Fre­quently Asked Questions

Why is The Rock so infor­mal?
Do we cel­e­brate com­mu­nion?
How can I get bap­tized?
How do I get involved in The Rock?
What if I want to lay low for a while, but still come to The Rock?
How can I join the Rock?
How can I get to know peo­ple in the church?
What hap­pens at Dis­ci­ple­ship Team?
How can I con­tact a Pas­tor or Staff mem­ber?
Can I get coun­sel­ing through the church?
How is the lead­er­ship of the church struc­tured?
Why haven’t the pas­tors attended sem­i­nary?
Who are the peo­ple on staff?
In what ways does The Rock serve in the com­mu­nity?
How is out­reach accom­plished?
In what way is The Rock involved in missions?

Why is The Rock so informal?

The Rock is a ser­vice designed specif­i­cally for sin­gles and col­lege stu­dents. In doing so, we elim­i­nate tra­di­tional stereo­types of what a Chris­t­ian “should” look like, either with the way we dress, hair color, hair style, etc. We have no dress code. Come as you are. We are inten­tion­ally break­ing par­a­digms many peo­ple have con­ceived about church, and invit­ing them to expe­ri­ence God on a per­sonal level every day… not just on Sundays.

Do we cel­e­brate communion?

Com­mu­nion, which is also known as the Lord’s Sup­per, is cel­e­brated with the whole com­mu­nity church on Sun­day morn­ings approx­i­mately once a month.

How can I get baptized?

If you would like to get bap­tized you can talk to your dis­ci­ple­ship team leader or to the pas­tor. Some peo­ple pre­fer to be bap­tized with their small group at a lake, river, or pool. Bap­tisms are sched­uled on an as-needed basis. So just let some­one know, and we’ll get it set up.

How do I get involved in The Rock?

We’d really like to encour­age you to be involved in the church and espe­cially to visit one of our dis­ci­ple­ship teams — oth­er­wise you aren’t really expe­ri­enc­ing The Rock. In addi­tion, we have a num­ber of other oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve. Of course, there are 1000’s of dif­fer­ent opin­ions on what makes a per­fect church. We cer­tainly respect this, and don’t claim to be a per­fect church. We are merely seek­ing to fol­low God to the best of our under­stand­ing. If there are areas in which you would like to get involved in and serve, let us know!

What if I want to lay low for a while, but still come to The Rock?

That’s totally fine with us. You are more than wel­come to sim­ply enjoy The Rock and not feel bur­dened to join in on all of our other activ­i­ties. We cer­tainly don’t want to pres­sure you into being more involved than you’d like.  You may have sched­ule con­flicts, or you may be “gun shy” from a pre­vi­ous church expe­ri­ence, or you may just need a lit­tle space for a while. That’s fine with us.  We want you to feel wel­come, not pressured.

How can I join the Rock?

We feel per­sonal own­er­ship is a very impor­tant step in our spir­i­tual jour­ney. There­fore, we peri­od­i­cally offer the Sum­mitview Dis­cov­ery Mem­ber­ship Sem­i­nar to famil­iar­ize inter­ested sin­gles and col­lege stu­dents with Summitview’s phi­los­o­phy, strat­egy, and beliefs. Call the Rock hot­line (970.691.5976) or send us an email for more information.

How can I get to know peo­ple in the church?

We’d really like to encour­age you to get involved with a dis­ci­ple­ship team and embrace your dis­ci­ple­ship team as your church fam­ily. We believe that a few deep rela­tion­ships are far more valu­able than lots of super­fi­cial ones. Of course that doesn’t mean that you can’t do any­thing with other peo­ple in the church. It just means that you may want the pri­mary focus of your rela­tion­ship build­ing efforts to be in your dis­ci­ple­ship team. Because this is our gen­eral phi­los­o­phy, you may find that we don’t put a lot of energy into hav­ing lots of extra events as a whole church. We cer­tainly see value in meet­ing as a large group, but often we see more value in leav­ing people’s time freed up to do things through their dis­ci­ple­ship team.

What hap­pens at Dis­ci­ple­ship Team?

Dis­ci­ple­ship teams vary widely. A “typ­i­cal” gath­er­ing might involve an ice­breaker, inves­ti­gat­ing a Bible pas­sage, pray­ing for each other, and hang­ing out. Typ­i­cally, each group breaks down into smaller groups of 3 – 5 peo­ple so every­one has a chance to share and con­nect at each meet­ing. Dis­ci­ple­ship teams usu­ally also have fun nights and after-Rock activities.

