Aaron Loy's Ragamuffin Blog

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.

Epic Mistakes in Ministry

You ever think back to something you did and wonder to yourself, What was I thinking?! Perhaps it was your first ministry gig or one of the first times you were trusted with significant responsibility and you did something of such epic stupidity that it still makes your face hot to think about it?

When I was in my early twenties, I was hired as the part time worship pastor for a church plant in Lincoln, NE. I had previously sworn to never work for a church. As a wounded pastor's kid, I had spent most of my young adult life avoiding church people. So when I took the job, I did so with more than a little hesitation and with a big church-person-sized chip on my shoulder.

So you can about imagine how well I handled it when anonymous comment cards started coming in attacking myself and the worship team for (of all things) wearing hats on stage. All of the bad pk memories came flooding back as I remembered the people who had caused me to tuck tale and run from religion so many years ago. Adding to the fire was the fact that these comment cards represented a direct contradiction to the vision of our church (the reason I was there in the first place). I was primed and ready to flip.

Then one week I received a particularly scathing comment card. Its author took cheap shots at various members of the worship team for their unacceptable attire on Sunday mornings - particularly their wearing of hats - and what they believed that reflected about their character. And in true coward form, it was once again anonymous. I was livid. But ya know, it probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal if I hadn't been on deck to preach one of my first sermons that coming Sunday.

Instruction Manual for Life

This video is poignant, beautiful and packed with truth. Wisely invest 8 minutes of your life and watch it. And if you're a Jesus follower, grab a couple close friends and spend some time wrestling with the questions this modern day parable brings up and its implications on our lives and ministries.

I love this short film. It beautifully portrays our human tendency to resist that which is mysterious and unpredictable. Only in worshiping religion do we attempt to reduce the great narrative of God and humanity to a static, symmetrical cupboard of do’s and don’ts. Why are so many of us afraid to embrace and celebrate the God-given uniqueness of each person? How can we possibly think that God’s ultimate goal for us is to look, act, feel, believe and behave in exactly the same way? Like the young boy portrayed in this film, we will discover entirely new colors, shapes and dreams for our lives if only we are courageous enough to step outside the demands and confines of religious dogma and consider what the book really says about us and its author.

If only we will do this, perhaps we will find ourselves more gracious and loving with those who disagree with us. Perhaps we will find entirely new designs and colors and shapes along the way, ones that inspire, guide and empower those who don’t know where to start or who find themselves stuck in a world of black and white. Perhaps we will find ourselves drawn to the author who believes in us enough to leave so many pages blank, yet to be written by us, and us alone. Perhaps we all need to rethink the cupboards we have built for ourselves.

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.

Top 5 Most Ridiculous Church Signs

Call me cynical, call me vulgar, call me whatever you will, but here are my Top 5 Most Ridiculous Church Signs! (Signs were unfairly judged at my discretion on the basis of hilarity, irony and/or just plain ridiculousness.) Enjoy!

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