Summit Podcasts: BACK40, Sermon Audio, and Leadership Night

This week Pastor Mel preached Romans 15:14-33, our next-to-last week in the book of Romans. Paul has spent fourteen chapters calling a divided church to unity, and now he tells them plainly that they already know what to do. They just need to be reminded. Then he opens his heart about his calling: he brings the good news so that he might present the Gentiles as an acceptable offering to God. Pasto...

In this episode we start with news of a plague in Russia and what Summit would do if it had to walk through something like COVID again. We talk about why the church would keep its doors open, how to weigh facts and data after 2020, and what it means to lead when every decision applies to everyone. Next we talk about the repentance of God in Genesis 6, where the Lord was sorry he had made man. We d...

This week Pastor Mel preached Romans 14:1-15:13, where Paul addresses a very specific dispute in the Roman church. Jewish believers returning to Rome after their expulsion found that the Gentile believers had dropped many of their customs, and the church divided over food and holy days. Paul's answer is unity: "Accept other believers who are weak in the faith and don't argue with them...

This week Pastor Mel preached Romans 13:8-14, where Paul turns from governing authority to the people inside the church. His call to a divided church is love — not a starry-eyed feeling but a sacrificial practice. It's the only debt worth carrying. Paul sums up the commandments against adultery, murder, stealing, and coveting in one line from Leviticus 19:18, "Love your neighbor as yourse...

In this episode we start with hell: whether part of its suffering will be the final realization of how much God loved us, why hell is better understood as the natural end we were all headed toward than as a punishment God adds, and why a good God is the one who stepped in to save us from it. Next we talk about power. If God grants us authority over other people, what is the most God honoring way t...

Pastor Mel preached Romans 13:1-7, the passage on how a Christian relates to governing authority. He makes the case that believers are called to submit to the authorities God places over them — even the ones they did not vote for. Submission to authority is godly, wise, and fair. But he is equally clear that the state's authority is not absolute: there is a place for civil disobedience when a...

This study moves into Genesis 6:1-10 and the events leading up to the Flood. As humanity multiplies, so does its corruption — the sons of God (Seth's godly line) take wives from the daughters of man (the apostate line of Cain), and godliness mixes with godlessness. We examine why the Lord declares that His Spirit will not strive with man forever, limiting human life to 120 years as both a judg...

Pastor Mel preached Romans 12:9-21, the final movement of Romans chapter 12. After eleven chapters of doctrine, Paul turns to the practical shape of life in a divided church. His prescription for unity is genuine love — costly, sacrificial, and possible only by the power of the Holy Spirit. Mel walks the passage command by command: really love rather than pretend, and hate what is wrong; take deli...

Pastor Mel draws six leadership lessons from Jack Welch, the legendary CEO who grew General Electric many times over. Control your destiny, or someone else will. Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. Be candid, honest "to the last ten percent," because clarity is a kindness. Don't manage, lead (and know the difference). Change before you have to, the cautionar...

In this episode we start with artificial intelligence: how these systems are climbing from narrow tools toward something far more general. We talk about the "alignment problem", then we pivot to a hopeful call for writing true, useful material a means of influencing the future of thought. Next we talk about sin as something contagious: Paul's picture of a little yeast working through...

Pastor Eran Holt preached Romans 12:3-8, picking up one week after Pastor Mel's message on being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Eran's driving question was practical: if God has really transformed a person, what would you actually see? Paul answers by naming four ordinary places a changed life shows up — how you see yourself, how you see others, how you see your gift, and how yo...

Pastor Mel reaches the great pivot of Romans — the "therefore" of chapter 12, where Paul turns from eleven chapters of what God has done to how a changed people now live. In view of God's mercy, Paul pleads with us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. Mel grounds an acceptable sacrifice in the Old Testament pattern of the first and the best, then turns to verse 2: don't be...

Pastor Mel preaches a message on prayer. Prayer is not a religious task to complete, but an ongoing, open-ended conversation with God that needs no fancy words, no set hour, and no particular volume. Quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer — "it matters little what form of prayer we adopt, or how many words we use; what matters is the faith which lays hold on God" — Mel reframes prayer for anyone wh...

