Mosaic puts great
emphasis on being a community where people can belong long before they believe.
This is really just a reflection of our value for those who don’t
normally associate themselves with church. Have you ever walked into an
environment and felt totally out of place?
I remember a rather
memorable evening spent at a local gay bar. A friend of ours was performing that
night and we decided to get a crew together to come out and support him. We had
a really good time, but as a straight, church-going, rural Midwestern married
man, suffice to say that it was a little out of my element. I had never been to
an event MC’d by a drag queen, had never seen so many fashionable men under one
roof, and I’m pretty sure there were a number of brilliant puns used seamlessly
throughout the night that just didn’t register for me. I was out of my element.
And as hard as I tried to fully immerse myself in the experience, and as
wonderful as the company really was, I still felt like an outsider.
I
think that church can often feel the same way to those who aren’t familiar with
it. Often times it is just assumed that people know all of the ins and outs. But
sometimes what we don’t realize is that over the years, we’ve developed a
highly complex (and often bizarre) subculture. This subculture has its own
language, norms, values and rules – most all of which are unwritten. To someone
on the outside looking in, it can look really strange at best, and uninteresting and alienating at worst.
Mosaic is a
community that desires to deconstruct this sort of “insider” culture by
creating an inclusive space where people don’t need to know the secret handshake
or subscribe to a set of beliefs to be a part of the community. Everyone who
wants in is already in. There’s no process. No membership. Just a community of
people from all walks of life that recognizes and respects the unique journey
of each individual, and who embraces that individual regardless of where they fall
on the spiritual spectrum.
What this means
practically is that at all times there are a number of people throughout the
Mosaic community – people who serve on various creative teams, who are a part
of small groups, who travel with us overseas and serve with us locally in humanitarian projects, who
attend Sunday gatherings and who consider Mosaic their home – who are not
professing Christians. And that is not just okay, but it is precisely what we
desire to see happen.
Our hope is that
Mosaic will be a place where all can encounter God and pursue what He might desire
for them on their time, when they are ready.