Mosaic Church of Bellingham

As I begin this post, I want to recoginize the work of people like Steve Ogne and Randy Roland who first shared these diagrams with me and a number of others. Over the past few years, there have been many times that definition came to experiences that many of us were having but didn’t really understand. Seeing this diagram was one of those experiences.

As you check out the diagram and the description, you will see that these are very broad categories and generalizations. They are not meant to describe everything about every church. The placement of the cross is meant to illustrate the primary place that the message of Jesus is communicated.

Historic                 Contemporary                     Missional

In the “historic” church, the building itself represented a gathering place and a community symbol. In many places, the church building was the tallest building in the town. You can probably look back at pictures of Bellingham and find that Assumption was the tallest building for many years. By the way, some of the best preacher in the world are still preaching/teaching in traditional churches!

In the “contemporary” model of church, the formality of the building gave way to the “box store” or “business park” location. This was not a move to “sell out”, it was a move out into the community and away from a focus on “religious” buildings. The message of Jesus is presented through services that speak to the seeker. These types of churches have literally changed the face of the church in N. America (and a few other countries). In the past 35 years we have experienced the growth of “mega-churches” for the first time in history. This has presented great challenges as well as brought incredible blessing.

When you look at the missional church, things become more of a blob, than a box or a building. It is not that the missional church doesn’t meet in buildings, they do (whether its a home or another type of facility). The issue is that the missional church does not find its “center” in a building. It finds it’s center (and therefore locates the message of Jesus) in the culture that it finds itself.
Of course all of this brings up a great question; “what is the message of Jesus and how should it shape how we live our lives?” I will deal with this in a future post.
This can make things rather confusing. How do people get connected? Where do we get to know people enough that we can experience “community”? How are programs developed to meet the needs of children? Youth? College age? Young couples? These are great questions and they are ones that the missional church (including Mosaic) is learning to deal with.
We hope you will learn with us. Our hope is that as we seek to be the community that God has called us to be, we will find organic ways to develop community amongst all the various demographic groups, but that none of them will become isolated from the whole. We believe discipleship happens best when the parts all work together in their learning process.
If you have a desire to be a part of building community with a particular age group, or you would like to see something going on for young couples, families, or whatever, let us know. You can contact any one of the pastors or you can talk to Leila Hobart as she has volunteered to help get people connected.

Blessings!