Mel, Joel, and Michael discuss law, death, and the thousand-year lifespans in Genesis. They open on the law, and the why behind it: how much of our lawlessness comes from leaders who wag their fingers at sin without ever explaining why a sin actually corrodes the kind of world we want to live in? Working through a hard, heartbreaking case in the news, they trace how a culture full of "what ab...

A full walk through Genesis 5, the genealogy that carries the "holy seed" from Adam to Noah across the 1,656 years before the Flood. We don't skip the list — it's where Scripture quietly keeps the promise of the protoevangelium, tracing the lineage that ends in Christ. Along the way: what Adam's creation teaches about the image of God and human humility, how a fallen nature p...

This week Pastor Mel preached the final message in our series The Kingdom, working through the last of Jesus' parables in Matthew 13 — the parable of the net (Matthew 13:47-52). Across four weeks Jesus has been revealing the kingdom through a string of parables — that it is holy, that it is transformational, that it is priceless — and here he brings it to its sharpest edge: a net thrown into t...

This week Pastor Mel preached Matthew 13:44-46, the treasure hidden in a field and the merchant's pearl of great value. Read the first parable too closely and the man looks like he cheats the owner, and Mel heads that off early: "If this is where you're at with this verse, you're overthinking it. I was overthinking it." Jesus is not teaching property ethics. He is making two...

Pastor Mel draws leadership lessons from Michael Scott, the regional manager of Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch on NBC's The Office. Mel grants Michael Scott one real credit: he treats the office like family, and the loyalty that produces is genuine. Then he works through the cost of the rest. A crippling insecurity that undermines his authority, his decision-making, and his ability to co...

Mel, Joel, and Michael debrief their experience hosting the Global Leadership Summit as a partner site — their favorite speakers, what separates a professional communicator from an expert, and why an authentic story often lands harder than a polished delivery. From there the conversation turns to three questions that keep circling one idea: what actually keeps a leader steady over the long haul. T...

This week Pastor Mel preached the second message in our series called The Kingdom, working from two short parables in Matthew 13, the mustard seed and the yeast. Both begin with something almost too small to notice, and Jesus uses them to show what the kingdom of heaven is like and how it actually grows. Mel drew out four points. The kingdom starts small but grows far beyond what its beginning wou...

This week Pastor Mel opened a new series called The Kingdom with the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, with its explanation in 13:36-43). A farmer plants good seed, but while everyone sleeps an enemy sows weeds among the wheat. When the servants offer to pull them, the farmer refuses and says to let both grow together until the harvest. Here is the tension: there is a weed call...

Mel, Joel, and Michael discuss the finale of the Prepare the Way series - Pastor Christina's message on calling. They dig into why God's call rests on relationship with him rather than our talent or gifting - which means everyone is called, both liberating and terrifying - how a vocation differs from a calling, and the humbling truth that God works in spite of us, not because of us. No sav...

Mel and Michael discuss how to hold grace and truth together. Is all sin equal? When does genuine love for a person actually require a firm, non-negotiable boundary? From there the conversation moves through three arcs. First, grace and guardrails — why some offenses carry stakes so high they demand a policy with no exceptions, why a good shepherd will protect their flock, and why redemption is ne...

This week's message worked through Exodus 40:34-38 - the cloud and the fire settling over the tabernacle - inside the Prepare the Way series anchored on Isaiah 40:3. The central flip: we usually ask God to prepare our way, to make our path straight and our lives easier, but Scripture invites us to prepare his way instead, to clear the obstacles so God can move freely in and through us. Mel, Jo...

This week on Leadership Night, Pastor Mel teaches on the importance of mentoring — why most leaders underestimate it, and what it costs us to try to go it alone. He opens with a reminder that the Global Leadership Summit is coming to Summit Church on August 6th and 7th, then makes the case with the data: employees who receive mentoring are promoted about five times more often, roughly three-quarte...