Aaron Loy's Ragamuffin Blog

Mosaic Thoughts on Communication

One of the things we do pretty regularly as part of the protege program is prepare and deliver 5 minute talks. (These are uniquely challenging because of how focused having just five minutes forces you to be!) The talks also give us a chance to put into practice some of the things we've been learning and give each other feedback on what we're doing well and where we need to grow in our communication (a big part of the program). This morning Hank Fortener, Mosaic campus pastor of the Mayan downtown joined us. His input and feedback is always so good and this morning was no exception. He are some of the things he shared that really stood out to me. I hope they prove as helpful to you as they were for me: 

Never share a story for the first time from the stage. Tell it to friends, family, and whomever else first. Find out when and if people laugh or cry, or if they don’t connect with it at all.

Constantly refine your ideas for your message with friends. Have people in your life that you can continually go to and ask, “Does this make sense?” “Does this resonate?” “Can people relate with this or is it just me?”

Anything more than 10 days is too long to be preparing for a message. You need to be speaking from a place of authenticity and personal journeying with whatever you are speaking about.

Never assume that people want to hear what you have to say. Every time I stand up at the Mayan I assume that everyone there is busy, skeptical and that they have somewhere else to be.” When I am starting my message, I want everyone to lean in and think, “I’ve been there. I know what he is talking about. I can relate with that.” Then I can begin to take them on a journey.

Don’t be predictable or presumptuous. The last thing you want is to try to create an “aha” moment or represent yourself as an expert and be so predictable that everyone knows where you are going and gets there before you do. It’s like watching a movie and quoting the main character’s line before he says it, and you think, “This is cheesy.” You do that and every skeptic in the room is going to think, “What a dork. I am smarter than this guy.”

Ask yourself, “Why does this matter?” For example, I recently had to speak on the topic of going to church and so asked myself “Why go to church?” Well the often pat Christian answers don’t work for someone like the gal I went to lunch with yesterday, who is an activist and has more friends and meaningful relationships than she knows what to do with. She has community, she has a purpose, she is serving humanity…Why should she go to church? I approach my subject from the eyes of the most skeptical persons I can imagine. I tear apart my belief piece by piece, strip myself of easy answers and really wrestle with it. And if at the end I no longer have an answer, then either I don’t have a message or I need to be honest about it at the beginning of my message.    

What moves you?

This past week the proteges and I had to create a piece of art in response to the questions "What moves you?" and "What do you desire?" It was fun. Some did spoken word pieces, some created videos, some wrote songs and some of us created photography pieces. The poster below was my piece. All of the photos are of Lincoln, NE and can be found here. 

Admittedly, the real work of my piece had little to do with my fine motor skills. (I used a really cool free program called Shape Collage and printed through my new favorite online printing company: Poster Brain.) No, the real work came as I paged through over 8,000 photos of the city of Lincoln. As I perused the work of so many talented photographers, I found myself captivated by the city to which Megan and I have been called. And as I paged through picture after picture for hours on end, I began to pray for the city.

I prayed for the people of Lincoln who today find themselves without hope. I prayed for those trapped by poverty. I prayed for those drowning in religion. I prayed for those who have succumbed to the apathy of a life without dreams. I prayed for those who will join us in creating a new movement in the city of Lincoln. And I prayed for those who will shape the spiritual landscape of Lincoln's future, many of which do not yet know Christ.

Father, may your spirit blow like a mighty rushing wind throughout the city of Lincoln. Prepare us and the city of Lincoln for all you are preparing to do.

"In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below...And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." - Acts 2:17-21

Belong Before Believe (part 2)

Creating a culture where people can belong before they believe is a practical application of our first core value: Mission is why the church exists. At first glance this might not seem like a big deal. After all, many Christians would nod their head in agreement with this statement. The mind of the seasoned Christ follower might even jump to relevant passages like the Great Commission in Matthew 28 or Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9. However, it is in praxis that this core value often becomes problematic.

Every church has got to decide which voices they are going to listen to. In most churches, it is the loudest, most persuasive, most powerful, or sometimes just the most deliberate Christian voices that get listened to. But the conversation is essentially the same: everyone vouching for their own preferred brand of Christianity. Mosaic essentially ignores these voices of religion in order to better hear the voices of humanity.

