These meals are potluck style, so start thinking now about what goodies you plan on bringing.  The early church began the practice of Agape Meals, where they’d get together to eat, pray, fellowship, sing and partake in the Eucharist. So on May 13th, that’s what our liturgy will look like. The majority of our night will be spent eating together and talking. Then Richard will lead us in music, and Sam into communion.

These are always meaningful times for our community. And we couldn’t be more excited about making them an even bigger priority moving forward. We hope you’ll bring a dish to share, and a thankful celebratory spirit, as we observe this feast together.

[We know this is Mother’s Day. But it’s also our last chance to dine & commune together before our students start Summer break & many of us start Summer vacations/traveling. So if you’re a Mom – tell Dad to whip something up for this. And everyone else bring something to share for what is always a special night in our community.]

There will be 3 different types of groups for people to participate in. We will continue to make available semester long groups that are focused on a specific subject or book. These groups will continue to offer participants and leaders a group with less structure and a shorter time commitment (8-12 weeks). From now on, we’ll be calling these “Journey Groups.”

But we’ve added the option for new groups or existing Journey Groups to decide to be considered a “Family Group.” These types of groups will be closed off at certain number, and will be encouraged to meet regularly for at least a year. They would hopefully be able to focus on multiple themes in a year. And it’s in these groups where we think things like deep spiritual growth and a fuller sense of community will be easier to experience.

Finally, we have the relatively new concept for us of Meetups. Meetups are ongoing groups that are the least structured and require the least amount of commitment. But they will be focused around interest or affinities – like a film discussion group, or gardening group.

As more and more options become available for this Summer, you can visit the Community page for info on the groups. They will begin sometime early in June.

And that’s why we’re thrilled to announce a brand new ministry team at Mosaic – the Care Team. For some time we’ve been developing and training this small team to begin to care for Mosaicians in a new way, and to model this type of care so that the whole community becomes a more loving and compassionate people. We hope to do this in two main ways; providing care for individuals, and facilitating group sessions on particular topics.

The members of this team have been trained by licensed counselors and social workers at Mosaic, as well as by our friends at The Center for Relational Care, to provide emotional and relational care to Mosaicians struggling with issues like:

• Stress
• Relationship changes
• Grief or loss
• Family issues
• Loneliness
• Fear
• Worry
• Shame
• Forgiveness
• Painful religious experiences

The list could go on and on, but this should give you a general idea of the types of things we hope to be able to walk with people through. These relationships would be free and confidential, and is a form of “lay counseling.” Some of our team are licensed professionals, but others are not. We want to be clear in saying that this is not professional counseling but is “lay counseling.” And it’s also not to be confused with discipleship or mentoring. Those opportunities are present at Mosaic too. But this team exists to provide short term supportive relationships that are developed for people going through a rough patch or who need someone to process with.

We will have no problem at all with referring people to counselors or groups in town if we feel like things are getting over our heads or training level. But we know this accessible and easy option could reach some people who might feel more comfortable starting in the church than picking a counselor or looking for help on their own. So if you think you’d be interested in beginning to meet with 1 or 2 of our Care Team members, please begin the process by emailing Sam.

The Care Team will also begin facilitating quarterly group nights with Sam Myrick and Sarah Bingaman, one of the Mosaic counselors who heads up this team. These sessions will be focused on specific topics, and will give people struggling with a certain issue a safe place to share their struggles and hear about others’ struggles. On these nights, the entire Care Team will be working to provide and model care for those present. And if need be, the individual partnerships mentioned above could start after one of these free and easily accessible nights.

Our first session will be on “Recovering from Hurt.” It will be on Thursday night, May 10^th, from 6:30-8:00 pm at Sarah’s office in South Austin. It will be free, and anyone’s invited to attend. But we will have limited space, so if you’d like to attend, please email Sam.

We couldn’t be more excited about presenting these new opportunities for healing and growth to the community. And we’re eager to talk about it all and build toward more and more people doing this type of work with us. So if you’re interested in finding out more or in being a part of this ministry in the future, please email Sam for that too.

Any women are invited to show up, get to know each other better and have some fun. Jaime Graves is the point person for this meetup. So check with her for details on this month’s gathering.

