Day Two was incredible! We had several people from our team walk through the rest of the core values:
Mission is why the church exists.
Kim McManus and several of the women from She shared about the way they connect women with the mission of Jesus. It was cool to hear from Rosie from Loyola Marymount University as she described the club she helped start on campus which raised $8000 for Blood:Water:Mission. The club she helped start won Best New Club of the Year and Best Humanitarian Event of the Year awards. Rosie is graduating and preparing for the Beijing Olympics with the Canadian Water Polo team.
Structure must always submit to Spirit.
Chad Becker walked us through our journey with Mosaic going to 17 locations in the last 9 years. Our mobility has allowed us to connect to many new people over that wouldn’t have necessarily found us in our other venues. At times these new locations were the result of strategic decisions. Other times we were moving in to help a community which was struggling, and then other times we moved out of desperation since we lost our previous venue. Chad challenged us to be willing to follow God wherever He may lead rather than our normal disposition which seems to be a search for consistency, predictability, and safety.
Relevance to culture is not optional.
Interviews of leaders from Big Sunday (David Levinson), a homeless relief effort called Room to Change (Gregory Hinton), Illuminate (Eileen from Mosaic), Serve LA (Adrian from Mosaic), and our anti-human trafficking efforts (Charity from Mosaic).
Love is the context for all mission.
Since I spoke during the “Love is the context for all mission” session, I was preparing all day and unable to blog as much. I guess I wasn’t preparing all day as much as pre-occupied all day. It seemed to go well. I showed a couple of films (“Managing the Creative Beast” and “Beauty“) and challenged us to make efforts to be known by love to overcome our Christian stereotype.
We ended the day with Q&A and a time of prayer and commissioning.
For me, the highlight of Origins has been connecting with old friends and meeting new ones. Some remarkable people from around the world challenged and encouraged me. People like Theo from South Africa, Naeem from Charlotte, Grant and Phil from New Zealand, George and Karyn from Tasmania, Australia, Elmer a Salvadorean in Australia, Sung from South Korea, Doug from Chino, Charlton from Seattle, and so many other great people.
