Category Archives: Mission

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Redirect

The wind is roaring through the trees outside my window. Another storm is blowing in. The events of the last few days, and all I heard this evening join with the howling wind in announcing a change is on its way.

Mosaic Nashville is experiencing, for the first time, something that is inherently Mosaic. No one on the team but me seems to realize this. And I only know it because I’ve lived through many incarnations of Mosaic. Of all the wonderful things Mosaic is, one thing it is not is static. God never changes, but Mosaic remodels itself at least once every six months.

Now, that’s not a complete retrofit reinvention. It’s really a constant series of course corrections. Driven by Erwin’s passion, we sometimes head off in a direction at such lightning speed that we miss the left turn we were supposed to make. It’s… somewhere back… there…

Ten years of Mosaic life taught me that God honors passion, even when we "miss" the turn. He opens the paths up, helps us forge new roads, to get us to the place that the missed turn was going.

John is so much like Erwin. He’s not at all detail-oriented, but his passion causes you to forget that, and to consider details inconsequential to accomplishing the vision he has. He provided the fuel we need to reach escape velocity. Perhaps that’s what God intended all along. But just like Erwin, John moved so fast that he missed a turn or two. Thankfully, God always factors this into His equation for our lives!

So I’m proud to say we’re officially Mosaic now. Not even six months into this venture and we’re already working on course corrections. Now its starting to feel like home.

If this is what it really is to be a church-planter, then I love it. I really love it! Failure isn’t an option in this endeavour. It’s a given. You are going to miss some turns. You are going to blow through some stop signs. Its just a fact of life. Isn’t that the most awesome, exciting news you’ve ever heard! There is such freedom in it! Try, experiment, move, do something…. anything. If it doesn’t work, cool. You’ve learned something new.

Mosaic taught me this. Mosaic taught me to stop fearing failure. It taught me to just try something… just do something….. and see what happens.  Sometimes I think God is more concerned with the process than the outcome. I mean, take a look at some of the things He’s created. Do you think someone concerned with the outcome, with perfection, would have created the Duck-billed platypus?  Honestly…!

I feel for my teammates, though. Many seem to be struggling with the whole thing. I see a resistance to call this "failure". I sense a profound sadness from some, and confusion from others. I understand. I’ve been there before. They’ll get used to it after a while. And eventually they’ll be like me, craving constant course corrections and redirection and unable to live in a community without it.

Yikes, look at the time! So much for sleep tonight…

PS The wind is still roaring, the rain is now in Memphis. The storm should be here by daybreak.

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Decisions

Life is an endless string of them. Why is that? Why is it that just when I think I’ve got it down, I’ve made my decision, the universe leads me around a corner and smack into another choice.

Grrr…

Some decisions I’ve made over the last few days haven’t led to new choices. Yet. Some decisions are in front of me right now because of choices made by others, which then requires that I make a choice. Kind of like a never-ending game of chess. Move. Counter-move. Counter-move to the counter-move… Ai-yah! My head hurts.

I suppose most people would find all this decision-making exciting, and grown-up-ish. I find it all quite annoying right now. I’d really like my life to settle down for a while, get a little normalcy going. I’ve been living like a nomadic nerfherder for so long it’s hard to remember what stability feels like. I have just enough memory of its taste to make my heart salivate for more, and cause my mind to insist its only a mirage.

Bill Sackheim once gave me a piece of advice — well, actually Bill was full of advice — but one nugget he gave me when I first started working with him came back to my mind with brutal force recently. He regretted having his name attached to a particular piece of… um, well, a movie… He could tell me exactly the day, hour, even minute that he knew the project was going south. But he kept his name attached, and, as Bill always did, worked his butt off desperately trying to salvage a once-decent script. It didn’t work. He hated the movie. And he hated the fact that his name was now forever linked with something that in his mind was a piece of garbage. His advice to me was, "the moment you smell the winds change and see the project headed in the toilet, get out. As fast as you can, get your name off the project and keep it off. Don’t let your name or reputation (and in Hollywood the two are synonymous) be soiled by a project you no longer believe in or like."