—–

The Dark Cloud, the pacifistic militant instrumental arm of the Mosaic Band and abroad, will be playing some quiet, loud, beautiful, and thunderous music. The Dark Cloud is an improvisational collective of members from bands such as Markov, the Creationists, Picardy III, Zookeeper, Belaire, Books Died On, The Whiskey Priest, Zlam Dunk, Tactics, The B Sterling Band, and many many more.

The show is free, good friends Tactics, and Jana Horn will open the night.

8:30 Jana Horn
9:30 Tactics
10:30 The Dark Cloud

1. people who are older or further along some of the roads of life than you

2. teenagers and/or college students

So we want you to know about a great new opportunity we’re starting up. On Saturday, April 28th from 10:30am-12pm, Mosaic will host a Meetup brunch at East Village Cafe that connects people interested in being mentored/discipled from Mosaic with friends of ours from First Baptist Church of Austin and from Journey. We’re hoping to form partnerships with these 2 churches that will allow some of us to meet with their older or more mature members, but that will also eventually allow some of us to pour into the lives of their teenagers and students.

Please RSVP to the meetup on our Facebook event page, and let Kate Blackshear know if you have any questions.

Acts of Sharing is a local organization that provides an easy way for friends or communities to share their stuff with each other. This has always been something we’ve tried to do around Mosaic, even creating our own Craigslist-like portal a few years ago. We believe living simply and being generous with our stuff is wrapped up in the Gospel. But we’ve never been aware before of any tool that makes it as easy for people to do that as AOS does. Besides their easy to use webapp, they even have iOS and Android apps that allow you to add or request items on the go.

So we have started a Mosaic Community on AOS (password is “achurchinaustin”) and we’re hoping everyone who calls Mosaic home will create an account and begin to take advantage of this easy way to share. You can share with anyone in the AOS sphere, but we know some of us will be more comfortable starting out in our community. And we hope to soon be linked up with our friends at Vox Veniae & Servant Church who are getting involved with AOS as well.

One thing AOS has noticed before (and we’ve had some experience with too) is that people might think this is cool and be excited at first. So they create an account, put up 1 or 2 things, then excitement fizzles out as time passes and nothing else really happens. So since their name & ethos comes from Acts 4:32, they are challenging new participants to commit to putting up at least 32 items on their profile. It can be anything – books, movies, lawn mowers, cars, tools, figurines made from paper clips. The 32 items aren’t mandatory to join, but it’s a good way to start strong by posting items that have been important or helpful to you. And 32 isn’t that much if you start throwing in things like books, cds or movies. Sam put up 37 books just with what he had at home. Can you imagine what it will be like once he’s able to get to his stuff that’s buried in the POD?

So why don’t we commit to each having 32 items up on our individual pages by Easter? And let’s start seeing some things we own (but don’t always need to have around us) change hands around here.

Here you’ll learn about soil, seeds, and all kinds of other gardening basics. Everyone’s invited, whether you’re just thinking about starting to garden all the way to you seasoned pros.

Coffee, lemonade and snacks will be provided too – so it would be great to have an idea of who is going to make it out. To sign up and get directions, please email our workshops coordinator, Jaime Graves.

• setting up the welcome table
• setting up the communion table
• getting chairs & tables in their places
• setting up the kids room
• turning on the screens
• communion table clean up
• furniture back to normal
• taking down the welcome table

There’s a lot more to these lists, but you get the idea. It is important work, and it’s not that hard to do when you are a part of a team. Heck, it could even be fun and help you get to know new people. With the staff a little smaller now, this help is more needed than ever. So if you’d be up for taking a shift once a month or so on the Setup Team, email Sam and let him know.

And so we practice a congregational style of leadership and decision making.  This means that it’s not just the pastor or the staff making decisions for the church.  But we’re also not based on majority rule, where 51% wins the day.  We’re a family on a journey together – and in big decisions we face we seek consensus through the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

But because there are so many of us, and because there are lots of different voices or opinions that could come up – for most of Mosaic’s history we’ve had a Leadership Team.

