Wednesday, January 25, 2006

LAUNCH SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5TH. We have been moving toward this day for over seven months. The day we will officially begin Mosaic Community Church. Even though we have planned and prayed for many months, our launch Sunday will go down in history as the inaugural worship service.

We are sending over 1000 post cards to residents around our community. We are planning to serve breakfast, give away gift bags, and begin a new sermon series. The sermon series is going to be a desription of our church. We will convey that message with an acrostic of our church name; MO-S-A-IC.

MO - Multi-ethnic and Open (Feb. 5th)
S - Safety (Feb. 12th)
A - Authentic (Feb. 19th)
IC - Incarnational Compassion (Feb. 26th)

We truly want to see people released from captivity so they can find liberty and freedom in Jesus Christ. If you need a safe place to worship, and you are looking for people who will care about where you are and where you have been, I encourage you to visit Mosaic.

This Sunday, January 29th we will have a special guest give her testimony. She is visiting Mosaic and she is a former crack cocaine attack. God has delivered her and she is praising Him and giving Him the glory. Praise God! He is still setting the captives free.

On a personal note, my family and I are moving into our new home this weekend. After almost eight months of being without our own home, we are finally moving to a new place. God has been so gracious and has always met our needs. My parents have allowed us to live with them for the last five months and they have been so generous and hospitable. I can only praise the Lord Jesus Christ and thank Him every moment of the day. He truly does rescue, restore, reconcile, and rebuild. He has taught Kristi and I so much and He is still not through teaching us. As a matter of fact, He is not through with any of us. He is always scanning the horizon to find people who want something more than they are experiencing in this world. He is looking for people who will bring glory to His Name. It is a precious Name, the Name that is above every Name, JESUS.

God bless. Todd

Friday, January 20, 2006

I believe Vine Middle School is going to be the perfect place for Mosaic Church to worship our Lord. This past Sunday was our first Sunday at Vine and it was very comfortable for us. It was a clean building and it had heat. That may not sound like a big deal but we have gone without heat a couple of Sundays. Vine will allow us to grow and expand our Sunday morning ministries. Thank you Lord.

Donald led our worship and he shared a tremendous burden that he was carrying on his heart. His mother's cancer has returned and she is once again receving chemotherapy. His heart was aching but it added to his authenticity as he led worship from his heart. Please pray for his mother. We had two families express an interest in joining Mosaic. We rejoice for their eagerness to be a part of God's family.

Now that we are somewhat stable in our Sunday morning worship, we are ready to launch our new church. SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5th @ 10:30am we will officially begin Mosaic Community Church with what is called in the church planting world, a launch service. On Super Bowl Sunday we will begin what we believe is a supernatural work of God. A multi-ethnic, multi-cultural church that exists to rescue, restore, reconcile, and rebuild people and communities by the transforming life of Jesus Christ. Built on relationships and an outward community focus, we hope the name of Jesus Christ will be honored and glorified and His power will be practically evident by all who experience His touch.

We are also in the beginning stages of instituting our elder leadership. We hope to have an elder commissioning service at the end of February or early March. We are also at the beginning stages of developing home groups to build relationships and continue our journey as we grow and mature into passionate followers of Christ.

Many excited things in the days ahead. Praise the name of Jesus Christ who is our Great Redeemer. He alone is worthy to be praised. Everyone is invited to our launch service on February 5th and we hope you will bring someone with you. God bless you.

Todd

Thursday, January 12, 2006

We have experienced what many new church starts experience, a multitude of different buildings to worship in. It is a wonderful reminder that the building is not the church. Our church, the Mosaic congregation, has worshipped in at least seven different buildings. I am excited to announe that our eighth should be where we are going to land for awhile. The Knox Co School system has granted us approval to meet at Vine Middle School beginning this Sunday, January 15th. Our worship will begin at 10:30am

We will meet in the auditorium that comfortably seats 500 in nice theatre style chairs. The school is a performing arts school so the stage is equipped with the necessary equipment and outlets for all of our multi-media needs.

The consistency of having a permanent location will allow us to effectively plan our launch Sunday. We are looking to launch on February 5th, Super Bowl Sunday. I will write more about that later.

Vine Middle School is located on Martin Luther King Jr. Ave, between two public housing projects, Walter P. Taylor and Austin Homes. The location allows us to remain in the community we feel led by God to display His love, grace and mercy. I can only say thank you Almighty Father for allowing us and trusting us to serve your children with compassion and love. We are grateful and very humbled to be used in this capacity.

We would like to invite you to come and worship with us. Everyone is welcome.

Todd

Monday, January 09, 2006

On the road again. That has been the theme of our weekly worship services. Sunday we met at Angelic Ministries on Central Ave. It was a wonderful time of worship and celebrating God's faithfulness. The worship team did a fantastic job ushering us into the presence of the Father. We had at least six first time guests and over thirty people were in attendance.