How can I con­tact a Pas­tor or Staff member?

The Rock’s staff have irreg­u­lar office hours. They’re in and out depend­ing on their var­i­ous respon­si­bil­i­ties. The best way to reach them is to leave a mes­sage on their work phones or to shoot them an email. While they will do their best to get back to you, please allow a few days for most inquiries.

Nathan: nathan@rockrevolution.com

John: john@rockrevolution.com

Dani: dani@rockrevolution.com

Can I get coun­sel­ing through the church?

As a first step to coun­sel­ing, we’d like to encour­age you to talk to your dis­ci­ple­ship team leader. If you talk to them and still feel a need for more input, one of the pas­tors will gladly meet with you. This is an impor­tant step, because although the pas­tors can always find the time to meet with you per­son­ally, they may not be able to find the time to really be involved in your life at a deeper level. That is why it is impor­tant to involve the dis­ci­ple­ship team leader if at all pos­si­ble. Of course, if you aren’t involved in a dis­ci­ple­ship team, or if you’re not com­fort­able talk­ing to your dis­ci­ple­ship team leader, you are more than wel­come to set some­thing up directly with the pastor.

How is the lead­er­ship of the church structured?

The pas­tors of the church are account­able to each other and make up the board of direc­tors. There is also a regional direc­tor who may give input and coun­sel to our pas­tors and who approves their salaries. A board of dea­cons does not direct the affairs of the church since we believe that the pas­tors are given the respon­si­bil­ity and guid­ance by God to lead, and that this is God’s plan and pro­vi­sion for the church. The pas­tor and min­istry direc­tors coach the dis­ci­ple­ship team lead­ers and var­i­ous min­istry lead­ers who lead the church at a more inti­mate level. The pas­tor and staff meet reg­u­larly with the dis­ci­ple­ship team lead­ers. This pro­vides a level of rela­tion­ship and account­abil­ity for both the lead­ers and the pastor/staff.

Why haven’t the pas­tors attended seminary?

The require­ments for being a pas­tor are clearly laid out in 1 Tim­o­thy 3 [show] The say­ing is trust­wor­thy: If any­one aspires to the office of over­seer, he desires a noble task. There­fore an over­seer must be above reproach, the hus­band of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hos­pitable, able to teach, not a drunk­ard, not vio­lent but gen­tle, not quar­rel­some, not a lover of money. He must man­age his own house­hold well, with all dig­nity keep­ing his chil­dren sub­mis­sive, for if some­one does not know how to man­age his own house­hold, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent con­vert, or he may become puffed up with con­ceit and fall into the con­dem­na­tion of the devil. More­over, he must be well thought of by out­siders, so that he may not fall into dis­grace, into a snare of the devil. Dea­cons like­wise must be dig­ni­fied, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dis­hon­est gain. They must hold the mys­tery of the faith with a clear con­science. And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as dea­cons if they prove them­selves blame­less. Their wives like­wise must be dig­ni­fied, not slan­der­ers, but sober-minded, faith­ful in all things. Let dea­cons each be the hus­band of one wife, man­ag­ing their chil­dren and their own house­holds well. For those who serve well as dea­cons gain a good stand­ing for them­selves and also great con­fi­dence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. I hope to come to you soon, but I am writ­ing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the house­hold of God, which is the church of the liv­ing God, a pil­lar and but­tress of the truth. Great indeed, we con­fess, is the mys­tery of god­li­ness: He was man­i­fested in the flesh, vin­di­cated by the Spirit, seen by angels, pro­claimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
, and Titus 1 [show] Paul, a ser­vant of God and an apos­tle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowl­edge of the truth, which accords with god­li­ness, in hope of eter­nal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time man­i­fested in his word through the preach­ing with which I have been entrusted by the com­mand of God our Sav­ior; To Titus, my true child in a com­mon faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Sav­ior. This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you– if any­one is above reproach, the hus­band of one wife, and his chil­dren are believ­ers and not open to the charge of debauch­ery or insub­or­di­na­tion. For an over­seer, as God’s stew­ard, must be above reproach. He must not be arro­gant or quick-tempered or a drunk­ard or vio­lent or greedy for gain, but hos­pitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and dis­ci­plined. He must hold firm to the trust­wor­thy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruc­tion in sound doc­trine and also to rebuke those who con­tra­dict it. For there are many who are insub­or­di­nate, empty talk­ers and deceivers, espe­cially those of the cir­cum­ci­sion party. They must be silenced, since they are upset­ting whole fam­i­lies by teach­ing for shame­ful gain what they ought not to teach. One of the Cre­tans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cre­tans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy glut­tons.” This tes­ti­mony is true. There­fore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devot­ing them­selves to Jew­ish myths and the com­mands of peo­ple who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbe­liev­ing, noth­ing is pure; but both their minds and their con­sciences are defiled. They pro­fess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, dis­obe­di­ent, unfit for any good work. (ESV)
. The main empha­sis in those pas­sages is that pas­tors must be men of char­ac­ter. We believe that the class­room is a great place to learn knowl­edge, but the church is a great place to develop strong char­ac­ter. Not only is it a great place to develop it, but it is also a great place to observe it. A healthy church should be pro­duc­ing men who are qual­i­fied to be pas­tors, and it should be evi­dent to those in the church. This is a dif­fer­ent way than how many churches do things, but we believe this method is com­pletely con­sis­tent with the teach­ings of Scrip­ture, and we believe that this is the surest method for the church as well.