For many decisions I make, I write my name in pencil, because I’m just not sure. Some, I write in pen, because, while there are still a few lingering questions, I’m ready for that dotted line, and all that comes with it. Only one decision have I written my name in blood, because I was willing and ready to shed mine for that decision. That’s my decision to follow Jesus, no matter what it costs me. There is no other decision I will ever make in my life where I will sign in blood. None.

In Hollywood, contracts are signed in pen — though I’m sure some felt like they’d been in blood, for all the bloodletting that preceded the signing. Even the most binding of those contracts can be broken. To pull your name off a project may cost you a pretty penny, but it won’t cost you your life.

In the world of Christians, we usually don’t sign contracts. At least not officially. Yet, the commitment made on the part of one party to another can sometimes be confused with the commitment made to God. One, or all, of the parties may have unspoken — even subconscious — expectations that all signers have signed in blood, because, this is, after all, "Kingdom Work". What happens then, when a few, or even just one, of the parties isn’t happy with the direction the project is going? Can you pull your name off, or are you bound to it, even knowing that it is not the kind of "kingdom work" you want your name attached to?

And, most vexing of all, once I’ve signed in ink, can I erase it and go back to pencil?

The chess game goes on…

Perhaps after a year or two of what the rest of the world might call boring — you know, working the same job, living in the same country, that sort of things — I’ll be ready for some more turn-my-life-upside-down kind of stuff. But please, can I just have a year or two off the merry-go-round? I’m feeling a little nauseous.

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Mosaic – A Conversation

Lon referred to "the Mosaic Movement". Hmm…

I wouldn’t call it a movement. I like how Brian McLaren describes Emergent: it’s a conversation.

I think Mosaic is a conversation. Perhaps even a model. But I hope it never becomes a movement. A movement is what Christianity is supposed to be. Mosaic should never replace Jesus, should never even attempt to compete with Him, in that arena.

I read an article recently about the Emerging Church conference and it sounded very much like a regular Sunday morning at Mosaic, full of chaos, confusion, miscommunications, frustration on the part of some leaders because of the all the aforementioned… Yeah, that pretty much sums up many of the Sundays I spent at Mosaic/The Church on Brady.

So why did I stay? Because it is all worth it. All the chaos, frustration, confusion, miscommunication, long days, long nights… it’s all worth it. The community forged within that arena, the bonds we all share because of our common experiences and, more importantly, our common convictions and goals. I also believe in, and stand behind, Mosaic’s core values.

Core Values
Mission is why the church exists.
Love is the context for all mission.
Relevance to culture is not optional.
Structure must always submit to Spirit.
Creativity is the natural result of spirituality.

It’s an interesting thing, really. These core values were present when I first arrived, long before we changed our name to Mosaic, and even before Erwin was Lead Pastor. However, Erwin had the foresight, and insight, to distill them down to bite size phrases, as well as to sum up the main theme of our community and communicate them to a new generation of leaders hungry for community at its most primal level.

I believe the instilling of these core values into Church on Brady/Mosaic is owed to Bro. Tom, Carol Davis, and all the other staff, leaders and elders from Brady’s past. These core values expressed through people’s lives were the very things that attracted me to Brady.

I felt a strong sense of God’s presence as soon as I walked through the door. I knew the people here lived by their faith, not just expressed it on Sundays. Not only that, there was true community at Brady. I know Erwin is at times fond of talking about how he nixed the "Welcome" time because members were stepping over guests to greet each other. However, I never saw that in my years at Mosaic. In fact, to quite the contrary, I’m the product of members constantly greeting me. Even after I was serving on the sound team I was often greeted by members whom I had not yet met and who welcomed me warmly during that welcome time. I saw how much they loved the Lord through how the showered me with attention and love. I also saw servanthood modeled by staff and elders that I’d never seen before. I remember seeing a staff member straightening chairs and cleaning up trash between services. It’s an image that will long stay in my memory. My dad had served on staff and several churches, and I don’t ever remember seeing anyone on staff doing such "menial" labor. I was amazed, and I was hooked. I felt compelled to follow their leading. I also saw hope reflected in the lives of the people around me. They followed hard after Jesus, which means they often took hard blows in life. But they never gave up, never stopped serving Jesus, no matter what happened. They also never pretended to not hurt, or pretended all was well in life. They were honest about where they were and what they were feeling.