There are always any number of conversations going on throughout Christendom that church people consider to be of immense importance. The details of these conversations are always in flux - traditional/contemporary, emergent/emerging, modern/postmodern/post-postmodern, and a never ending plethora of theological asterisks. But as a movement whose very purpose for existing resides outside of its four walls, Mosaic just isn't all that interested in engaging in such "internal" conversations. We want to spend the best of our time, energy, passion and creativity on connecting people to God who wouldn't normally associate themselves with church.

This doesn't always involve a choice. After all, we are not a divided humanity. At our core we all desire, need and long for the same things. Mosaic speaks into those things that are true of us all. However, in those times when we must choose, we will always choose to ignore the voices of religion and internal religious conversation in order to begin new conversations with those who do not know Jesus.

Belong Before Believe

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.

Crave Lounge

This last week I was a part of an experience put on by various Mosaic artisans called the Crave Lounge. It was beautiful. We lounged, we shared, we reflected, we dreamt and we jumped off of trampolines (see below). I walked away from the experience and thought, you know, just about any church could pull off an experience like this, but few actually do. You see, I think the thing that really sets Mosaic apart from so many faith communities is not its location, its lead pastor, or its talent, but rather its willingness to continually risk in creating things that are new, beautiful and transformational.

I love my community.

Church Planting w/ Erwin McManus & Co. (pt 3)

This is the 3rd and final installment of my notes from last week's church planting class at Fuller Seminary with various leaders from Mosaic.

Octavio Martinez:

I am at a place where I just don’t care what people think of me unless they’re a non-believer.

I love my Christian brothers and sisters. But I just don’t care if they are worried that I am slipping from the faith, not focused enough on soul formation, or praying for me (or my demise) because I am meeting with a non-believer at a local bar in Whittier.

The church will actually become a reflection of you – your DNA, your virus, etc. You cannot ask people to do something you’re not doing. They are going to watch how you live. That is their only frame of reference. So you may be able to talk a great game about being missional, but if you’re not living it, it doesn’t matter.

Church Planting w/ Erwin McManus & Co. (pt 2)

This is 'part 2' of my notes from last week's church planting class at Fuller Seminary with various leaders from Mosaic.

Erwin McManus:

You cannot inspire passion when you start from a narcissistic core. It can’t be about your need to feel important, your need to be valued, your need to lead, etc. It has to be about what this tribe needs.

Passion and excitement are different. Lots of communicators can generate excitement. It is all about the moment, like fireworks. Passion is generated by sustained risk. Passion is generated by people watching how you live, what you are willing to risk.

When people sense that you are risking greatly for your own good, they might be willing to risk for their own good. But when you risk for the good of others, they will begin to risk for the good of others.

We need to stop asking what kind of church we want to plant, and start asking about the kind of world we want to create.

Church Planting w/ Erwin McManus & Co. (pt 1)

This last week I had the chance to be a part of a church planting class at Fuller Sem with various leaders from Mosaic. It was beautiful in that the spirit of the conversation all week was, "This is what we've done, doing and trying to do and what we have learned along the way. It isn't necessarily right, this is just us." There was really a spirit of humility and it was very conversational all week. It made me proud to be a part of Mosaic.

Interestingly, however, there was some real hostility towards Erwin when he taught on Day 2 - had a couple walkouts, some angry questions and probably lost 1/3 of the class by the end of Day 3. This was especially interesting given both the spirit of humility and the fact that Erwin was far more gentle and accommodating than normal. Seeing such a lack of teachability and such a resistance to creativity and innovation in the church only served to reinforce my lack of faith in institutionalized Christianity and its ability to change. The class itself was a great illustration of precisely why we need new faith communities (and why having a seminary education in no way qualifies one for ministry).

I have had a few people ask for my notes from class, so I thought I'd share some of those here. Unfortunately, there is some great material that I didn't take notes on because I've heard it so many times in the last year. So what you are getting is bite size nuggets that stood out to me personally. I'll be rolling out my notes in 3 parts by presenter - Chad Becker, Erwin McManus and Octavio Martinez. Hope that they prove as helpful for you as they have for me.