Who are the peo­ple on staff?

Cur­rently John Lar­son and Nathan Hrouda are the two min­istry direc­tors lead­ing the Rock on staff, while Dani Cohen has stepped in to help with admin­is­tra­tive support.

Where is the offer­ing plate?

The Rock prefers to not pass a plate to col­lect money. If you feel like The Rock is your home and would like to sup­port it, there’s a Tithes and Offer­ings box located in the Sum­mitview West lobby.

In what ways does The Rock serve in the community?

The Rock is grow­ing into becom­ing a vital part of Fort Collins & social respon­si­bil­ity to our neigh­bors is inte­gral to the call that Christ gave us.  There is a ten­dency to just be busy read­ing our Bibles all day long while there are legit­i­mate needs that could be met or to become so engrossed in our social respon­si­bil­ity that we neglect the rest of our call­ing and pur­pose as a church. Our desire is to find a healthy bal­ance. We under­stand that people’s pri­mary need is spir­i­tual, but some­times address­ing people’s phys­i­cal needs may open a door to their spir­i­tual ones.

Much of what we do socially, we believe is most effec­tively done through people’s indi­vid­ual lives. What you can do for your neigh­bor is prob­a­bly more mean­ing­ful than what some church can do for them. Insti­tu­tions don’t have rela­tion­ships with peo­ple, but their neigh­bors do. To be effec­tive in min­is­ter­ing in our com­mu­nity, each of us must feel a per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity to reach out to the peo­ple God has put into our lives. This is our pri­mary plan for achiev­ing effec­tive outreach.

We also rec­og­nize that the church as a body can do some things that are hard to do indi­vid­u­ally, and so often dis­ci­ple­ship teams will coor­di­nate ser­vice projects every so often.  The Rock as a large group too aims at hav­ing a ser­vants heart in this self-centered and indi­vual­is­tic world, and peri­od­i­cally will arrange for a large group ser­vice oppor­tu­nity.  Let us know if you have ideas of how to make this more effective!

How is out­reach accomplished?

Shar­ing the good news of the free gift of eter­nal life is one of the great­est priv­i­leges we have as Chris­tians! Although we’ll do lots of things to try and bring more peo­ple to church, it is impor­tant to know that our best form of out­reach is you! When peo­ple share their faith with their neigh­bors, acquain­tances, rel­a­tives, friends, and fam­ily our church grows in the most nat­ural way. When peo­ple come to church from adver­tis­ing, they don’t know any­one and don’t have any nat­ural rela­tion­ships. When you invite them, they start off on the right foot!

We are also involved in inter­na­tional out­reaches. These trips last from one to two weeks and are excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn how to share your faith, and to really trust God through chal­leng­ing circumstances.

In what way is The Rock involved in missions?

The Rock is more involved in church plant­ing than in send­ing out mis­sion­ary teams. In other words, if we decide to do some­thing in Latin Amer­ica some day, our pref­er­ence would be to send a team of peo­ple to start a church there rather than to send a mis­sion­ary there. We’d really like each per­son to be an active part of spread­ing the good news, rather than just feel­ing like they are part of a sup­port team. For this rea­son, the church itself does not cur­rently sup­port any mis­sion­ar­ies, but instead tries to develop and fund church plant­ing teams as part of Sum­mitview Com­mu­nity Church.