Mosaic’s roots are found in 2 Thessalonians 1:3-4. We strive to be a community:

Living by faith
Known by love
And is voice of hope to the world.

Ultimately, this is what we all strive to be at Mosaic. It’s fleshed out in the core values, but this is it at it’s most basic. If you want to be a part of the Mosaic conversation, this is the place to start. Community.

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Hey Lon! An Answer and A Bit of History

Wow, how’d you find out I’d quoted you…? I forgot to let you know (what I usually do when I quote someone I don’t know.)

You commented that it looks like I’ve joined the "Mosaic Movement" and wanted to know more.

Well… no, I didn’t join Mosaic. It kinda popped up around me.

See, back in 1994, I joined the Church on Brady — who’s official name was, and still is as far as I know, First Southern Baptist Church, East Los Angeles. It was originally founded in the 1940s out of a little store-front on Whittier Boulevard in East LA. It eventually moved to property on Brady Street in East LA, where it still was in the 1960s. The racial turmoil of the times caused people to drop the "Southern Baptist" part from the name of the church, preferring instead to say, "I go to that little church on Brady Street." The nickname stuck and eventually all the signs were change to The Church on Brady.

I started coming at the urging of a friend, Darla, around the end of 1993. I joined the sound team in January ’94 and joined the church a few months later. I’ve been a member there ever since. At that time Bro. Tom Wolf was the pastor. In April ’94, however, Erwin McManus was named Senior Pastor and Bro. Tom took the position of Teaching Pastor.

In 1997 we made our first foray into services at a new location — East LA College (ELAC). We planned to start meeting there full-time come January 1998 because we were outgrowing the Brady site. This presented a small problem. The Church on Brady would no longer be the church "on Brady Street." Now what? I remember some talk about what we would call ourselves… and for some reason I want to say we had kind of a naming contest going, or something… but I can’t remember. At any rate, Erwin eventually came to the name, Mosaic; the elders voted and it was decided. Mosaic we would now be.

In 1998 we moved both our morning and evening services off the Brady Street property. The only thing that still met there were our Wednesday evening classes and monthly Lord Supper services. ELAC was one of the meeting places. The second was a downtown nightclub, at that time still call the Shangri-La, once owned by Prince. We had actually looked into buying it, but when we couldn’t agree on a price it was sold to someone else. That new owner was willing to rent us the space for our "Urban" services on Sunday evening.

Unfortunately, there’s a growing misconception that Mosaic began with that "Urban" service at the SoHo (as the club was then called). This isn’t true on many levels. As I’ve pointed out, Mosaic was begun as First Southern Baptist over sixty years ago now. Also, we’d been having those Sunday night services at the Brady site for over a year before moving to the nightclub. However, up until we moved to the Mayan night club a few months ago, the SoHo had been the longest venue we’d been at since we ventured off Brady Street. I think many people hear Erwin refer to that fact and assume that Mosaic started in ’98 with that service. Just NOT true. šŸ™‚

Eventually our morning "Metro" services were moved back to the Brady site for a year or so, mid-99 thru 2001. Somewhere around April or May 2001 (I was in India at the time) Metro moved over to San Gabriel High school, and met there until March of 2004, when it moved over to the night club as well.

In 2003 we finally sold the Brady site property, and in 2004 we purchased some land in… La Puente area, I think… I’m not really sure where it is. I think it will eventually become the office facilities. And hopefully, with any grace from God, it will also become a housing facility for our overseas workers when they are in the States (a quad-type home featuring 4 2-3 bedroom apartments with laundry facilities and small kitchenettes all of which share a main large common living room-type common area has been suggested by some friends of mine…).

That’s kind of the history of Mosaic/Church on Brady/First Southern Baptist Church as it pertains to me. My involvement with it, however, and my convictions run much deeper and are more complex.

