Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Ashcraft.
Hi Jon, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am a pastor at a local church in Pasadena. I moved here in March of 2015 from Arkansas. Greater Houston has more people than the entire state of Arkansas, so it was a big change for us. Our oldest daughter had just graduated high school, our son was entering his senior year, and our youngest two daughters were 15 and 14. It was a big change at a significant time in our lives. We moved, because this opportunity opened up and we wanted to be where we could make the biggest impact for as many people as possible. Our lives have always been about serving and loving people, helping them develop into the full potential of their lives and purpose. This seemed to be an excellent place for that dream to come true because there are so many people we have the opportunity to serve. We pastor CT Church in Pasadena. CT stands for Community Transformation. And that’s our desire. That because our church and our people are here, that we are able to help others experience the fullness of their potential.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of things we say about our church is that it’s a place where anyone from anywhere who’s done anything can find hope, help and healing. Hope that tomorrow can be better than today. Help for the issues we face today and healing for the things we’ve experienced in the past. Getting people on board with those three ideas was pretty easy, but getting the church culture to transform into a place where anyone from anywhere who’s done anything was a bit more difficult. One of the issues churches have to face is that as we grow, the culture can turn inward. We become more about our own friends within the church than looking outside our comfortable relationships and finding new ways to serve people and new people to serve. Another change was that we wanted to focus on making our church a resource to the community in a meaningful way. We asked ourselves if we closed, would the community even notice or care? We were about community transformation, but were we really transforming the community? We began to share the direction with our members that we wanted to be a place of substantial community involvement and change. With this came a change in focus of our staff time, energy and the focus of our budgets. We provided our facility for free for other nonprofits and organizations within our community that were seeking to make a difference in the lives of people. We began to promote the concept to each of our members that their lives were given to make a difference in the lives of others. Instead of everyone serving a single focus for our church, everyone had something in them which they were passionate about – whether that be a problem in the world they wanted to solve or a people group they wanted to serve. We began a leadership discovery and development program to help people launch into their place of significance. We oriented our staff time and energy toward developing each person’s God-given purpose. This was a major shift. In years past, we had focused on getting all people to serve the single mission of the leader of the church.
Now, we were focused on developing every person for this mission. This has been a substantial challenge for several reasons. First, we had to convince people they have a God-given purpose and assignment beyond just making money and living life. Instead, they were made to make a difference. The time and energy this took was substantial. There were some who resisted the change in direction and focus and chose to move their church membership elsewhere. Of course there is a monetary challenge when members leave and move their charitable giving, but there is also an emotional challenge as a church leader when people leave and go elsewhere. Beyond those challenges, I would say that just learning a new way of operating the focus of the hired staff and then finding different ways to quantify success provided their own challenges. While this was always our heart and passion, actually executing it was extremely challenging. We needed to reposition staff members, reallocate their time and allow for things to be measured differently. When you find yourself in unfamiliar territory, it is often difficult to keep yourself from going back to what you’ve always known and measured instead of continuing to trust the process when you’re not sure how to navigate. I suppose the best description would be sailing in uncharted territory. You’re excited about the journey, but uncertain of what might be an unknown obstacle you might run across that will sabotage or sink you.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Non-profit / Church / Life & Community Transformation. We are all about helping people discover their destiny and design and fully actualize the life we believe God intended for them. I believe what distinguishes us are three things; – Acceptance – Family Culture – Focus on development and deploying Acceptance: As I said before, our motto is: “CT Pasadena is a place where anyone from anywhere who’s done anything can find hope, help and healing.” We really mean it. We find that people need to be accepted and loved right where they are. One of the problems within the church is that as soon as we get past a particular issue in our lives, we can easily become judgmental of those who haven’t yet. We forget that it was love that transformed us. We see this modeled with the life of Jesus and we just want to be like him. Family Culture We call ourselves Family by Choice. We have chosen to adopt one another as a family. We believe our best hope of transformation isn’t with an institution and forced values, but in community.
As we walk through life together, we begin to transform in a place we know we can trust and belong. Focus We focus on helping every single person discover their God-given purpose and work to develop that so we can deploy them. We have a process in our church for doing this which is an educational and transformational track for each individual. We call it the Equip Track. The whole purpose of this developmental process is to grow people in their leadership, personal character, and life mission. By the time they complete this process, they are ready to take on an assignment to be a personal agent of change in their community. We deployed 23 people with this focus in March of 2021.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
We have a focus for our staff to serve not only those within, but also those outside our organization. We created a position called “Community Pastor,” and that staff person’s role is to network with other organizations in our city. We leverage those relationships to help find places for our developing leaders to serve. It’s a really great partnership.
Contact Info:
- Email: pasadena@myct.church
- Website: myctpasadena.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myctpasadena/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myctpasadena
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_AAFGH9IMEiVDOPt9MB6tg
Image Credits
CT Photography Team Kathy Pratt, Cicily Ashcraft
