Arundel Mills Project
Baseball season is upon us once again, which means another year of heartbreak for me. A lifetime Chicago Cubs fan, I know that my team presents an unhealthy addiction that results in heartbreak and frustration every year as the losses mount.
Despite having my heart broken regularly by my favorite teams, I love both playing and watching sports. I love the competition, strategy, and discipline involved…but most of all I love winning. Whether it is my favorite team playing baseball, me trying to get a personal record in running, or a “friendly” game of Scrabble, I love to win.
So this leads to some questions as we lead Mosaic. Andy Stanley says one of The Seven Practices of Effective Churches is that they “clarify the win”. Much like a baseball team looks at the scoreboard, any church needs a “scoreboard” to determine if they are winning.
At Mosaic our mission is to be a church for people who don’t go to church. So several questions we ask regularly are:
Are our numbers growing? (to show that we’re reaching more people who don’t go to church)
Are we providing intentional environments to help people go to the next level in their walks with God?
Are we hearing stories from individuals whose lives are being changed by the Gospel?
Recently we had a few experiences that make us think we may be winning…or at least have the lead!
Easter is a big day for every church, including Mosaic. Our theme this year was Hope, and we handed out invite cards for the three weeks leading up to Easter so people could invite their friends. Our average attendance for the last quarter had been 130, and personally I had been praying for 200 on Easter. Aside from the invite cards we didn’t do any advertising, but our people really responded: our Easter attendance was 227! I know that numbers don’t tell the entire story, but they do tell an important part of the story, so we were very excited that so many heard the Gospel that day.
We wanted Easter to be bigger than an hour on Sunday, so a few weeks before we launched an initiative called 40 for Hope. This was a prayer relay where we transformed our office into 10 different prayer stations. We asked our people to sign up for a 40-minute block to come to the office and pray for hope, so that as a church we would be praying for the 40 hours from 6pm Good Friday to 10am Easter Sunday. We honestly weren’t sure how many of the 3am and 4am time slots would be taken, but our people stepped up and filled all 60 slots that were available. At the different stations they prayed for lost friends, requests from Mosaic attendees, Mosaic’s vision, that we would stay grounded on God’s word, for our community partners, and for the two church plants we’re helping launch this year. Most people who participated had never prayed 40 straight minutes their entire lives, so it was a growing experience for them.
As great as Easter weekend was, the weekend before was even better. Prior to that Sunday we had done all our baptisms off-site: at other churches, in pools, and at the Chesapeake Bay. But we wanted our entire church to experience the thrill of being at a baptism, so we borrowed a portable baptistery from another local church and set it up in the theatre! We arrived at 6am and filled it up with 450 gallons of heated water. Then at the end of our service we baptized two people there in the theatre! (The only hiccup was that it took longer than we were told to empty it, and we were still emptying it as the previews started for the movie. What was the movie that day? Hot Tub Time Machine!)
We baptized two people that day, one of whom is Laura. Laura was raised in a home that believed in God and was involved in her youth group growing up, but really just did it to have fun. She spent her college years partying and not pursuing a relationship with God. Then, shortly after graduation she got married, and things went downhill fast. Eventually she was 27-year-old divorcee who was confused and lonely. Fast forward three years and a couple mountain biking friends invite her to Mosaic, where she starts to pursue a relationship with Jesus. When she came into the office to talk to me about getting baptized she broke down in tears and said, “Carl, I don’t think I should get baptized because I just don’t deserve this.” And I replied, “Laura, that means you are ready!” It was an amazing story.
Later this year I’m going to attend a few games when my Cubbies are playing in Washington D.C. When I attend those games, I’ll be able to look at the scoreboard to see if my team’s winning or not. And while I know there are thousands more lives that God wants Mosaic to impact and it may only be the top of the 2nd inning, I think the scoreboard says we’re ahead right now.
Carl Kuhl, Lead Planter