Soon we’ll be putting on our website a document months in the making, a Leadership Team overview. This overview will explain in depth what Leadership does, and how it does it. And the very first section states:

The Leadership Team of Mosaic exists to shepherd the community and to help navigate its journey through

• reflecting upon the big picture
• encouraging the congregation to live out of its ethos
• working through theological issues as they pertain to the church
• advocating for the pastoral staff and their work
• taking the lead in major community decisions

so that the church is growing towards a faithful embodiment of the gospel.

Another section explains our rotation structure, which is the first rotation plan we’ve ever had for this team. From now on, new members will commit to 2 years on the team. Then at the end of their first term, they can choose to do another 2 year term or to rotate off. No one will serve more than 2 terms (or 4 years) moving forward. So every 2 years, there will be new members brought onto the team.  As you might know, this year is a rotation year.

So, believing that the selection of the Leadership Team should be a process that is soaked in prayer, last month we invited Mosaicians to nominate people after praying at a day-long silent retreat, a night of prayer and music, or on their own at home.

The Leadership Team then took the nominee list and worked through it prayerfully, thinking about where we were as a church and who we perceived we needed to help us navigate this journey. After several discussions, and after having our list of candidates also approved by the Personnel Team chairman, we would like to bring the following Mosaicians onto the team this Spring:

• Kate Blackshear
• Jenna Creech
• Amber Hunter
• Chase Roden

And now, we are opening up the process to you all. For the next two weeks, we ask you to pray for the team and for these 4 people. And if anyone in the community has any issue with a nominee, we ‘d like to hear about it -so please email Sam with any comments, concerns or questions.

But if there are no issues, and the candidates are accepted by the community – we will affirm them as part of our liturgy on April 15th. Then the new members would join the team for our first meeting in May.

I couldn’t be more excited about these 4 people. There were tons of great nominees, and so many people at Mosaic who could help with this important work. But we feel this cross section is a strong one, and look forward not only to how Leadership Team is shaping up, but also to all that’s before us as a church in the coming months and years.

May we journey well together through this Holy Week, and may God’s deep love for us be evident in profound new ways.

Sam

The schedule for all Holy Week liturgies is below, and each liturgy will be at Space12. We’ll again be joining with our friends from Vox Veniae for the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night services. And we hope to see you this Sunday as we begin this important and sacred week together.

Palm Sunday – 5pm (with Family Meeting immediately afterward)

Maundy Thursday – 7pm (a snack dinner will be available starting at 6:45)

Good Friday – 7pm

Holy Saturday – 7pm

Easter Sunday – 5pm (with a potluck dessert party to follow)

Baptism is the powerful proclamation that Jesus is Lord – a picture of the old being buried and new life being birthed. It announces to the church and the world that anyone who is in Christ is indeed a new creation.  So important is this act that the early church could not conceive of a person following Christ without first following him into the waters of baptism.

Lent was originally set aside as a time of preparation for new converts, readying them for their Easter baptism. And because we’re a baptistic community that tries to take our roots seriously – we too have always baptized those who wish to take this step on Easter Sunday.

And our children’s dedication time is a special time we set aside to introduce kids to the community, pray for them, and let their families know we are here to support and encourage them as they strive to raise their children well and in our shared faith.

If you are interested in knowing more about baptism or having your child dedicated – or you have questions about either practice -please contact Sam.

Each quarter, anyone who calls Mosaic “home” is invited to stick around after liturgy for the Family Meeting. The staff and the Leadership Team share updates on what’s been going on since we last met, and what’s coming up on the horizon. Besides spending time together in prayer, things like our finances, new ministries, and questions about direction are all addressed.

Our next Family Meeting will be on Sunday, April 1st right after liturgy. We’ll be ordering pizza. So if you can throw in a few bucks to help cover costs, that’d be great. We hope to see you there!

February 22nd will be Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Lent is the season of preparation before the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter. During Lent, we follow Jesus into his suffering. Lent is a time for stripping down to essentials, as Israel and Jesus did in the desert, so that we can then walk more fully in the newness of life experienced in the Resurrection. So we encourage you to think about giving something up for Lent, or to take up some new and good activity during the season – so that we all might together be shaped more into the image of Christ.

