Each week, at the end of service, we hear our ministers say, "To the right of the stage, there will be volunteers that would love to pray with you...", and if you’ve ever lingered in the sanctuary after service, you’ve seen our Prayer Team in action. These are volunteers who faithfully show up and step into the stories of our congregation, meeting them where they are, ready to intercede.
Disciples of Every Age
Every week in Base Camp, kids and volunteers gather to connect with God and one another. It’s everything you’d expect to find in a high-energy children’s ministry environment. But what you see on a Sunday morning is just a snapshot of something much deeper and richer taking shape over time. Within Base Camp, a fabric of Christ-centered relationships is being woven each week across generational divides. Communities of volunteers, growing deeper in their own faith, walk alongside families through the ups and downs of life, serving kids who will move on to Surge and Edge and return to lead small groups of their own, guiding the ones who come after them.
The Blessings We Bring
As a church, we are stepping into this call, reaching through relationship. We’re rolling out a whole new framework for how we accomplish the “Reach” portion of Summit’s Vision Statement. In other words, in this next season we’re basing how the whole church goes about “reaching lost people” on a practical book called B.L.E.S.S.: 5 Everyday Ways to Love Your Neighbor, and we want everyone, I mean everyone, to read this thing!
The Courage to Grow
Plants, whether new sprouts or 1,000-year-old redwoods, ocean-dwelling or hanging right here on this wall, need the same four components present to grow. They need sunlight, air, water, and nutrients, otherwise they’re sure to wither away.
Spiritually, we need the right nourishment too, and we get it from the Word through which all things were made, the air breathed by our Creator, the living water of the Holy Spirit, the light that shines in the darkness, which the darkness could not overcome. Jesus, himself, is our source of life.
Christmas Eve Offering
Commission 127 is a non-profit organization aimed at equipping churches to support foster, adoptive, and biological families in crisis. They helped us set up our own Family Advocacy Ministry, and we’ve only just begun to hear the stories of how our support teams are helping foster families in and around Summit. We’ve seen the fruit of their work first hand, and we believe they can do the same for other churches in our area. That’s why we want to take our support of this great organization a step further this year by making them the recipient of our annual Christmas Eve Offering.
Like The Trees
When some dear friends and I were writing songs for “Children of Light” back in 2017, I thought there might be something missing from my debut worship album. I’m admittedly not a “nature person” (Ha!). That may be the understatement of the century, but my concept for the record was to take listeners out of the hustle and bustle and into the mountains or the woods—a more natural setting—where they could reconnect to a more primitive faith, a purer spirituality. But the album did need something earnest and straight from the heart.
Deuteronomy: The Book Not the Monkey
Our obedience, in these everyday, mundane moments, builds our trust in him. And that trust deepens as we remember who he is and what he has already done for us. That trust brings us to a place where, even in the midst of hardship or uncertainty, we can see his kindness at work in the details.
Grow Our Hearts: Prayers for the World
We are beginning a monthly element in our worship services that we are calling “prayers for the world.” This communal time of guided prayer during our worship services will be intentionally built to have us pray for the things that hit close to home for us as well as the things that hit close to the home of another—to pray for the daily bread of another even as I pray for my own.
God Doesn't Write Bad Endings
Each day that I show up and invite God in—with all my junk, with all my pain, with all my hopes, fears, dreams, memories, desires—matters. He will meet me. He knows me. And has known me. And knows you. And has known you. And he doesn’t write bad endings. And what we are seeing and remembering is just a taste of what’s to come.
Living Hope
We can’t control the masses, we can’t control a pandemic, we can’t control others, and we are spinning to grasp onto something. It doesn’t have to be that hurt, habit, or hang-up. We can control what we reach for—even though no one is looking. Maybe you reach for your Bible, maybe you reach for your phone (not to scroll the news or social media but to FaceTime a friend or send a nice text to someone else), maybe you reach for help, maybe you reach for community.