Let me see if I can detail all that out in another post… or two…

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Addendum Redux

What if we just moved Tennesee and the Carolinas overseas…? Do you think anyone would notice…?

If I could just find a way to have the beauty and majesty and culture of these three states (well, sans the overdeveloped, undernourished "churchy" stuff) and still be in a foreign place….

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Isn’t It Strange

Taking a quick break from addressing envelopes for Christmas Cards… went downstairs to get something to drink from the break room and spent a little time staring out the big picture window, watching traffic pass by and the American flag waving in the wind.

As I watched our flag, I flashed back to the moment I first saw it again after my first trip overseas. I’d just spent 4 glorious days in Japan and 9 painfully culture-shock-filled days in China. I was so desperate to be back on familiar soil! Arriving back at LAX, the first American flag I saw was painted on the side of an aircraft hanger. You never saw someone with so much joy in their heart! I was so glad to see it, MY flag, staring back at me so huge and proud.

Wow, I thought. It’s so good to see that emblem again and know I am safe at last.

That was eight years ago. And for the better part of two years, whenever I saw that flag waving in the wind I felt proud, and never wanted to live somewhere it wasn’t flying.

Now, after two major stints overseas, and a whole lotta life packed into each year, each time I see the American flag waving proudly in the wind, I get a bit of a shock. As if I took a gulp of coke when I was expecting iced tea. I keep expecting to see a Greek flag, or Indian or Ethiopian or Chinese, or some other nation’s flag waving outside. And there’s a small sense of disappointment that pricks my heart when that expectation goes unrealized yet again.

Where once I felt I’d never live anywhere else, now each time I see my flag waving I wonder, what am I doing here?

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Trite and Tired

What is going on with me these days?

I used to have a great deal of patience and understanding when people used trite sayings and phrases to express an idea. Now I have none. Absolutely none. I’m tired of the lack of authenticity I see. My experience with God is so opposite from it. My experiences with my closest friends are so opposite. So when I experience it from other believers who say they are following hard after Christ, I… I just can’t deal with it. It’s like having a pebble in my shoe. I want to confront it and get rid of it.

I just wish people would be real.

I passed so many churches this weekend with some variation “Have an Attitude of Gratitude” on their signs. Do people really believe that such a trite saying written on some sign is really going to transform someone’s heart? That someone’s going to see that sign and have a sudden epiphany, “omigosh! I forgot to put on my gratitude today.” Paleeze.

I saw a book for sale at LifeWay today called, “It’s Not About Me.” I just rolled my eyes and thought, ‘here we go again.’

Tonight, while I was on my cell phone with one of my best friends, another friend left me a message on my voicemail reiterating some trite things they’d previously said. I know my friend means well, but… dang, so many times he sounds so fake. Its those trite sayings, those Scripture passages used in place of real feelings and thoughts, those Christian phrases people say as a means to avoid having to dig into their own spirit and soul for words and truth.

And it all comes so naturally. We don’t have to think about it. Trite sayings have crept into every aspect of our lives. Think back over the last day. When someone asked you how you were, did you answer truthfully, or did you give the standard and expected “fine”? When was the last time you actually meant “bless you” when you responded to someone’s sneeze?

Every day is filled with dozens upon dozens of banal, overused, unmeant, rote phrases we volley to each other over and over. Christians are especially notorious for this. With all our Praise-the-Lord!-I’m-just-a-sinner-saved-by-grace-God-is-good-life-with-Jesus-is-sweet-I’m-just-a-vessel saccharine crap, it’s no wonder the world finds Jesus distasteful. Who wants to join a revolution full of fakers? Or worse, one full of perfect people? Who could keep up with that? I couldn’t.

I used to be able to tolerate all this stuff. I felt people meant well for the most part, and was willing to overlook the fact that their words sounded insincere because, “their heart was still in the right place.” Besides, they probably didn’t realize how their words came across.

I still believe that to be true. But my tolerance level has shrunk to zero. I don’t know why, exactly.

