A flourishing multicultural, multiethnic, multi-location church that formerly met in a downtown Los Angeles nightclub is getting the attention of Christian leaders for the way the congregation is reaching people in their 20s. Mosaic, which has services that include a creative mix of spirituality, the visual and performing arts and borrowings from non-Western cultures, has also caught the attention of The Los Angeles Times, which recently spotlighted the church. Emphasizing relationships and serving other people, Mosaic has grown in less than six years from fewer than 100 members to nearly 2,000, with sister "communities" in San Francisco, Seattle, Manhattan, Atlanta and Nashville, and more underway in Germany, Spain and Scotland. The congregation's membership represents 57 nationalities, almost half of them Asian and the rest a mixture of Latinos, whites, blacks and others.
About 80 percent are single; the average age is 24.
"Mosaic is the talk of many Christian leaders who want to reach out to the younger generation," the newspaper observed. Its unusual name is meant to reflect the diversity of its members and "a broken and fragmented humanity, which can become a work of beauty under the artful hands of God," said Erwin Raphael McManus, Mosaic's senior pastor. Mosaic is affiliated with the SBC, but it does not subscribe to many stances of the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
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http://www.charismanow.com)
