I have had the pleasure of getting to know Jonge Tate and his family through his amazing wife Lynna, who is a national sales director with Mary Kay. This is truly a family that is on fire for Jesus. In 2008 Jonge, Chris Dowd, and Jeremy Minor. They first planted a church in Bedford, Virginia that met in the local YMCA. They soon outgrew their local YMCA, and Bedrock began to meet in the Auditorium of Liberty High school. Since the churches original founding in 2008, Bedrock has become a consistent presence in their community. In fact, they have also planted a church in Roanoke, Virginia and in Bozeman, Montana.
In Bedrocks vision statement they say “Our prayer is that you will consider how you and your family can help in accomplishing the mission to go and make disciples for Christ.” The Tate family lives out that vision in their own lives. Lynnea continues to use her Mary Kay business and elite status within the company as a way to evangelize not only to her customers, but to equip the women she leads within the company to be lights in their homes and communities as well. Back when she decided she wanted to step up to the national sales director position she wanted to do so, so that when the church decided to start outreach in lower income communities, Jonge could do so without the church paying him a salary. Lynnea is truly one of the sweetest women I have ever met and her passion for wanted to help others is evident in every aspect of her business. In 2006, long before ever founding Bedrock Lynnea visited Nicaragua on a missions trip. She felt called to serve the people there but wasn’t sure how. After becoming a National she decided to give back part of her income to building homes for families there.
Lynnea and Jonge are both living out Gods incredible calling for their lives, and in some very cool ways. Once on an inner city missions trip, Jonge saw some local teens doing parkour. I feel the need to clarify this is not the type of parkour that Dwight, Andy and Michel Scott were doing The Office. This was legit parkour. Jonge who saw that these kids were jumping on and off of buildings and asked them to teach him how to do it too. He learned how to do parkour and while they we teaching him he shared with them what he does and was able to share God’s love with them.
This is a pretty amazing story of a pretty amazing family. It is amazing to see what God can do in people’s lives and how these people can have such a positive impact in the community. Nice Post.
-Asher
I love that Lynnea is using Mary Kay as a way to share the gospel! That is such a creative idea because she is already interacting with so many women everyday and she has a captive audience easily available to her!
These definitely seem like awesome people looking to make an impact for God wherever they are working. I especially liked you last comments about how Jonge learned parkour and then was able to share the gospel with those people because of that. That could be an interesting community to target with a ministry.
Very cool church with a very cool family based mission! It’s awesome how both she and her husband have used their talents to spread the gospel in ways and places that aren’t exactly traditional, and we might not think of doing everyday. Definitely redemptively focused!