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  • Mosaic Address:
    606 West 3rd Ave., Spokane, WA 99201

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Dec 30, 2012

Our Historical Future

Passage: John 17:3

Preacher: John Repsold

Category: Holiday

Keywords: location, place, serve, history, future

Summary:

This message celebrates our 5 year anniversary as a church, looks at the history of Mosaic Fellowship, the events and values that developed who we are, the role PLACE has in shaping God experiences and where we see it going in the days ahead.

Detail:

Historical Future

December 30, 2012

 

Welcome to the last Sunday of 2012!  I’m glad you made it…not just to our worship gathering today… but to the end of another year. 

In the last 48 hours, various of our brothers and sisters in this city have experienced death at close range.  On Thursday I met with some family members of a dear woman, Shirley Bell, who passed away on Christmas Day, her favorite day of the year.  She was 83 and had taught hundreds of children in Sunday School through the years.  And yesterday, little baby Owen, Jim & Audry Dingfields’ youngest grandchild, passed into eternity after just 19 days on this earth.

Life is an extremely precious gift.  The passing of special days, of seasons and of years themselves constantly remind us that our days on this earth are not infinite in number.  God has given to each one of us life that we can spend and expend every day as we choose, as we see fit. 

            And, as the Bible says, “…man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment….” (Heb. 9:27).  Living with the realization that our finite lives are rapidly passing is not meant to be morbid or depressing.  It is meant to be invigorating, to help us focus our life on what matters rather than dissipating it on things that do not last. 

 

It just so happens that, in the rhythm of life at Mosaic Fellowship, our anniversary as a church also coincides with the New Year.  We began as a church 5 years ago next Sunday.  And since we will be having a special guest preacher next Sunday, I wanted to take this opportunity on the last Sunday of this, our 5th year of Mosaic life, to do a little inventory of our “toddler years” as a church, a little reminiscing, a bit of praising and thanking God for His blessings, and a bit of dreaming about the days ahead. 

 

As I was hunting through the digital archives of pictures I have at home, a couple of things struck me.  One of them was how many of those now a part of Mosaic were not with us when we launched.  That is both a healthy and good thing.  But it means you missed out on a bit of the back-story of how God lead and launched this church. 

            Origins are important.  Just as the history of our own great nation’s birth is critical to properly understanding our nation’s values and development, so it is with churches.   We were launched five years ago with certain core values, certain expectations and dreams that have shaped who we are today and what we will become tomorrow. 

 

So I’d like you to join me for a short trip back in time to a little over 5 years ago.  If you’re a regular here, you know that I normally take a passage of Scripture and teach pretty much verse-by-verse.  So please don’t judge me too harshly if that’s what you came expecting today.  Today will be different.  1 out of 52 weeks isn’t asking too much, is it?  Today I want us to recount the goodness of God to us as a church and talk simply from my heart to yours about where God has brought us and where He may be taking us. 

 

When I left the senior pastorate at 4th Memorial back in February of 2007, I had no idea what the next move was for our family and ministry.  I was just finishing up my doctoral project on the multiplication of pastoral prayer groups in Spokane with the intent of seeing God pour out historic spiritual revival, renewal and reformation on our city.  So I didn’t have any sense from God that we were finished in Spokane.  If anything, I felt He wanted us to stay in this city, to continue to pursue the spiritual health and renewal of Spokane, and to do something different, something hopefully fresh to aid the growth of Christ’s church in the Inland Northwest. 

 

So we prayed.  For 6 months we prayed, read, refreshed, talked with people and waited for God’s leading.  Somewhere early in that process, Joe Wittwer, pastor of Life Center Church, had lunch with me.  Through the years of my time pastoring in Spokane I’ve been privileged to not only know Joe but to be part of various pastor’s groups he participated in that meet regularly to help one another in ministry. 