Perhaps that’s what depression does to you. The rose-colored glasses get yanked off and ground under foot. Once that happens you see the world in a less-flattering light. Perhaps a more realistic light. People are taken at face, and word, value.

What we say, and how we say it, reflects who we are. Whether true — and truly meant — or not, words have a powerful impact on others, both on their own outlook and on their opinion of the speaker. For better or worse, our words leave a mark on every listener.

God help me! Keep me silent unless You need me to speak. And help me find my patience, which I seem to have mislaid… or give me the courage to speak boldly and gently. Let the marks my words leave be ones of healing, hope and love!

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Past, Present & Future

God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty — never canceled, never rescinded. — Romans 11:29

This morning at Nina’s church I felt familiar pangs of longing. But this time was different from the last year. This time there was hope in my spirit.

I never realized how much I longed to be a missionary until I gave it up to spend a season at home seeking healing and wholeness. In the months after my resignation, I wept and mourned bitterly over what I had lost. It felt as if a significant piece of me had died. And with it, my hope in the future.

The door is open for me to go back at any time. And I’ve purposely structured my current work and life with the church plant in Nashville so that I keep that possibility alive.

I feel very strongly that I am exactly where I am supposed to be right now. And with my struggle with depression and current walk through grief, not to mention the pain of my first full year overseas, it has been hard for me to think far enough into the future to see myself going again overseas.

Yet… I cannot deny the pull on my heart. I cannot deny how my heart breaks for the world every day. I cannot deny how I seem to daily spot out of a crowd the various nationalities and cultures I see represented. I cannot deny how excited I feel, how my pulse races and my very spirit is inflamed when I think about building bridges between cultures, helping followers of Christ understand various worldviews and spot the God-moments in them, encouraging and developing in others an appreciation, even a passion, for learning about other cultures, interacting with them and building lasting relationships with people of other cultures and religions!

When I look at a map, I don’t see lines and countries. I see people. People of various ethnic groups and religions, with struggles and victories, convictions and fears, beliefs and needs. When I look at a map I think of the food the people eat, the weather they endure, the clothes they wear and the lives they lead. I wonder if they fear the same things I do, if they struggle with the same issues, if they long for the same things… I am in love with all the people I have met in my life, from Japan to Ethiopia, from India to Cyprus. Amazing people. Resilient, robust, beautiful, inquisitive, questioning, apathetic… they came in every size, shape and possibility. I remember each fondly, for who they are and what they taught me about life.

I don’t envy my friends overseas. I have lived that life and I know the sacrifices they make every day so that others may know Jesus the way we do. I admit, I love being able to drive on the right side of the road, read all the signs around me, communicate fluently with everyone I meet as I go about my daily routines (even if the accent throws me off many times). I love having an American style apartment with all its amenities, like consistent electricity, heat and a/c, hot water, shower heads and a western toilet. šŸ™‚

Yet… Thanksgiving night, driving home from Toby’s sister’s home, my mind went unbidden to MLC (a learning center for Overseas Workers in Virginia), and I wondered how they had celebrated Thanksgiving. If they were giving the new crop of Workers a true taste of what celebrating Thanksgiving in a foreign country is really like. I spent Thanksgiving 2002 in Ethiopia. I saw first-hand how much we as Americans have to be thankful for. At the same time, I missed my family terribly. I was thankful, yet my heart was heavy. That’s part of the holiday experience for a missionary.

All weekend I have wrestled off and on with a sense of longing. One that I’ve never been able to fully identify. One I thought I’d categorized as a desire to be a missionary, to be “on mission” with God.

Perhaps that is what the longing is. But I don’t think it’s all it is. I just don’t know right now…

This morning’s message from Nina’s pastor, Jeff, continued to stir that longing, bringing the pangs so strong they continue to resonate in my soul. This overseas “thing” just will not let go of me.

What is my role in it? There was a time when I believed I was a “Mobilizer”. Then I thought I was a “Goer”. But I’ve done gone and come back… now what am I??

As Jeff preached and I contemplated, God whispered, “My gifts and My call are irrevocable…. they still apply to your life… you’re still a part of what I’m doing in the world… And, there’s time yet…”

Hope.