The Mis­sion of the Church and The Pur­pose of The Rock

The Mis­sion for the Church was given to us by the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ, before He ascended into heaven two thou­sand years ago.

” I have been given com­plete author­ity in heaven and on earth. There­fore, go and make dis­ci­ples of all the nations, bap­tiz­ing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new dis­ci­ples to obey all the com­mands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18 – 20 [show] And Jesus came and said to them, “All author­ity in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (ESV)

This mis­sion is known as the Great Com­mis­sion. This mis­sion is not just for the church as a whole, but for the indi­vid­u­als in the church. What is true of the whole must be true of the parts.  And so our tagline around here that you’ll here often is that we are being and mak­ing dis­ci­ples of Jesus to go to the world together.

We could sum­ma­rize the com­mand of “The Great Com­mis­sion” and our vision at The Rock into three main divisions.

1. Rad­i­cally lov­ing God toward transformation.

The great­est com­mand that Jesus gave when asked was sim­ply this:  ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (Mark 12:29 – 30 [show] Jesus answered, “The most impor­tant is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (ESV)
).  And so the first pri­or­ity and goal of every dis­ci­ple of Jesus is to love God with their whole being.  Wor­ship­ing God, being des­per­ate and needy for his grace, and seek­ing him with our whole hearts is part of this.  Div­ing deep into his Word, the Bible, to not gain intel­lec­tual facts and under­stand­ing, but to grow our love of Him.  Pray­ing in the Spirit on all occa­sions, and grow­ing a true heart that is trans­formed into the like­ness of Christ, not tra­di­tions and man-made rules.  Walk­ing in the light of the gospel daily is our first desire at the Rock!

2. Rad­i­cally lov­ing the church toward unity.

The Rock is a part of Sum­mitview Com­mu­nity Church, which is a non-denominational, biblically-based, Chris­t­ian church. Our church is not a build­ing, but peo­ple com­mit­ted to one another, united in the belief that God has given us a new life and a new future through our shared rela­tion­ship with Jesus Christ. We are a spir­i­tual fam­ily, pur­su­ing deep, mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships through the love God has for everyone.

Dis­ci­ple­ship teams are an essen­tial part of The Rock’s com­mu­nity. These groups, made up of 8 to 20 peo­ple, meet weekly in homes, with a focus on devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships, dis­cov­er­ing life change through the Bible and prayer. You are always wel­come to become part of this vital dimen­sion of our church life.

Our lead­er­ship devel­op­ment takes place pre­dom­i­nately within the con­text of dis­ci­ple­ship team lead­er­ship. The Lead­er­ship Train­ing Class or LTC is designed to equip and train dis­ci­ple­ship team leaders.

3. Rad­i­cally lov­ing the lost toward salvation.

We believe that the mes­sage of God’s redemp­tion should do more than affect the indi­vid­ual; it should trans­form the cul­ture for good. We desire for our church to be a dri­ving force to meet needs and bring the love of God to our cam­pus and city, being a city on a hill to shine our Sav­ior to this world.  We want to be a place that those who do not fol­low Jesus can still check out and see for themselves.

We believe that the church is the best way to mobi­lize the mes­sage of God’s love and free gift of Christ. Our vision is to con­tinue to plant churches in the US and beyond to bring the trans­form­ing power of Christ to the whole world, as Jesus out­lined in the Great Com­mis­sion.  Join with us in the revolution!