            So Joe asked me, “John, what do you think God wants you to do in the next chapter of ministry?”  I told him that I had a commitment to our previous church that I would not start another church or take another senior pastorate in Spokane for at least 6 months.  I had seen firsthand what that sort of action would do to a church and I wanted no part of doing damage to any part of Christ’s church in this city.  But having spent the previous 14 years seeking to heal, grow and change an established church, I was convinced that I wanted to pour the remaining energies of my life into building a new church.  I knew there would always be battles in ministry, but the ones I wanted to fight with all my heart, soul, mind and strength are the ones that fight for the next generation of the church, not the last generation.  I want to rescue the lost, not argue with the saved.  I want to experience the life God has for my children and grandchildren’s generations in a growingly hostile spiritual environment, not try to recreate the life God blessed my and previous generations of Christians with in this land. 

 

So one thing led to another.  Life Center sent Sandy and me along with Charlie & Lisa Greer to a “Church Planter’s Intensive” in Portland, OR the summer of 2007 to both equip us for a new church plant and to assess whether or not they felt we were a good investment.  Apparently they concluded we just might be, because the next thing we knew, they committed to underwrite the start-up support cost for the 4 months leading up to our launch 5 years ago. 

 

During that time we began to pray that God would bring together a team of people with a heart for what God had put in our hearts:  to reach a part of our city that was under-served with the Gospel and presence of Jesus’ Bride, the Church.  At the same time, we concluded that downtown and the lower South Hill was THE most unchurched area of Spokane.  With more churches dying and closing in the core of the city for at least 2 decades than starting or growing, we felt the leading of God to do something right in the heart of Spokane.  

 

Joe very graciously invited me to preach a couple of Sundays in the summer and fall of that year and encouraged people to talk with us if they felt that God was speaking to them about somehow helping with this new church.  After almost every service, someone would come up, introduce themselves and ask how they might help.  One gentleman later contacted me and wrote a check for $10,000 to help us get started. 

 

So in the fall of 2007, God put us in touch with a man attending Life Center who owned this building.  The only other tenant here at that time was Eva up on the 2nd floor with her architecture business.  Other than that, the entire building was empty.  So after seeing the facility, we were given an extremely reasonable lease for the basement and the first floor.  We moved in, set up an office, and started making plans to launch Mosaic Fellowship in January 2008. Our plan at the time was to set up a coffee shop/art gallery in this space while holding services in Interplayer’s Theater around the corner. 

 

That December, 5 years ago, a hardy, small band of believers started gathering for worship and prayer on Sunday evenings.  As you can see from some of the pictures, there weren’t even lights in this room at the time.  We brought in floor lamps, construction lamps and just about any light we could find to allow us to meet after dark.  And we held our first baptism.  For those of you who don’t recognized the other two gentlemen in that picture, the one getting baptized is Kit Erhgood, who owns The Spokane Music Institute in the Garland District, and Greg Papst, the man preaching in the bottom left photo and standing with his hand on me at the baptism.  Greg passed away from cancer less than 2 months after this picture was taken.  (Yes, that is a horse water trough we’re using as a baptismal.)

 

On Sunday, January 6, 2008, we held our first worship service at Interplayer’s Theater on Howard.  That place was to be our home for worship services for about 2 years until the winter water leakage and resulting mold problem forced us to make a change and move to this venue for services. 

 

As many of you know, we have a one-line phrase that sort of summarizes what we hope Mosaic will be to each of us and to this city:  Mosaic—experiencing the heart of God in the heart of the city.  Just last week, walking from the parking lot to here, I heard a couple of people talking as they walked down the sidewalk, saw our sign hung on the west wall and read it out loud:  “Mosaic:  experiencing the heart of God in the heart of the city.” 

 

That phrase is more than a cute tag line.  It is what we pray will happen with every one of us here who chooses to make the effort to come downtown to experience life in the family of God.  You see, WHERE you experience the life and power of God makes a difference.  Oh, God is everywhere.  And he can give you an experience of himself in just about any place. 

  • God can meet you alone in a desert or he can meet you in a stadium with 50,000 other people. 
  • He can cause you to experience him in a prison cell or on a mountain peak.    

But where we are often shapes the KINDS of experiences we have with God. 