Once again, we are participating in a joint Ash Wednesday liturgy with our friends from Vox Veniae on February 22nd at 7:00 pm, at Space12.  We’ll mainly follow the Ash Wednesday liturgy found in the Book of Common Prayer, but we’ll also sing together, and spend times in silence.  The liturgy should last about 45 minutes.  As always, children are welcome to this special time together, but childcare will not be provided. If you’d like to RSVP, check out the Facebook event page.

We invite everyone in the Mosaic community to read through Mark’s gospel over the season of Lent.  We found this reading plan online to structure our reading around. Along with reading through Mark’s gospel together, most of the liturgies and sermons during Lent will be centered in texts from Mark.

Traditionally the Sundays of Lent are “Feast Days”, in which the church is invited into rest, worship, and, if wanted, dropping the Lenten fast for the day.  So on Sundays you might want to re-read a text from the week, catch-up if you’ve fallen behind, or read the lectionary texts for that day.

So we hope you join us on Ash Wednesday – the day that we begin our journey towards the cross and resurrection, a path that slowly and intentionally leads us through the desert of reflection, confession, and repentance.  God’s grace and peace upon you, upon our community, and upon the church worldwide as we enter into this sacred season.

We feel strongly that nominations should only be made after prayer and a lot of thought. So in the past, we’ve required people who wanted to make nominations to go on our Spring Silent Retreat. But we know that it’s not possible for everyone to give an entire Saturday. So for the first time, we’ll have multiple opportunities for you to nominate new members.

Besides the Silent Retreat on March 3rd, we’ll also have a night of prayer and music on Wednesday, March 7th. We’ll meet from 7:00-8:00 at Asbury UMC to pray, listen to ambient awesomeness from our band, sit in silence, and make nominations for the new team.

We really hope that everyone who is interested in nomination someone makes one or both of these events a priority. But if you just can’t make either time, we will also accept nominations in a box on the welcome table at liturgy. If you want to nominate someone this way, we want you to first commit to spending time like everyone else in prayer and reflection. The deadline for nominations will be Sunday, March 11th.

Regardless of how you nominate, everyone will use the same sheets. We’ll ask for your name, the name(s) of people you’re nominating, and a sentence or two explaining why you think they should be considered.

We hope to have the new team selected by late April. 4 Leadership Team members have recently rotated off. So we will be bringing on either 3 or 4 new members to take their spots.

Finally, as you’re beginning to think and pray about who you’d like to nominate, we’d like to remind you of the qualifications of Leadership Team members:

• Frequent in presence,
• Faithful in giving,
• Responsible in relationships,
• Enthusiastic about inviting & including others,
• Disciplined in prayer, Bible study, fasting, meditation, and silence,
• Missionally engaged in community & culture,
• An active participant in Mosaic before September 1, 2011,
• As a participant in Mosaic, a servant,
• As a counselor to others, wise,
• Imperfect in all areas but accepting the challenge to grow where she or he is weak. We agree to set the standard high because we will not be a mediocre sacrifice and will not offer to God that which costs us nothing.

We will begin our day together with prayer by the labyrinth in the park. It’s just off of Barton Springs between the Palmer Events Center and the Dougherty Arts Center. Parking is available off of Barton Springs on Dawson Rd. This map might help you make sense of it, and if you have any problems finding us you can call 512.751.2360.

We’ll have times of prayer together, time to eat lunch together, and we’ll finish the day by taking the Eucharist. But most of the day, people will spend time alone walking around the lake, sitting in the sun, walking the nearby prayer labyrinth, etc…

The retreat is free, all you need to bring is a bag lunch and your bible/journal/books you might want.

This year also happens to be a Leadership Team rotation year. So part of the day will be focused on praying about that team and making nominations for it. But participating in the nomination process  isn’t a requirement for going on the retreat. So anyone’s invited to come out with us on the 3rd for what we hope is a beautiful & prayerful day at the park.

Email Sam for any other info or with questions.

