Flourishing in Jesus's Name and Way

We are preparing to open registration for Flourish, our women’s discipleship cohort offered every other Spring. Our pilot cohort launched in Spring 2022 and in many ways that feels both like yesterday and a lifetime ago. Since then, much has changed in our church, our city, and the broader cultural landscape.

I remember sitting quietly after one of those early Flourish retreats, asking the Lord: Why this? And what are You entrusting to us? I loved Flourish then, and I still do, but I sensed the need to be anchored in what we were truly being called into as we continued to invite women into this unfolding opportunity- not to mention a reading list that garnered strong reactions! That’s what I hope to share as we prepare to invite a new group of women into this journey.

Each of us carries stories about our worth, our identity, and our bodies that are shaped by family, culture, experience, and even the church. But at the start of Flourish, the guiding question we brought before the Lord was: What story does God want His daughters to believe about themselves and what is the most beautiful and life-giving way we could embody that in the local church?

I pictured the little girls growing up in our church eventually stepping into womanhood and navigating complex conversations around gender, faith, and identity. I imagined them rooted, joyful, secure, and non-anxious women confident in who they are as beloved daughters of God, formed by His Word. Not just aware of but convinced of their worth and value so much so that they had the capacity to minister to others in their pain and confusion.

We realized then, and we’re convinced even more today, that every woman in our church needs space to remember, rehearse, and be loved into experiencing (not just knowing)  those truths as well—not only for our own flourishing, but so we can pass them on to the next generation and be a signpost of God’s kingdom to our neighbors.

So back to the original questions: Why Flourish? And what is it, really?

Why?

• Because the gospel transforms everything, including the stories we believe about who we are—as women and as men.
  
• Because when we first began Flourish, the cultural conversation around womanhood was (and still is) at a disorienting crossroads, and Jesus’ voice is the compassion and clarity we need to be fully alive and cultivate life in the face of sin and death as we await his return.
  
• Because in a church like Mosaic, full of children and families, one of our greatest callings is to model and mentor what it looks like to belong to the family of God as brothers and sisters- grateful not ambivalent- about God’s design for men and women.
  

And what is Flourish?
It’s a semester-long discipleship cohort for women—a space to choose community over anonymity, truth over confusion, and transformation through God’s Word over self-reliance. It has been the joy of a lifetime to walk alongside women as we behold God together and are changed in His presence.

And yes—at the end, there’s a beautiful commissioning dinner. You can’t call it Flourish and not throw a party that might have more flower arrangements than people! It is a night to celebrate, bless, and send these women into a new season of renewal and restoration. It’s always one of the most special moments in the life of our church as we honor, appreciate, and live into the celebratory and honoring nature of the kingdom of God.

If you’re a woman at Mosaic, I encourage you to prayerfully consider if this is the right season for you to step into Flourish. You can learn more here, and we’ll be holding a brief Zoom interest meeting on October 12 from 8:00–8:45 PM.

If you’re a man in our church, would you take a moment to pray for the women in your life—your sisters, your friends, your wife, your daughters—that they would encounter Jesus afresh in this season?

May God be so kind as to lead the men and women of our church into deeper wholeness so that we all might truly flourish in the name and way of Jesus.