We believe God is finally bringing us to the place where we will worship, at least for a little while. Vine Middle School has opened up there auditorium to us and we are very grateful. We hope the paper work that needs to be completed by the Knox Co school board will be completed this week, and we will have good news in the next day or two. Vine Middle is in a great location on Martin Luther King and places us between two public housing projects, Walter P. Taylor and Austin Homes. It also keeps us around the Five Points Community where we feel led to minister.

Once we meet and work out the bugs in the auditorium, and get our routine down, we will announce our launch date. It will be the culmination of seven months of prayer, planning and much sacrifice. Our small, but growing congregation is very excited about the days ahead. We believe God is doing something extraordinary and bringing many pieces of a puzzle together. I believe, in the next couple of years, we are going to see a visitation by God on the inner city of Knoxville, that will be undeniably God.

In my sermon yesterday I talked about the few references in the Bible that called certain men "friends of God." It was said of Moses in Exodus 33:11. It was said of Abraham in James 2:23 and Isaiah 41:8. It was said by Jesus when he called his disciples friends in John 15:15. I believe it could also be said of the Apostle Paul who said he would much rather leave this earth so he could be with Jesus.

I believe being a friend of God is a deep level of spiritual intimacy with God. It goes beyond being a child of God or a servant of God. It seems to go to a deeper place of relationship than most believers want to go. How we get there goes beyond simply laying out formulaic principles that has the potential to kick us into some kind of performance trap. I looked at some characteristics that were common to each man to see if we can understand something of what it means to be a friend of God.

I know there are probably many similarities between these men who were called God's friends, but I want to focus on three and specifically one. First, they all had a passion and desire to know God. It is obvious we must be a God chaser if we are going to know God deeply and intimately. Second, they all had traumatic, dramatic experiences in their lives. Most of those experiences involved suffering and plenty of it.

The last similarity I noticed was each one experienced a change of location. Moses was born a Hebrew, lived in Pharoah's palace, killed an Egyptian, lived in the desert, then back to Egypt, but this time as a Hebrew. Abraham moved from Ur to Canaan. The disciples left everything they had to follow Jesus and Paul left the intellectual life of a Jewish Pharisee to minister to the Gentiles. I believe there is something significant about a change of location and a change of culture. Paul said, "I have become all things to all men so that I might wen some..."

Paul notes the primary responsibility for change lies in the one moving into the new culture. He did not try to change their culture, he changed so that he could gain credibility so they might listen to the message of Jesus Christ. He certainly did not engage or condone sinful or inappropriate behavior to be like them. But he did focus on adapting, or changing to the culture he was in at the time.

I believe it is something very God-like to leave your comfortable culture and go to a new culture, a new place. It expands our view and perspective of life. It widens our narrow scope of what we experience as our reality. And we begin to care and become friends with people who can give us a more complete picture and understanding of who God is. Something is missing when we hang out only in our Ur. Beth Moore says UR stands for Usual Routine. As a matter of fact leaving one culture for another is what God did when He left His divine culture to come slumming with the human culture. Perhaps that is why people are so touched and changed when they go on short term mission trips. The problem is we get back home and settle back into our UR, usual routine, and slowly drift away from something that is transforming.

I hope and pray that many Christians will begin to be challenged by getting outside their comfort zone and leaving their UR. It is difficult, challenging, filled with potential misunderstanding, painful, and sometimes lonely. That is what makes it so real and transforming. It provides us the greatest opportunity to truly and practically be like Jesus. Awesome!

I pray that God will continue to lead us into new places that will stretch us beyond our own personal comfort and will take us out of our UR.

God bless you. Todd

Thursday, January 05, 2006

School is back in session and people are getting back in their usual routines. We are no longer meeting in the old church building. The owner says she wants to make some improvements to the building and feels it is best that no one meets in it right now. I suspect she is trying to use this time to get us to increase our offer on the price of the building. We do not feel led at this time to do that but I still believe that church is a potential part of our future.

I am meeting with public school officials today to secure the use of a middle school in the Five Points area of downtown Knoxville. It will allow us to remain in the location we feel called to and give us some stability on a weekly basis. Once we secure a place to worship, we will schedule our official launch date.

We have been given a tremendous responsibility by God to care for people who are marginalized and isolated. Issues of trust and fear are common walls we bump into often. We have broken through, at least on some small scale, with one particular man. One of our homeless friends is an incredibly talented and gifted musician. Someone heard him play and invited him to Nashville to play and sing on two radio stations. I will be traveling with him this Sunday to Nashville, and on Monday he will perform on the radio. Please pray for God's fullness to be accomplished.

God bless and Happy New Year. Todd