This list will be sent quarterly financial updates no matter what state Mosaic’s finances are in. But there will also be a few triggers set in place that will cause an email to be sent. These triggers are:

1. if our account balance at the end of a month is $2000+ less than the balance at the end of the previous month
2. if we have spent $2000 or more than what we’ve taken in for that month
3. any time that we have to pull from our savings account or emergency fund
4. any time that the staff is late being paid

The list will automatically include anyone who is:

1. on a team at Mosaic
2. in a Journey or Family Group at Mosaic (but not Meetups)

But if you don’t fit those criteria and/or you would like to make sure you are on the list, you can email us and we’ll add you. Then, you hopefully wouldn’t hear from us until the normal finance update at the end of the quarter!

And, of course, just as with the Weekly Email list many of you are already on, you could unsubscribe at any time for any reason using the option at the bottom of each email.

Hello, Richard here.

I am not the kind of guy to say “God did this” or “God told me to do that” or “God found me the best parking spot at the grocery store.”  I can, however, see that God has brought me on a specific journey over the last 3+ years.  I went from never wanting to work at a church again, to being a full time music pastor between Servant Church and Mosaic.  I’m not exactly sure what a “calling” is, even though I took an entire class on it at Fuller, but I can say confidently that I feel called to be serving at these two communities.

I look forward to what is in store for Mosaic, and I look forward to making more music with the Mosaic Band.  There are going to be some changes in the way that the band works.  For the most part, it has been the same six or seven people onstage most Sundays over the past couple of years.  I want to change that, no… WE want to change that.

Mosaic is blessed with lots of gifted artists and musicians and we want to start incorporating more of them into liturgies on Sundays.  If you are a musician and would like to play every once and a while please shoot me an email so we can get to know each other and see what it would take to get you more involved.

I’d also love to hear from you if you have experience running sound, or would be open to learning.

I, your pastor of Noise and Sounds, am going to start a monthly blog series in 2012.  I’m going to exercise my ‘Music Pastor’ muscles and talk about music, theology, and whatever.  What I’m not going to do is post about Christian bands making ‘Christian Music’ because if that’s the way they approach it it’s probably going to suck.  I also won’t be posting cool music trying to show that I am cool and I’m a Christian and Christians are cool and they’re relevant and you-should-be-one-too.

Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to talk about whatever the hell I want and it might have to do with music, theology, Mosaic, or not.  I’ll try not to say stupid stuff all the time.

For today what I’ll do is talk about one of my favorite records of the last few months: Portamento by The Drums. Their last album was one of my favorite indie-pop albums, like, ever.  This one is ever indie-poppier.  What caught my interest the most, however, was the opening track, The Book of Revelation.

As some of you know, I spent much of my time in Seminary studying apocalyptic literature, theological anthropology, and the Book of Revelation. Chase Roden and I taught a Revelation class a couple of years ago, and I think it is absolutely my favorite text ever written.  It is not, as many seem to think, a timeline telling us what the end of the world will be like.  It is so much more beautiful than that, and so much more powerful.  It is an epic letter of encouragement to some desperate people who were being killed because of their faith in Christ.

Back to music; I remember back in high school when The Smashing Pumpkins’ classic Melloncollie and the Infinite Sadness was released. They played the song Zero a lot on the alternative stations.  During the breakdown there’s a line where Corgan whines ‘God is empty, just like MEEEEEEE’. I love singing along to my favorite songs, but was always quiet during that line. It was so hard for me to say those words.

Well, The Book of Revelation chorus so catchily says ‘Well I’ve seen the world and there’s no heaven and there’s no hell/And I believe that when we die we die/So let me love you tonight.’  At first I thought the same thing, I can’t sing this!  Then, after some calculated thought I decided that maybe I could.

I do allow for a Christian faith which states that heaven is not necessarily a place we get to go when we die. Instead, the hope of the New Testament Christian is physical resurrection in the new heaven and new earth (see Book of Revelation 21). Heaven is, instead, the place where God lives. Also, it has been clear for millennia that some Christians do not believe in a ‘hell’ with fire and brimstone and eternal damnation and all that business. Some believe that all will ultimately be ‘saved’ (whatever that means), and many believe that when you die you die, unless you are granted ‘eternal life’ at the resurrection.

I would probably fall into the latter camp, at least from a Biblical perspective. Here’s a paper I wrote in Seminary that shows you what I thought about the subject several years ago, someone please read it and remind me what I think about that.

