Christ the Rock Builds a Church Like Family

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  Christ the Rock is unique here in Farmington with churches probably most of all because we focus on being a family. And so everything that we do here is family oriented. We gather together as a family on Sunday morning for worship and praise. We gather together as a family to study God’s word together on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. We gather together as a family for fun and fellowship with food and, and activities and things. So I like to focus on Christ the Rock being, being a family and a family that not only cares about people within the church walls, but even all of Farmington. I’m Pastor John Brown. I’ve been here at Christ the Rock for five years now. I’ve been in ministry for almost 35 years and I’ve had a chance to, to work with a lot of different people in a lot of different places. And that was one of the things that drew me to Farmington, that there are so many people of different backgrounds, different cultures, even different languages that it was an exciting opportunity to, to come here and be part of this community. We’re a Lutheran church and very simply Lutherans focus on a couple of main things. We focus on scripture alone, that we, we turn to God’s word as the truth for everything that we do. We, we focus on following him by faith alone, that it’s not us, it’s, it’s God who gives it and it’s God who gives us the strength to follow him. And that faith is focused on Jesus Christ as our savior from sin and on him alone. And so that’s a, you know, the basics of what the Lutheran church teaches. We’d love to have people come and visit just so that we can share the, the good news that Jesus loves them just as much as anybody else. And to be able to share that in a very clear and, and understandable way, we just want them to know that we’re always here for them. Our doors are always open and we don’t care who it is. We don’t care how you come. You know, we don’t have a dress code here at Christ the Rock. We just want people to come and hear more about Jesus. I, I love to connect with the congregation in a personal way. I know that there are, there are churches that the pastors are just kind of the guys who show up on Sunday morning. They do the preaching and they’re kind of the center of, the center of attention. But I see my congregation as the people are the center of attention. And so I, I visit them in their homes when they have questions or maybe when they haven’t been in church for a while. You know, if they end up in the hospital, I go into the hospital and I spend time with them in their hospital rooms. I try to connect with them for their birthdays and anniversaries, just send them a text and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about you. Happy birthday.” My role is, is to be a shepherd and shepherds need to be with the sheep. One of my friends said, “A shepherd really has to smell like the sheep.” And she always says, “Pastor, you smell like your sheep.” If I were to go to heaven tonight and God said, “Why should I let you in, what would I say?” And a lot of people have different answers and maybe as you’re watching this, you, you, you don’t even know what you’d say. But here at Christ the Rock, we want to share that answer with you so that you can know even though God, God sees all the things that we do wrong, he promised that he sent Jesus. And Jesus was the one who died to take away every sin that we’ve ever committed. So then when we stand before God on that day and he asks us why I should let you in, we can say, “Because Jesus died for me, because he loved me enough to do that. And he says I can come in.” And that’s our focus here at Christ the Rock. If, if you get to hear nothing else from us, if you come visit, we want you to know how much Jesus loves you and that he was willing to pay it all so that you could have eternal life. So I hope that you can come visit us sometime because we’d love to see you.