Mosaic Film

One of Mosaic's strongest suits is quickly becoming its endeavors in short film. Many of the people who collaborate on the projects are professionals in the industry who volunteer their time - a very cool perk of being in L.A. Today I found out that Erwin and company are working hard right now to get copyrights worked out for future projects so that shorts and bumpers can be made available to other churches and organizations to use!

For anyone out there looking to get a taste for Mosaic film...

The first place to check out is Mosaic's Kevin Wilson at Compass Films. You can check out some of his work on the site. Shorts that have been shown at Mosaic include Beauty, Waking Up and Water Artist.

Also, Awaken has some films online that can be purchased and used. (For some reason, the shorts and bumpers weren't working when I last checked. Must be tech issues, but keep checking back if you're interested. There are some good shorts here.)

Finally, Mosaic has a YouTube page that has a lot of different content on there. There are performances from Mosaic gatherings, clips of Erwin teachings, shorts and bumpers, etc. For fun, here is one of my favorite shorts from the last few month. Enjoy!

Predestined to be a Scientologist

This past week me and the protege crew spent a morning touring a Scientology center in, of all places, Hollywood. This has been on our "to-do" list for some time now and it was great to finally get to do it. Part of our reason for going had to do with our discussion about tribes, but the main goal was to experience what it felt like to be on the other side of high pressure evangelism. Unfortunately, they knew we were a group of Christians before we got there so I think we got the non-fat version.

Aside from a hilarious South Park episode (which they cited as an obnoxious headache), I really didn't know much about Scientology prior to my experience the other day. After our rather vague tour that primarily centered around what an amazingly swell guy L. Ron Hubbard was, I still feel there is a lot I don't know. The thing we were a part of was more like a introductory 'first experience' type thing. Although we asked a lot of questions, the answers we got were pretty vague and some actually contradicted things we had heard from those with friends deep into Scientology. It felt more like a PR session catered just for us, but I still learned some interesting things I thought I'd share.

Though you'd never guess it with their horrendous sci fi looking book covers, they are really good at marketing. They know how to draw people in, connect with them, and get 'em 'hooked' without ever having to address the truth behind the truth. And at least on the front end, I can totally see why Scientology has the kind of following it does. They boast about it being the one major world religion started in the 20th century (a rather odd thing to boast about, if you ask me), and frankly, it is exactly the type of religion you would expect to be birthed out of the 20th century. The things they champion are generally good: keeping street drugs out of the hands of kids; helping people become better leaders, better communicators, better human beings; encouraging personal health and success; making families stronger and homes healthier environments for kids to be raised in. These are all good things that most of us can agree on.

Their focus is intellectual and rational, they celebrate knowledge as progression (think "modern"), and interact a lot with popular psychology. They also acknowledge that God exists (something the vast majority of people are willing to agree with) and they will even go as far as to say that "if we miss God, we miss everything." Interestingly, their worship services look just like a church. They have a pulpit, the attenders sit in rows, they baptize babies, do weddings, worship together, even have a leather bound bible (though not called that) written by L. Ron Hubbard himself, filled with sermons for all different kinds of occasions.

They proudly admit to sampling from every major religion and then, perhaps most importantly, they affirm people's personal beliefs while giving themselves and everyone else permission to agree to disagree on most everything spiritual. We hung out with a woman who is an ordained minister and she outright said, "God is the most important thing there is. And there is only one God. There is not a god of the Jews, and a god of the Muslims, a god of the Mormons, etc. There is only one God..." (alright, sounds good, I am tracking with this lady so far...then she says,) "But what God is for me is probably very different than what God is for you."

Bam. There it is. They have essentially taken the things we can all affirm as 'good', championed those things and invested their resources in helping people with them, and then subtracted the one thing that every disillusioned Christian, atheist, apostate, and postmodern thinker has a problem with: the idea that one belief is 'right' and other beliefs are wrong. They have essentially created a community that both empowers personal development and acknowledges spirituality, without ever having to articulate what that spirituality is, allowing each person to define it for him or herself. From our brief introduction to Scientology last week, it almost seems to be the perfect man-made religion.