The Rock Church Mission to Mexico History
The Rock Church began when Jeff Knight’s parents, Joe and Linda, started a Bible study in their home in 1984. Before that year’s end, the Bible study grew into a church called Cornerstone Christian Center. In 1994, they changed the name to The Rock Church, based on Matthew 16:18:
And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church… (NKJV)
In January 1999, Joe and Linda Knight began a ministry in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 2 years after they had visited the city dump. It’s hard for many of us in America to imagine a whole community of people that have lived their entire lives in a dump – a literal dump – for three generations or more. It was harder for Linda to experience it. There were over 300 families living in cardboard shacks, eating trash from the nearby resorts, and drinking from discarded soda cans. Their clothes came from the garbage, and many of them had no shoes. Linda came back resolved to do something about it. She and Joe led the whole church in raising money to provide very basic things like clean drinking water, food, and showers to the people of Puerto Vallarta’s dump. They gave their mission a fittingly simple name: Mission to Mexico.
Just a year later in January 2000, the Knights made a return trip to Puerto Vallarta to see how they could expand the ministry. They had no way of knowing that it would be their last trip. On the way home, their Alaska Airlines flight crashed into the Pacific Ocean, killing 88 passengers, including Joe and Linda Knight.
Jeff and Melinda Knight were serving as the youth pastors under Jeff’s parents at the time. Shortly after the crash, The Rock’s board asked Jeff and Melinda to lead the church. “It was a very challenging time in my life. I was 29 years old and had just lost my parents,” Jeff says. But he didn’t let either youth or grief hold him back, telling the board, “If I’m leading, I need you guys on board 100%, and I’m going to make some drastic changes.”
One of those changes was to bring a more media-intensive style into worship. The church had been the same size for about 6 years. “It wasn’t dead, it just wasn’t growing. We had great people, great volunteers, but I thought, ‘We’re not hitting the mark.’” In just 5 years time, The Rock Church is clearly hitting the mark, averaging over 830 people each week and reaching the community beyond the dreams of Jeff’s parents.
On top of re-energizing a church, taking legal guardianship of his sister Jenny (who was 16 at the time), and settling the estate, Jeff and Melinda continued to raise support for the mission. They raised enough money to build the School of Champions on the edge of the dump, and it was opened on February 15, 2001, a little more than a year after Joe and Linda were killed. At the School of Champions, children attend classes and families have access to kitchen facilities, toilets and showers.
The Rock Church leaders, members and interns still make regular trips to Puerto Vallarta, and they’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from all over North America. Mission to Mexico provides food, clothing, dental supplies and medical supplies on an ongoing basis. The school now offers English and computer classes to give the students a chance that their parents never had – a chance to leave the dump and raise their families somewhere else.