In 2011, we celebrated our first Orphan Sunday, and have made it a part of our annual rhythm as a church ever since. As result, more and more people in our church started getting involved in adoption, foster care, safe families and Global Orphan Care. On any given Sunday, we have more than 100 children in our Children’s Ministry that have been adopted or are being fostered.
Adoption and Foster Care are a big part of our story at Mosaic. Here is a video we created for our Get Loud initiative to demonstrate the kinds of stories we love to step into! Maybe you can get some ideas from it for your church.
When you think about a Missional Community, I find that it is helpful to think about a team of missionaries in a foreign context. What characteristics would you expect to find in a healthy team of missionaries in another country? We expect certain things of missionaries who go serve in another country. Why would we not expect the same things of team of missionaries serving locally in our context? As I think about the expectations of teams of missionaries and apply those to a Missional Community, here is the list that I discover.
A Missional Community is a group of people who orient their lives around being on mission together to make the Gospel known among a target group of people (a shared network of relationships, neighborhood, or need in their city). A Missional Community is a team of Missionaries working together for the glory of God in their local context. There are three reasons why I believe Missional Communities are the best way for a local church to live out the gospel in community on mission.
We all know that our churches need to serve our communities, but let’s be honest, that can often degenerate into offering things at your buildings, and hoping that people will show up and “be served”. A few years ago, we took this to a whole new level with Mission Serve:Local. It has grown each year and last Saturday, over 600 people who call Mosaic Church home fanned out into the community to serve in over 50 projects, then returned for lunch together. Here is a full post about it. Having promoted this event for several weeks, we wanted to celebrate it right away, the very next day at all of our services with a video. That meant having one of our video people do a super fast turnaround on a video by editing all of the content in just a few hours. It also meant sending our story team around to multiple projects to capture video and pictures. I think it turned out well. Check it out.
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Phil Taylor
My name is Phil. I am the Executive Pastor of Leadership and Development at Mosaic Church in west Orlando, FL where I live with my wife and three kids. I'm into running and kayaking.
Antone Goyak
My name is Antone. I serve as the Executive Pastor at Redemption Hill, a gospel-centered church in Kingsford, MI. I am happily married and have three kids and grandson. I love to mountain bike and backpack.
Gabriel Forsyth
My name is Gabriel. I am the Pastor of Discipleship and Mission at Mosaic, a muliti-site church in West Orlando, FL. My wife and and I are passionate about serving our city and changing our world.