Marking Our 4th Anniversary as Mosaic

by Stephen Kriss

This Pentecost marked our 4th anniversary of becoming Mosaic Mennonite Conference. We took our name during the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic, during a weekend of protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd. Pentecost 2020 was for many of us, during a tough time, a bright spot to celebrate a coming together. (If you need a reminder of our unveiling, here’s the video, which was filmed at Zion [Souderton, PA] and Centro de Albanza [South Philadelphia] while trying to social distance, at a time when many of us couldn’t get haircuts). 

This year we marked Pentecost by encouraging #MosaicTogether gatherings across our Conference which brought congregations together in a variety of ways. That same weekend, the Mosaic board met at Bethany Birches Camp in Vermont for equipping on discernment and decision making and affirmed the anchor/foundational statements of our Pathways strategic plan. Our previously scheduled Vermont board meeting had been cancelled during the pandemic time due to Vermont’s rigorous regulations on COVID. In a lot of ways, we are still catching up and adjusting to the newness and challenges of the timing of our beginning together. 

Since our birth in 2020, we have received congregations in Florida that now make up about 15% of our membership. We have had several congregations leave our conference after the special delegate session of Mennonite Church USA 2022 and had several congregations close. In the meantime, we’ve supported numerous new church planting initiatives in the United States, Mexico, England, and Colombia, and have had our first online-based communities emerge. We are in the midst of significant change around us and within us. 

I’ve been thinking about what holds mosaics together. It’s easy to see the brilliant, unique, and bright pieces, but harder to notice the quiet work of holding the pieces together. The work of cement and grouting is not particularly glamorous but essential. The task of our Mosaic Conference structure is to hold and situate each piece. We are a community of communities and ministries, not individuals. It takes work that is both individual and communal to hold us together. 

In becoming Mosaic, we had lofty dreams. We didn’t fully know what we would be living into together. We moved forward with hope, believing that our foundation in Christ, our commitment to community, and our willingness to work at reconciliation would give us plenty to do and the strength to do it. Early on we confessed in our vision statement that we work within a broken and beautiful world. That reality makes a mosaic possible. And difficult. 

Cynicism can come from unmet high expectations. Unfulfilled hope placed only in the human realm, not within the reign of God, can frustrate us. We can find ourselves constructing a tower of Babel rather than participating in the fullness of the Spirit’s Pentecost work. The culture around us needs for us to become fully Mosaic, embodying the reconciling love of Jesus, and will attempt to disassemble it.   

I continue to be aware of both our beauty and our precariousness. I am grateful for the ways that so many of us have invested time, prayer, work, and resources that help situate our Mosaic reality, to hold our beauty and brokenness together. Our faith grounds us. The Spirit gives us hope to live out our vision and mission. And love, both of God and each other, is what will hold our mosaic together through the bonds of peace (c.f. Ephesians 4:3). 

This post is also available in: Español (Spanish) Indonesia (Indonesian)

This post is also available in: Español (Spanish) Indonesia (Indonesian)