Mosaic (Part 1)

Alright, time for the second of my covertly Southern Baptist LA-area multisite megachurches . . .

Mosaic's downtown campus (which I actually didn't attend)

Unpacking the Big Box--

What Churches Have Learned from Target

I’ve decided that I want to popularize a new term: “big box contemporary”-- sort of like “contemporvant” but a little less satirical.  I think the term may be floating around already, but I want to go ahead and make it a part of the regular church lexicon.  I want this term to be more widespread, because then I could describe Mosaic and Summit and New Life and both Mars Hills in just three words rather than writing the same stuff over and over again: industrial feel of the sanctuary, contemporary instrumentation, lots and lots of black, cement floors, young trendy pastor, scaffolding like a rock concert, everyone is under 40, words on screens in very plain fonts, very dynamic stage lighting, making fun of “your mom’s church,” etc.  These churches share a lot of common elements, all of which seem to revolve around unadorned worship spaces, music that is very much in sync with the popular culture, and a casual come-as-you-are atmosphere in terms of attire and attitude.  The sanctuary always feels like a big black box where the scaffolding and lights have all been unpacked and suspended fairly recently.  It always feels new-- sometimes even like it’s still being put together.  It’s sort of how you would expect a church to look if you had just recently purchased it from Target.

Actually, let’s consider the Target model for a second since I have a special place in my heart for Target.  While other big box stores like WalMart and K-Mart arrange their merchandise to make people hunt for bargains, Target has clearly marked clearance racks that are usually in an easily-located space.  While every WalMart in America has a slightly different, regularly-changing configuration so that you never really develop a routine at WalMart, every Target in the country has the exact same layout or a perfect mirror image thereof.  Regarding inventory, while every WalMart carries a slightly different array of goods, Target is consistent from Memphis to St. Louis to North Carolina to California-- different stores, same stuff.  Every Target has nearly identical merchandise for sale, so if one store sells out of the item that you’re looking for, you can often go to another location and find it.  Even though it’s still a big box shopping experience, Target offers a certain consistency and comfort that I call “The Zen of Target.”  If you have shopped at even one Target store, you can establish a routine, a specific way of walking through the store to hit points of personal interest, and this routine can be used at any Target in the country since they are all identical.  With all this consistency and uniformity, shopping at Target feels sort of like walking a labyrinth-- a familiar pattern that brings peace with repetition.  Of course, it’s a labyrinth of consumerism, but I really do think it’s the same synapses firing in your brain in both experiences.  Also, as I’m starting to realize, there are a lot of similarities between walking around Target and attending a contemporary megachurch.

Just as I enjoy walking around Target, I also kind of like big box contemporary.  I’m not sure if I’d want it every Sunday, but it’s the sort of atmosphere I like for a revival.  It’s a setting where I know I can retreat to recharge for a bit.  Typically, I can just blend into the crowd and worship in a setting that reminds me that Jesus is cool and relevant and that the Bible has a lot to say about contemporary cultural issues.  It’s a setting where people tend to look like me and talk like me and think like me, and even though I believe in a biblical call to diversity in the church (see Ephesians 4), I have to admit that it’s fun to run away and be with people who “speak my language” every now and then, and Mosaic was definitely such an experience.  Big box contemporary has its appeal.  Like Target, you know exactly what to expect before you walk in.  You know that other shoppers will probably be about your age and have fairly similar values.  You even have a general idea of what “merchandise” --in this case, sermon style and music-- will be provided (since so many contemporary megachurches have a surprising sameness to them).  In fact, it even seems like there is a certain orthodox way of doing 20-something-oriented, contemporary worship these days, and I want to give it an appropriate name: big box.  It has all the trendy merchandise and unadorned splendor of a Target store, but it also provides the same comfort of repetition and consistency.  I know this isn’t exactly what the contemporary worship movement set out to do --initially, they just wanted to be “not your mom’s church”--, so this new traditionalism strikes me as a fascinating phenomenon, and I will definitely be devoting more attention to it as this study continues.

Arrival and Background

I really didn’t know what to expect when I got to Mosaic.  Based on the write-up in Jim & Casper and what friends had told me, I knew that the church had grown in popularity partially because of one of their venues: the Mayan Theater.  The Mayan is an active nightclub in downtown LA, and Mosaic rents it out on Sunday nights with the rental fee being a weekly Sunday afternoon cleaning of the facilities.  A few church members described the weekly ritual of preparing the space: wiping up spilled beer and vomit from the dance floor, setting out folding chairs, and revving up the wonderfully loud sound system for worship.  You won’t find many churches that offer earplugs to their attendees at the front door, but Mosaic’s loud music is a major selling point for many in the 18-to-23 age range.  The church also features a huge stress on the arts and emphasizes diversity (just as the name implies).  I had initially intended to attend at the Mayan, but due to a scheduling conflict, I wound up attending a morning service in Pasadena instead.

William Carey University campus

The Pasadena campus meets at William Carey University in their Mott Auditorium.  “Hmm . . . interesting that they meet at a university named after a Baptist missionary,” I thought to myself before asking around and finding out that Mosaic is slyly Southern Baptist in their affiliation and theology.  (Wow, how many secret Southern Baptist churches are there?)  Of course, given that the Southern Baptist Convention was originally founded after a group of Baptists split off from the Triennial Convention in 1845 over the issue of whether a missionary (James Reeve) could hold slaves, and the SBC only just recently apologized for their history of defending slavery and remaining silent on segregation, the Southern Baptist label doesn’t exactly connote diversity, so I can understand why the church doesn’t flaunt it.  Also, I’m still going to cite the whole Disney thing again; Southern California is Disneyland territory, so boycotting the Magic Kingdom just didn’t do a lot for the SBC’s reputation.  Like Summit, Mosaic also began life as a more traditional Southern Baptist church that sought to redefine itself to meet the changing needs of its community.  The church started out in the 1940s as Bethel Baptist Church and then became the First Southern Baptist Church of East Los Angeles and then the highly missional “Church on Brady Avenue” before finally selling their building altogether and evolving into the multisite Mosaic, deciding on that name to reflect their artistic focus and their ethnically-diverse membership.  The church actually does not own any land; rather, it rents out spaces like the Mayan and the auditorium at William Carey University.

