This is a bit of an “in house” post for Mosaic Edinburgh. We have been looking at our values and tonight we narrowed it down. Just wanted to thank everyone and I mean everyone for their contribution, to me it was exciting to hear people’s perspective. I kept thinking of that little phrase that crops up in the letters to the 7 Churches in the opening chapter of the book of Revelation, “let him who has an ear listen to what the Spirit says to the church”
Anyway below are the words/concepts that we narrowed it down to tonight. Have a read through them, ponder them, pray about them, ask God to clarify what He wants to be our very essence. Don’t get too caught up in the actual wording, we can work on that, think about the concepts.
What do we really want to be known for?
Given who God has called together in our community, our experiences, character, values and gifts what can we be known for?
What values initially attracted you to Mosaic Edinburgh?
Missional / Incarnational
Authentic Community
Loving
Serving
Reproducing/Multiply
Creative Worship
Biblically Founded
Relational
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Below is the introduction to “Small Ship, Big Sea” Mike Frost’s church in Sydney. Have a read. See anything here that might help us in our discussion about language, about values etc?
At smallboatbigsea we have a reputation for “doing church differently” but that’s not how we see it. In fact, we don’t think we “do church” at all, let alone differently. We are simply a community of Jesus-followers who prefer people to programs, and worship-in-action to worship-in-a-building. We’re a tight knit bunch, deeply committed to working together in God’s mission in Christ to bring peace and hope and love to the world – including our own world in Manly as well as the whole world out there.
They call it being missional, but actually we think it’s being church as it was intended, with less focus on maintaining institutional religion and all our effort on both announcing and demonstrating the universal reign of God in Christ. Sounds grand eh? Well, it works itself out in both big ways (advocating for the poor) and small ways (an act of kindness to the old lady down the street), in spoken ways (helping someone understand Jesus’ message of hope) and unspoken ways (street chaplaincy in the wee small hours).
Being missional together means we exemplify good community by looking after each other and extending care to our local and international neighbours. We devote time together each week to meet over a big meal, to celebrate the goodness of God, to understand the scriptures, and pray together.
Generosity, hospitality, faith, sacrifice, teaching, service, worship, prayer, laughter, justice-seeking, family, love, grace etc. You can’t really do that stuff “differently”. You just have to do it, right?
Come along and join our table. There’s plenty of room in our small boat!
Small Boat Big Sea is a community of people who share a passion for life, creativity and justice. We seek to develop genuine Christian spirituality that connects deeply through place and space, beyond just Sundays. We do, however, meet weekly on Sunday afternoons at the William Street Studios in Manly, and hold a number of other events, gatherings and projects.
Our Mission
COMMUNING WITH GOD to create an expansive Christian spirituality that infuses daily life.
CREATING A COMMUNITY of safety, grace & healing that shares kingdom building adventures in Manly & beyond
COMMISSIONING PEOPLE to create a just, safe & beautiful world for everyone.
CATALYSING A MOVEMENT that provides a relevant & creative Christian spirituality for Australians
Abraham's Footsteps 
Hey everyone just been reflecting on last night and indeed the dream for and development of Mosaic. A couple of things just struck me afresh as being really important to us
COMMUNITY …. I think we all are to an extent fed up with church being primarily an event, we want our experience of church to be expressed in and through authentic community. Christianity is a communal faith and we can’t grow in the Image of God nor be part of God’s Kingdom orientated mission without community being about more than a nodding acquaintance
MISSIONAL …. The danger is that community for community’s sake can become inward looking and self serving. Again I think all of us realise that community is not an end in itself, its part of our commitment to being shaped by our God’s mission. I would place us firmly in the so called “missional movement” which wants church to be shaped by mission not our traditions or structures, we can’t conceive of church which doesn’t have a sense of being sent by God to join him in His mission of transformation. This also means that we see Mon through Sat as important as Sunday morning, we are all called to be missionaries who incarnate the Kingdom Of God where we are. Another outworking of this is that we see “orindary” Christians as being the really important people in the mission and ministry of the church, we are against firm divides between lay/clergy. Those called to work primarily within the church are called to resource and support the mission of the church through God’s people.
LOVE …. If God is love, His style of love, sacrificial, grace filled and transformational should characterise everything we do. If the word “love” doesn’t pop into people’s heads after prolonged contact with us according to Jesus we have failed to show ourselves to authentically be his disciples.
CREATIVE / INNOVATIVE …. If God is the primal Creator surely as His people we should be marked out by creativity in what we do? I think creativity has always been important to us, whether its in terms of art, music etc or in terms of being creative in how we function as God’s people. I think being committed to being incarnational necessitates innovation as when we encounter new sub cultures and new groups of people in some sense we have to innovate how we embody and express the Kingdom of God in that context. So our commitment to being innovative / creative isn’t about some desire to be trendy, cool or cutting edge but about wanting to express our nature as God’s missional/incarnational people.
OK …. All of that was a bit a wordy but I was trying to articulate why I think some themes were so clear in our discussion last night despite our difficulty in thinking about how we actually express them.
What do you think?