If you’ve spent any time around Mosaic, you will have encountered our vision statement: We are a gospel-centered family of disciple-makers that hope to see the gospel and its fruits cover every square inch of Richardson. This vision isn’t mere hype or overstatement, but rather the articulation of God’s very heart for our city. From the “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” of Genesis 1 to the “make disciples of all nations” in Matthew 28, God’s aim has always been to extend the experience of his goodness and beauty to all peoples in all places.
For Mosaic, that means we steward our resources - from our Sunday gatherings and financial generosity to our family discipleship and varied vocations - to the end that every square inch of our city might have the opportunity to enjoy God forever in Jesus. While such a grand vision might stir my heart, if you’re like me, it also stokes uncertainty. Will this ever happen? Where do we even begin, and what exactly should we do? God must desire someone bolder, more educated, winsome, and more experienced than me.
Jesus anticipates our doubts, giving us both parables and promises that illustrate the confounding way of God’s Kingdom: it starts as small as a mustard seed or as imperceptible as yeast within the dough. Yet it grows up into a plant that offers lodging to the birds and swells a paltry lump into an expansive loaf that feeds a household. More than confounding metaphors, these parables illuminate God’s ways for us as those living in the dissonance between what he promises and what we see in the already but not yet of life: tiny, unnoticed means that, by His power and in his time, upend and transform reality.
And it happened: the gospel rang out from Israel, Syria, and Turkey into the far reaches of the earth, with the book of Acts recording for us the living God’s ongoing commitment to multiply his glory amongst all peoples. How did it happen? Not through the powerful and the connected, nor through the charismatic few who could fill a stadium, but through the faithful witness of largely unnamed and overlooked fishermen, cheats, terrorists, adulterers, and demoniacs who shared what they knew and gave away the truth they had to faithful men and women who would teach others also. This sort of multiplication of simple, faithful obedience to Jesus has been God’s way from the start. Yet here we sit in Richardson, TX, more than 2,000 years later, and the burning question is this: will he do it again, here, now, through me? There’s only one way to find out. Let’s join him and see.
