Mosaic

Five questions:

If you had one book to read for the rest of your life (other than the Bible), what would it be?

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

Favorite local joint in Austin?

Franklin Barbecue – I kind of want to be Aaron Franklin’s apprentice.

Three items on a desert island?

I would hate being on a desert island, so: 1. fully charged satellite phone to call for rescue 2. copy of East of Eden for while I wait 3. Franklin Barbecue brisket to eat while I wait (with espresso sauce, of course).

How do you spend your free Saturdays?

Our Saturdays are like a lot of other “grown ups” — a lot of house or yard work. But we try to get out for storytime with the kids, a movie or a meal whenever we can.

Favorite music?

My favorite genres are indie rock & hip-hop/rap. But I can listen to anything except modern country and Glee songs.

Sam’s story

Benton, Louisiana is a small town just outside of Shreveport, tucked into the pine woods. That’s where Sam Myrick grew up, and where he began his faith journey. He was 12 when he went to a youth rally at a Southern Baptist church in a nearby city and was frightened into following Christ.

Sam remembers the youth evangelist asking them, “What if your church bus crashed tonight? Where would you go?”

Sam didn’t know. “It scared me, I didn’t want to go to hell,” he said. Looking back, it wasn’t the way he wished he’d began his journey — but it was authentic, and it stuck.

Sam and his family began going to church regularly around the same time, and Sam quickly became active in choir, drama, mission trips and summer camps. For years, he only listened to Christian music and went to Christian events. When he felt himself becoming tempted by rock radio stations as a teen, he took the antenna off his 1984 Plymouth Turismo so he could only listen to Christian CDs.

But by his senior year of high school, Sam’s eyes were being opened. He’d made friends with non-believers and people from other Christian traditions and started questioning his own beliefs. He began feeling uncomfortable with the pervasive racism that was accepted throughout a lot of the Deep South. He screwed the antenna back on his car and started listening to rock, hip-hop and rap.

His next stop was Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas, where he began studying for the ministry. But during his senior year, he stopped going to church, feeling that he couldn’t be a part of what he saw as hypocrisy in the Baptist churches he’d worked and worshipped in. He switched his studies, aiming to become a religion professor instead of a minister. He thought he could fix the problems he saw in churches by helping to train future pastors.

He then attended seminary in Denver – where he met his future wife, Kim — and where he discovered a vibrant Evangelical Presbyterian Church. One Sunday the pastor shared how his family had been hurt by the church when he was growing up. And he then told about years later when he felt Jesus was saying to him, “You don’t love my church, you hate my church.”

The words brought tears to Sam’s eyes – it’s like they were meant for him. Sam felt God was telling him to release his anger, his hate and fear – to be with people and love them instead of trying to “fix” them.

And that’s when Sam rediscovered his desire to minister instead of teach, and switched his studies back to pastoral ministry. Due to several events, Sam left seminary during the last year of his M.Div. studies to marry Kim and move to her hometown of Austin. As they searched for a new church home, they began attending Mosaic, and after several months Don Vanderslice and the Leadership Team approached Sam about joining the staff.

Sam came on staff in late 2005, as the Pastor of Community & Contemplation. Since then, Sam says Mosaic has continued to change him. He’s learned more about being a minister, watched his theology and spiritual practices evolve, become less of a detail-oriented perfectionist and more focused on the bigger picture – and the importance of just being with people.

In November of 2011, after Don Vanderslice’s transition out of Mosaic, Sam was named the Interim Lead Pastor by the Transition Team. And in January of 2012, he was affirmed as Mosaic’s Lead Pastor.

Sam and Kim welcomed their daughter Ada into the world in August of 2007, and their son David in November of 2010.