Mosaic Blogs

Folks - please take a moment to respond to this survey for mosaic if you haven’t already.

Click Here to take survey

I’ve been meaning to create an online anonymous survey for our community for quite a while now.  I think it’s helpful to get a better sense of the ‘pulse’ of one another as a whole…

I figure rather than me just coming up with my own questions, I’d create a space here if any of you have any good juicy questions you’d like to ask of one another in this survey?

I’m hoping to compile something in the next week.  Comment here or email me if you’ve got burning questions of our community!

1. If you have to pick three of these dreams, which ones would you pick?

• to flourish in the community outside of church building
• to bring true life to others…a life that is contagiously attractive to our communities outside of Mosaic
• to strive to root in God’s word and prayer and develop the passion towards the community/people that God brought in their lives

2. how would you contribute to these dreams?

• be more intentional in reaching out…make more friends…take up opportunities to share life with others
• practice REAL and to invite others to join in…
• stay close to God…to celebrate Sabbath…learn to confess our sins to each other…devote in prayer and scripture

This is my commitment to God…to Mosaic…to the Mosaic movement…to His Kingdom…

Sincerely,

Cindy

P.S. Please keep me accountable and pray for me.

Below is a list of random topics that I’m open for discussing during our sunday gatherings.  I’m definitely no expert in any of them, but they’re all topics I’m up for learning more on.  

Open source curriculum design helps create content that senses the pulse of the community and hopefully engages you best.  Feel free to choose up to five topics that you would like me to bring up over the next while as time permits.

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I read a blog today that I want to share it with you all. It is written by the founder of Adventures In Missions, Seth Barnes, who post his blog daily. Enjoy!

Posted in Community and Church by Seth Barnes on 9/10/2008

Going to church with hundreds of other people to sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it.

Community will reveal where you have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known, and therein lies the power and therein lies the danger. Aren’t there moments when all those little companies, in all those stories, hang by a thread? Galadriel says to Frodo, “Your quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.”

Most churches survive because everyone keeps a polite distance from the others. We keep our meetings short, our conversations superficial. “So, Ted, how’s everything going on the Stewardship Committee?” “Oh, just great, Nancy. We’ve got a big goal to reach this year, but I think we’ll be able to get that gym after all.” No one is really being set free, but no one is really at odds with each other either. We have settled for safety in numbers-a comfortable, anonymous distance. An army that keeps meeting for briefings, but never breaks into platoons and goes to war. Living in the community is like camping together. For a month. In the desert. Without tents. All your stuff is scattered out there for everyone to see.

A true community is something you’ll have to fight for. You’ll have to fight to get one, and you’ll have to fight to keep it afloat. But you fight for it as you bail out a life raft during a storm at sea. You want this thing to work. You need this thing to work. You can’t ditch it and jump back on the cruise ship. This is the church; this is all you have. Without it, you’ll go down. Or back to captivity. This is the reason those small house fellowships thrive in other countries: they need each other. There are no other options.

God is calling together little communities of the heart, to fight for one another and for the hearts of those who have not yet been set free. That camaraderie, that intimacy, that incredible impact by a few stouthearted souls-that is available. It is the Christian life as Jesus gave it to us. It is completely normal.

Here’s a painting of our life group.

I can’t stress how important it is to have a faith community outside of the sunday flury of activities.  It’s not easy always meeting up together but our group has had the opportunity to share meals, share homes, journey through a book together, share more meals, walk the streets, paint together, and simply share life together.

Don’t we all crave deeper community? To be more fully known in our fragmented society?

If you missed last sunday our own Phil created some live art on the spot during our gathering.

it brought me great joy to be given an opportunity to bring glory to our God with the creativity He’s given us…christian/non-christian…it’s a gift to all from God…and it’s crazy beautiful…

and i have an idea for this thing…but i think i will need to hold auditions for this…hahah…i need a guy (some fabulous candidates: phil, lon, ian’s friend - douglas) to wear a speedo and let me paint him into a meteor and then he can either choose to crash live in front of the audience that night or we’ll make a video of it…now don’t worry….u won’t be doing that for free…this post will host a petition for this act and all proceeds will go towards the water system…i will provide the speedo and the body paint (could tempera work?…i’ll find out)….

i will start by sponsoring $70 to petition for lon to do it live

p.s. all u fashion designers out there…let’s do a fashion show for solar crash!…that’d be soo cool!…and in reaction to conservation we will use second hand clothes to make these pieces…so if you have some clothes that you don’t need anymore…gimme gimme =)

Happenings:

• Life group leaders gathering for this Saturday is postponed. Most of you cannot make this day.
• Aaron’s (from previous prayer requests) open heart surgery has been successful though with minor complications. He is now at home recovering. Continue to pray for his health.
• Vicky and Lindsay are doing well in Lima. Mother Theresa’s Home for the Dying and Destitute is situated in one of the worse areas in Lima, please pray for safety.
• The 1st TenderCare Sunday worship for the Cantonese speaking residence has an attendance of almost 30 seniors. Two of them are English speaking that prompt us to prepare some English hymn sheets for the future. One-on-one translator perhaps is also needed if this continues.
• Pray for Sophia’s epideral cortisone injection on Thursday.
• Pray for the recovery and rebuild work at Sichun, China and Myanmar. We have donated (one thousand dollars each) to the relief works in these countries through the Red Cross.
• Pray for Henry Chow, Stephanie Tung and Janet Wong (Rosewood Baptist) on their upcoming missions trip. Henry Chow: Chibougaumau for construction work. Stephanie Tung: well drilling in South America. Janet Wong: Benin, missions work. 

10 Great Ways (and counting) to Change Your World

• Pray.
• Help the poor, the widows, and orphans.
• Forgive those who hurt you.
• Give generously.
• Work responsibly.
• Rest well.
• Dream.
• Mentor and be mentored.
• Invest wisely.
• Doing little things well.
• Plant a tree.
• Listen more and talk less.

and … your continuing input …

Basic Christian education, anyone?

Perhaps one of the most frequent questions that I got asked by fellow pastors and church leaders is: how do you do Christian education if there is no Sunday school or Bible study groups in your church?

I can understand the concern behind this question: it is easy for your church people to go astray if the truths of the Bible is not taught systematically.  I appreciate the concern. I also understand that this question is raised with an underlying conviction that knowledge equals transformation. It means that the more knowledge a person has, the more the person will get to know the truth. The outcome: being able to live the right kind of Christian life. Hence, little chance for the person to go astray.

Yes, this is a good argument. For example, if people will have more knowledge on AIDS, it can prevent the spread of the disease.  Education is the conduit to deliver the knowledge to people. So far so good.

However, let us not forget that truth discernment may not necessary come from knowing the hard facts. As a bible believing Christian, it comes from a total surrendering and believing in the person and work of the Holy Spirit. “He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth.” (John 14:17) Furthermore, life transformation comes from the believing and yielding to the Holy Spirit. (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 5:18; 1 Thess. 5:19)

Where do all these lead us?

First of all, the more facts a person know of the Bible may or may not help a person to discern truth. It may also not transform a person. The many Sunday schools and Bible studies have been reduced to discussions in the ivory tower with little connection to a person’s life. The many so-called applications are at times too generalized and not getting into the depth of a person’s soul.

Secondly, truth discernment and life transformation can happen more often when a person is living the kind of life that Jesus modelled for us. It is through living out the experiences that truth can also be known. We cannot truly know what is true if the hard facts of the Bible simply stagnated in our heads. Therefore, I would argue that encouraging and moving people to live Jesus’s kind of life is a more effective way of Christian education. Give more time to people out of the classrooms is a way to facilitate Christian education rather than stiffle it.

Thirdly, we do still need people to get involved in some form systematic Christian education. This relates back to Ephesians 4 when one of the gifts of Jesus to the Church is that of ‘teaching’. There are those who are called by God to teach; of course, not only to deliver the hard facts of the Bible. The failure of Christian education in the Church has more to do with not realizing the different learning styles of individuals. The cognitive mode of teaching and learning can only be connected by a very small population within the Church.  When Christians talk about ‘basic teachings’, it is mostly referring to this mode of teaching and learning. Then the ‘basic teachings’ for the early Christians is really this: Jesus loves me this I know and I will live my life imitating his life. Truth discernment and life transformation will come as a result.

Unfortunately in today’s Christian world, we are microscoping on worrying not knowing the truth as in hard facts; on formulas and methods in transforming our lives to the extend of missing out the basic of Christianity is really to live out the life of Jesus. We have focused on something only the Holy Spirit can do and neglect what we must do. We find comfort in getting the truth through cognitive learning alone. End result: shifting the goal of the Christian life from that of living out Jesus to forever truth searching in the four walls of an institution and building that we call ‘church’.

Conclusion: I would rather take the risk of using the New Testament as a model of basic Christian education than following something that has prevented the Christ followers to life out their potential in the past few decades.

Basic Christian education, anyone? Jesus love me this I know and I am to live my life modelled after Him, who is Lord and Savior of the universe.