The first person I spoke with at Mosaic was Randy, one of the many Sunday morning greeters (or, as Mosaic calls them, the “connections team”).  Randy had short cropped gray hair, but his face was filled with a youthful excitement, and the energy about him made his age (53) difficult to discern.  He was also quite tall.  Really tall.  Like Rob Bell tall.  When I told him a bit about my journey and some of my destinations so far, he replied, “Yeah, my wife and I actually have Michigan roots, and we attend Rob’s church whenever we’re up there.”  Wow, how’s that for a coincidence?  What is it with Grand Rapids people being so tall?  I digress.  Randy told me a bit about the core values of Mosaic and explained them to me using a nearby handout:

Wind (Commission)- Mission is why the Church exists.  The Church is a movement, not an institution.  Every follower of Jesus is commissioned by God.

Water (Community)- Love is the context for all mission.  The Church is relational, not programmatic.  Every follower of Jesus is part of a larger community.

Wood (Connection)- Structure must always submit to Spirit.  The Church is empowering, not controlling.  Every follower of Jesus is called and connected uniquely to serve.

Fire (Communion)- Relevance to culture is not optional.  The Church is incarnational, not esoteric.  Every follower of Jesus celebrates communion with God.

Earth (Character)- Creativity is the natural result of spirituality.  The Church is transforming, not conforming.  Every follower of Jesus grows in Christ-like character.

Captain Planet, he’s our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero . . .

“Okay, yeah, the whole nature symbols thing is a little hokey, but people seem to gravitate to it, and they really are good principles,” Randy explained.  “Personally, I’m an engineer, so I’m totally fine just remembering commission, community, connection, communion, character.  Five Cs-- easy enough.”  Randy went on to explain that he and his wife had originally thought about doing overseas missions, and while they always wound up remaining in the States, they never abandoned that mission mentality.  Randy also said that he realized he was a bit older than the typical Mosaic attendee (as the average age there is 27), but he loved the church and felt like he was called to serve there.  His enthusiasm was contagious too, and while I walked onto the campus of William Carey University with little clue of what I was getting into, the conversation with Randy left me excited and eager to see what would take place in the service.

After parting ways with Randy, another connection team member named Taren told me a bit about the Artist Tribe and about the cookout afterward, and it was around this time that I looked over my shoulder to the many tents in front of the worship center, each of which featured information on a different group within the church: Celebrate Recovery, SHE women’s fellowship, Artist Tribe, etc.  Under the main welcome tent, standing right there and having a long conversation with another minister, was none other than Erwin McManus.  At first, I didn’t believe my eyes, but there he was.  He was wearing khakis and a v-neck t-shirt with a bag slung casually over one shoulder, and he sort of had an expression like it was his day off (which, since another pastor was speaking that day, I guess it sort of was).  The big dog pastors almost never greet folks out in front of their churches, so I decided that I needed a second opinion to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.  “Um, Taren?  Is that . . . Is that Erwin?”  “Yeah, that’s him.  You should go over and say hello.”  No way.  Erwin McManus.  In the flesh.

I haven’t read a one of Erwin’s books, so what would I say to him?  What would I ask him?  What would we talk about?  Two minutes into the conversation, it became clear.  We talked about the only thing two people from North Carolina can ever discuss, the most spiritual thing in the whole state: the Duke-UNC rivalry.  Erwin is a Carolina grad, so we ribbed each other for a bit, each of us pretending that the other school took the rivalry more seriously.  Of course, since Carolina made it farther in the championship this year, Erwin had a bit more room to brag, but I feel that I held my own.  Now that I think of it, maybe I should have asked him something about theology and the arts or how his Southwestern Seminary education had influenced his ministry in LA or about how being an immigrant from El Salvador affected his ministry or absolutely anything other than basketball.  Still, with all the Saddleback business, I had gone into this church without a lot of prep work, so I did the only thing I could: talk about what you know and try to get a feel for a pastor’s style that way.  I was a little surprised to find Erwin a bit reserved and soft-spoken.  The Global Leadership Summit had described him as a “culture maker.”  Church Report called him one of the 50 most influential Christians in America.  Jim & Casper labeled him a rising star, an up-and-comer, a dynamo of a man whom God had unleashed upon a world in need.  To me, he just seemed a little tired-- like it was a slow morning and he hadn’t had his coffee yet.  He was pleasant.  He was friendly.  He was also a little reserved and methodical.  In short, he was human.  He wasn’t over the top, and he never made me feel like I was in the presence of a spiritual giant.  He struck me as a really nice, down-to-earth guy.  In fact, I probably spent more time talking to Greg, the more conversational associate pastor with whom Erwin had been talking when I walked up.  Of course, Erwin also did something that really put me at ease; when I asked to take a picture with him, he actually laughed and smiled and gave a simple “sure.”  No Rob Bell tone of disappointment.  No Bill Hybels shrug of aggravation.  Just a little laugh and a “sure” as if this were some sort of flattery that was familiar but welcome.  After a reception like that, I’m thinking maybe I should try to read some of this guy’s books.

Erwin headed inside, and before I could strike up a conversation with any more of the connections team, I looked at my watch and realized that the hour had arrived.  Time for worship.