The History of
Rock Family Church
On June 6, 2004, 52 people gathered at Mountain View Elementary to give birth to Rock Family Church along with founding pastors, Dean and Kim Hawk. That same evening, we held our first youth service with 25 students. Yes, half of the people that launched RFC were teenagers. Dean and Kim attracted families that mirrored their own family of three teenagers at the time.
The church began to quickly grow and within the first year a full time youth pastor was hired and the church relocated to a lease building near Garden of the Gods and I-25 where they grew to several hundred. In 2008 rock was on the move again and relocated to “Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center” on Mark Dabling Blvd. that was 150,000 square foot family fun center with an event center to conduct weekly services. The church leased permanent office space as well and was somewhat portable as they set up and tore down every Sunday around the other community events hosted throughout the week.
In 2011 God spoke very clearly to Pastor Dean and said, “It's time for Rock Family to have a permanent home and be permanently planted in the city.” The search for a new home began. The board of directors looked and considered at least 15 different locations throughout the year. In December, they took a look at a Methodist Contemporary Church Campus located at 4005 Lee Vance Dr. that was for sale. Unable to take the leap to purchase the 72,000 SF building, Rock leadership negotiated a lease/purchase agreement, and we took possession of the building on January 1, 2012.
The building was built in 1985 and was first used by Current Publishing. It was later used as a tech company, a warehouse for Cook Publishing, and was then partially converted for church use by the Methodist church.
In 2013 the members of RFC rallied to raise the down payment and financing was secured to purchase the building for $2.8M In June of 2013. We inherited multiple tenants that were leasing portions of the building which helped us with our initial mortgage payments. Over the next few years Rock’s attendance doubled in size to over 1000 in weekly attendance. As tenants’ leases expired, we expanded the church into those now vacant spaces.
In 2015 we also purchased the nine acres to the east of our building for $1 Million with hopes of future expansion. Several years passed and the landscape of doing church began to shift to a “campus model” for church expansion rather than building larger auditoriums.
Out of the blue in the summer of 2020 during the peak of Covid-19 multiple developers began to reach out with interest in purchasing our vacant land to the east. We quickly realized that the value of our land had increased significantly. By the spring of 2021 the board of directors had accepted an offer for $4.7 Million with the goal of paying off the current mortgage, completing the interior building renovation, and pursuing land in the Falcon area for an East RFC Campus in the future.
On January 5, 2023 the land sale closed, and on January 4, 2024 we received the final payment which paid off the final portion of our mortgage and making Rock 100% debt free to now convert monies going to brick and mortar to ministry, people, and outreach in our community.