  • When I’m on the couch in the morning having my devotions in the family room, it is a different experience with God from when I am, say, at a summer Bible camp in Canon Beach, OR or Cusick, WA. 
  • And that experience with God is different from when I’m in our Agros Nicaraguan village of Luz de Manana, 45 minutes from the nearest paved road OR sitting in a Bible study on a Wednesday evening in Nancy’s condo 6 blocks from here. 

Location and place do matter when it comes to the kinds of experiences you will have with God.  Just think of how important a location was to…Adam and Eve in the Garden…or Cain & Able in the field…or Noah in the ark…or Abraham in Ur of the Caldees.  Location mattered to Joseph in Egypt, to Moses in Midian and to the Israelites in the wilderness.  Location mattered to Mary & Joseph in Bethlehem, to Peter & John on the Mt. of Transfiguration, to the demoniac in the graveyard and to Paul on the Road to Damascus.  Location mattered to just about every account we have of God-encounters in the Bible. 

 

So HOW does being in the “heart of the city” change…or potentially change…our experience with God? 

Much of what we experience here today many other gatherings of God’s people around this city today are also experiencing. They are singing.  They are hearing preaching.  They are enjoying coffee and conversation with brothers and sisters in Christ.  They are giving money and time and gifts to the Body of Christ.  They are driving some distance and parking their cars in some parking lot.  In fact, some experiences of God they are having may be superior in some ways to what we’re able to experience here.  They may have bigger rooms and sanctuaries, nicer sound systems, better heating, prettier carpeting, more people, better lighting, better preachers.  J 

So how does being in the ‘heart of the city’ change or potentially change our experience of God?  What do you think?  What have you experienced?  How has your experience with God been changed because we gather and minister in and through this place? 

And as you answer that question, please don’t be afraid to be truly honest.  Some of what God wants to do with us to help us experience him in this place may not be very comfortable.  You may outright not like it.  You may be itching to get back to the suburb where most of us live…or, if you live downtown, to get out of the downtown core where you may feel you are stuck living.

[Solicit responses.]

 

Believe me, I know how living or working in an urban environment changes you. 

  • I’ve lived in Manila, the Philippines, a city of over 11 million people and, according to Wikipedia, THE most densely populated city in the world.  (I have a somewhat hard time believing that having seen Hong Kong high-rise living.) 
  • Our family has also lived in high-rise apartment buildings in Madrid, Spain, a city of 6.5 million people. 

Both of those experiences shaped and changed my experience of God.  And sometimes it didn’t feel like it was for the better.  Many times I longed to be back in what felt familiar—suburban  America, with houses and lawns and gardens and porches and…space! 

            As a 22 year old in Manila, I remember my experience with God being changed by just riding the jeepneys and buses crammed with other hot, sweaty bodies…people that fit more comfortably with their 5’ frames than I did standing with them in buses with 5.5’ tops. 

  • My experience with God was shaped by weeks of sickness I had never before experienced. 
  • It was shaped by the young couple and their two rag-clothed toddlers living in the wreckage of a burned out car in a vacant lot which I passed daily just 2 blocks from where I lived. 

PLACE has the potential to change our experience with God, some places more powerfully than others. 

 

We’re not better for doing church down here.  But I can guarantee you that your experience with God will be different than in the suburbs.  Some of you already know that. 

  • When you serve at City Gate or Cup of Cool Water, it has the potential to change you and your walk with God in ways that serving dinner to your friends and family at home just doesn’t.  J
  • When you go into the apartment buildings around here handing out soups or scones or invitations to something we’re doing, it changes your experience with God.

By the way, it also changes the lives of people down here too.  STORY:  Dianna lived in the Wall St. apartments a half a block from here just 4 years ago when we handed out scones by the hundreds.  She came to visit Mosaic because her daughter on the East Coast encouraged her to find a church near her.  And she came to faith in Jesus, got baptized and is now living 5 blocks west of here in a wonderful apartment.  And we’re currently maneuvering the public housing bureaucracy to get a Bible study publicized in her building where, by the way, another young woman who attends Mosaic has just moved in as well.     

