02 Jun Link to News Article About Us
Hi there! I want to share with you a link to a news story that has recently been written about you and me and Mosaic Church, published last week on the University of Texas’ online news magazine, called “Reporting Texas”. Here’s the link, but don’t click on it just yet. Allow me to give some context for it before you go clicking away!
Click here to read the article.
The article was written by a member at Mosaic, Taylor Buchanan, and she did a great job, I think, capturing a good bit about who we are, particularly how we come across to the outside world.
That being said, don’t get thrown by the headline, which was not of her doing—that decision was made by a higher up editorial board. Two things about the headline (“Church Finds New Path to Growth with a Mission of Diversity”) I’d like to address:
We are not multiethnic because it’s a marketing strategy or “path to growth”—doing church this way is far too challenging to be a path to growth. As a matter of fact, many missiologists say that multiethnic churches are the most challenging way of doing church, and that something called the “homogeneous principle” is to be embraced; that is, that churches should strive to reach people just like them. For the record, I reject that thought (as do a growing number of pastoral voices).
Second, our mission at Mosaic Church is not “diversity”. Our mission is to live out the Great Commission and Commandment and obey Jesus in making disciples of all nations. I believe that ethnic and racial diversity ought to be a by-product of the right preaching of the Gospel, where that opportunity exists (some places and nations do not present that opportunity, obviously), but to put “diversity” as the church’s mission would be to put the cart before the horse, and would rob Jesus of his rightful glory as the author and originator of our community.
Having said all that, however, I hope you can appreciate what this headline is subconsciously saying: that in this way, through our unity in diversity, we are living out Titus 2:10 and “making the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
With those two caveats in mind, you can feel free to read the article, and as you do, I hope it inspires you to participate in our next “The Gospel And”, which are events where we create space for dialogue to take place around topics or ideas that frequently polarize God’s people. This “TGA” will be focused on how to become the kind of person who others would choose to maintain friendships with, despite cultural and political differences. We’re calling it, simply, “The Gospel and Community”, and here’s why:
One of the things I am most passionate about is understanding God’s Word through what is called the Bible—66 books from dozens of different authors, written over centuries, telling one grand and overarching narrative—how the triune God who made the universe comes into a broken humanity and works for the loving and just redemption of all He has created.
A big part of that redemption is the redemption of the human heart from the tendency it has to put self at the center of the universe, instead of God and others. One of the ways we do this is through looking at ourselves and putting our own selves and culture and skin color above other people’s, and then looking down on the other for being made differently in the image of God.
A quick look through history will show that many times, that kind of redemption can be slow in coming and difficult to achieve, and yet history also shows that the Gospel of Jesus provides the resources to enable a new kind of redemptive community to come into being in this present world.
We’d love for you to be a small part of intentionally creating what the city and world needs to see, and develop the skills and heart to do so.
So, here’s the link to register for the next TGA, coming up on Friday night, June 9 at 7 pm.
That’s it! See you Sunday as we move into Acts 7 (you over-achievers can read ahead!).
Morgan