After thinking about all of this, I don’t have a problem singing along to the Drums sometimes now. I have a feeling that we are singing these lyrics for different reasons though, as the singer is using the lack of an afterlife as an excuse for copulation. I can only agree, however, with lots of theological gymnastics and caveats.  Either way, listen to Portamento and listen loud, sing along if you like.

Elizabeth and Dave took time to interview each LT/staff person involved and then developed these stories with hopes it would be helpful in providing a glimpse of who we are as a community. They will soon be looking for new ways to tell stories about who we are through the lens of various Mosaicians.

On Saturday, December 24th at 6:30 pm we’ll have a Christmas Eve liturgy at Space12. This will be a shorter, simpler liturgy composed of music, readings, and candle lighting. If you are familiar with a Lessons & Carols service, it will look a lot like one of those. There won’t be any childcare. But kids are totally welcome. You can even bring them in their pajamas if you’d like so they can get right to bed when we are done around 7:15.

Then on Sunday, December 25th – Christmas Day – we will have our regularly scheduled liturgy at 5:00 pm at Space12. Come as we celebrate together the arrival of God’s gift to the world that is Jesus. It’s alright with us for you to wear pajamas on that night as well. Although we really shouldn’t make a habit of that type of thing.

*There’s really only about a 5% chance this will happen. But you should come anyway.

Along with her art, there will also be available a brand new coffee blend in her honor – “The Lodowski Blend.” And all of Elizabeth’s art sales along with the sales of “The Lodowski Blend” will go directly toward her living and medical expenses.

For more info on the event, check out the Facebook page. 

This Sunday, November 27th, we move into the new year of the church calendar as we enter into the season of Advent. Advent is a time of waiting and preparation as the church readies itself for the celebration of the incarnation. In the midst of the rush towards Christmas, our culture consumes more - more hurry, more buying, more stuff. But the church is invited instead to stop, breathe, and receive the gift of waiting. So our four liturgies leading up to Christmas will reflect this movement of the church, as we gather to wait, hope, and journey together.

It’s always a meaningful time for us. And if you’ve not had the chance before to experience the Advent journey with a community, we think Christmas and the gift it represents will mean all the more if you come along with us.

It will be held on Thursday, December 1st at St. David’s Episcopal Church, 301 E. 8th St, beginning at 7:00 pm.

All are invited to gather for this annual World AIDS Day service of remembrance, which marks one of many World AIDS observances for 2011. This service consists of reflection, music, drama, poetry, prayer and the annual AIDS Bell banner. The Care Communities sponsors this along with other HIV/AIDS organizations and the St. David’s community. If you know someone who is living with HIV/AIDS or has died from complications,  please join in this annual Service.

If you want details about the Service, please contact Roger Temme, Outreach Director for The Care Communities, at 512.459.5883 or e-mail at roger@thecarecommunities.org

Sad Accordions will be playing The Mohawk this Saturday night as part of ((sounder))’s record release show. Doors open at 9, and the show starts at 10. $6/$8 minors.

Then on Tuesday night, The Whiskey Priest will be headlining a show at The Carousel Lounge, along with our own Picardy the Third & B.Sterling. That show starts at 8.

Come join us for what will surely be two great nights of music, fun, and Seth Wood’s beard tugging!

From Sept 11-Oct 23, our community will take part in a season called Growing Young. We will together explore a new aspect of what it means for our church family to grow young together. You don’t want to miss this time! In the very least, you can expect some worshipful liturgies, a workshop (and more!) that would not put you -or the kid in you- to sleep.

We are super-excited about this season and hope you will participate in our Sunday liturgies or our Growing Young Workshop on October 15th.

A team of highly qualified therapists from The Center for Relational Care have agreed to guide us Mosaicians through a workshop on how to understand one another’s emotional needs, the needs of our church family’s kiddos, and how to help kiddos respond to their peers’ needs at their own level. This is a workshop intended to pertain to our ENTIRE church family; it is not only for parents or kids’ volunteers by any stretch.

We are happy to say Servant Church is partnering with us at this event as well!

Mark your calendars: Sat, Oct 15, 9am-3:30pm at Servant Church on Cherrywood and 38 1/2 Street.

*Childcare provided for the portions of the workshop where they are not included.