  • Going caroling downtown…or manning the Salvation Army Christmas kettle when it’s 12 degrees out will change your experience with God (and perhaps your toes and fingers too).

 

We’ve done a variety of things, some of them right here in this room, that change our experience with God as we pick up the towel of service in Jesus’ name and make a difference in this community. 

  • Some of you have taken Alpha right here…or in someone’s home from Mosaic.
  • Some have served marriage groups right here.
  • We’ve served our community on Bloomsday several times, giving out food and water as well as taking surveys that sometimes lead into spiritual discussions.
  • Others have helped downtown residents through “A Hand Up” right in this room.
  • We’ve blessed other urban Spokane ministries with not only tens of thousands of dollars in the last 5 years but with hundreds of man-hours of service and untold baskets of encouragement to ministries that are on the front-lines of some of the darkest areas of our city fighting for the most vulnerable of people.
  • We’ve been able to assist in the launch of another church in the city core here, a “bar church” that Charlie and Lisa Greer started in The A Club on Riverside called The Seaside.
  • We’ve reached across the world with the love of Christ to China by hosting Chinese students in our homes and right here in Spokane. 
  • And we’ve taken that same loving compassion of Christ to other countries like Nicaragua…and Cambodia.  Why?  It’s what worshipping and fellowshipping and living in this PLACE has done to us.  Just take Cambodia and Mark Massingale.  We would never have met him, heard his passion for the people of Cambodia, helped him realize God’s call or been part of something totally new like this if we had not been in this PLACE. 
  • Week after week, behind the scenes, a committed core or adults pours into our children and our teenagers. 

 

Now regardless of where we meet or minister, experiencing God with the people of God, His church, should have some common elements. 

  • Every church should have solid instruction in the Word of God.  Hopefully we offer a measure of that every Sunday when we gather here.  Hopefully we always open the word of God and challenge you to consider its implications and applications to your life. 

We also seek to provide other times of teaching and instruction during the week through Conduit on Monday nights or mid-week Bible studies here at Mosaic and in homes. 

  • And every church should engage God’s people in prayer.  That’s why we try to have a time of prayer every Sunday when we come together.  That’s why we have prayer groups throughout the week.
  • Every church should be helping God’s people experience life-to-life fellowship in Christ, times when we are sharing with each other what God is doing with us, saying to us and asking of us. 

Both Men’s Connection and Women’s Connection are designed for that. 

So are small group experiences and some of the time we share each Sunday.  And believe it or not, some of the best bonding of heart and soul happens just doing things together…things like playing softball...

or fixing/painting someone’s house. 

Enjoying retreats & camps & sharing food can all be part of knitting our hearts together in Christ.

  • And fourth, in a healthy church there should be continual sharing of the Gospel of Christby whatever means we can find to effectively bring Christ into the lives of people needing Him around us.  Honestly, I’m not sure we have done such a great job at that.  We’re trying though. 
    • The Alpha Course is one of the tools we believe God uses when we employ it.  (CALL to consider becoming a part of a group by inviting some of your unchurched and unsaved friends and neighbors to one or hosting one in your own home.)
    • Multiplying urban missionaries, people who have a passion to reach their “neighborhood” for Christ, be it in the suburbs or be it a whole apartment building in the urban core.  EX:  Mike and Daniel, assisted by Chuck and Flasha, a terrific combination of youthful energy and zeal with mature wisdom and great cooking!  We would love to see every block of this city having a Bible study and an outreach team/residential unit in it. 

 

Now when we use that phrase, “Experiencing the heart of God in the heart of the city,” it’s a culturally understandable way of saying just what the Bible is saying when it calls us to “know” God.  “Knowing God” in the biblical sense of the word is not knowing simply truth and facts about God.  It is having life-on-life personal relational knowledge of God.  It is actually experiencing God in life. 

            The Apostle John recorded Jesus’ own words in John 17:3 when he wrote what Jesus was praying to the Father. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

            Again, the word “know” here is the Greek verb ginosko.  Greek has other words for “knowing” but this word is often used to speak of personal and relational “knowing” of someone.  Clearly Jesus is telling us that if we want eternal life, life to the full with God that includes now and forever, what we need is to “know” God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son experientially. 

That comes through the very things I’ve just talked about:  growing in our experience of God through sinking our lives into his Word, through communication with Him in prayer, through experiencing His “body” in this world through deep, life-changing fellowship with each other and through being Christ’s hands and feet, eyes and ears in this world through serving others both in and outside His family, the church.   

I so often feel like I’m “preaching to the choir” when I talk about these things.  If I can be candid, one of the most frustrating things in ministry is to offer a balanced menu of spiritual opportunities to see only a fraction of God’s people consistently and regularly take hold of them.  I’m not saying everyone should be at everything Mosaic or any other church offers.  But I do see a direct correlation between showing up and growing up.  SO often our growth is stunted simply because we don’t make time or priority for the very things God has said will strengthen and grow us. 

 

Having said all that, let me talk briefly about where God seems to be leading us in the near future. 

As I looked at hundreds if not thousands of pictures this past week, one of the things that amazed me was how different our congregation is from when we started.  One statistic was given to us at that Church Planter’s Intensive I told you we attended 5.5 years ago.  It was that “90% of the people you start with will not be in your church 12 months later.”  While that was thankfully not our experience 12 months after we started, I would have to say that I think about 60-70% of the people we had as part of Mosaic 5 years ago are not with us today.  Frankly, I was amazed how many have been taken in death…and several of them were my age.  I was also reminded of how many have drifted away, too often as a result of divorce.  Others have simply moved cities…or changed churches.  That’s normal.  But what it also shouted to me was that unless God’s church is constantly and consistently growing, it will not survive.  Unless we are adding new believers…or inviting friends…or engaging those who were once a part of a church somewhere but now form that huge group of “un-churched Christians” in our culture, we will not be able to fulfill God’s call upon us in Spokane and in our generation.

NOTE:  “Un-churched Christians” is to me a huge oxymoron in my thinking.  But it is also a hugely unfortunate reality in our culture.

Over the past year, we have been fortunate enough to experience a few growing pains.  We’ve gone to 3 services so that we’re not uncomfortably squeezed into two.  We could use more space for the children that are a part of Mosaic. 

But in addition to those evident growth needs, there are several parts of the original vision we believe God gave us for a church in the heart of our city that we have not been able to take up due to the constraints of this location. 

  • We believe the church is never a building. And if a church has the luxury of having a building like most churches in America seem to, it should be used all week long, as often as possible.  Furthermore, we think it should be a building that somehow serves the community.  It should be a place where most people feel comfortable coming every day of the week, not just one in which a few people from a cultural sub-group feel comfortable in one day a week.
  • We’ve actually been asked to consider moving into one of the downtown church facilities…and I’ve turned it down so far.  Frankly, a “church building” is a pretty big turn-off to most people in our culture today, particularly the younger generation…unless their past experience in church has been good…which isn’t the case for more and more people.  But a coffee shop, not so much of a problem.  In fact, over 50% of American’s have coffee every single day.  Coffee takes 85% of the hot beverage market in our country. 
  • So we’re looking for a location that has enough room to be a thriving coffee/tea/hot chocolate/pastries and such shop during the day and a great all-ages concert venue by night.  Weekends and select evenings would be available for church gatherings.  We’d love for this to be the kind of place in the right part of downtown that is attractive to older teens and younger adults.  And it may well be a place where we are even able to provide space for The Seaside as a separate congregation.

Having said all that, my concern is that the only thing you will remember is that we’re in a building search.  No, what we’re really searching for is GOD!  Regardless of WHERE God leads us to experience and pursue Him, the most important need of Mosaic in the future is to experience the heart of God more and more, deeper and deeper, until He returns or calls us home one by one.  AMEN??? 

QUESTIONS?  COMMENTS?  Let’s pray about this!