What is Mosaic Niagara?

 

What is Mosaic Niagara?

Mosaic Niagara is the dream of a new way of doing and being God’s church in this place and time in history.  And by “new way”, we mean old way.  But before we get too far into that, maybe you don't know who "we" are.  We are Craig and Kim Frere.  For the past 28 years, we have been a team in ministry together with Craig being the paid pastor and Kim working both in and outside of the home in various ways including teaching in the school system.  While it has been Craig's name on the paycheques at the various churches where they have served, they have always functioned as a family on mission together along with their 3 (now grown up and moved out) children.  Craig and Kim both grew up in the Niagara Region but have been living and working away for most of the past 28 years of ministry.  Lately, however, we have been feeling the need to step out in faith and try doing church differently.  So we have moved back to Niagara to begin this.  So how will Mosaic Niagara be different?

The idea that church is that thing that we do on a Sunday morning, in a building, with cool worship, paid staff and a bunch of exciting programs – THAT, actually, is the new way.  But it has been our experience over the last bunch of years that this way of doing and being church isn’t working for an increasing number of people and has become less and less effective in helping people who aren’t already in the church to find relationship with God through Jesus Christ. 

And since we believe that the mission of the church is to help people to find relationship with God, we also believe that we need to add new forms of doing and being church that will be more focused and effective in that mission.  This is the idea behind Mosaic Niagara.  Mosaic Niagara will be more like a micro church and will focus on creating small missional communities of 10-20 people who will live, worship and serve the community together.  The vision is not to create a large group weekly worship service, eventually have a building and paid staff.  Instead, the vision is to grow and multiply the groups as we live our lives together as followers of Jesus and invite others into our lives to discover Jesus for themselves. 

Why the name Mosaic Niagara?    Well, the idea of a mosaic seemed fitting for the vision that we have for the church.  A mosaic is a collection of small individual pieces that are often very different from each other – different sizes, different shapes, different colours.  But when those pieces are put together, they are part of something larger and together form a beautiful picture.  We see this new church being similar.  As we seek to grow and multiply the smaller groups, we envision them to be very different from one another.  The dream is to have a growing number of these missional communities that are unique in their geographic locations, their mission focus in their communities, their age or socio-economic demographics, their cultural and ethnic backgrounds, their language and in the way that they do life together.  These individual small groups, however, scattered across the Niagara Region with all of their uniqueness will know that they are part of something bigger.  They will understand that they are part of a larger network that together form a picture of what God is calling us to be as God’s church.  Like a mosaic.  There will likely be gatherings of the groups from time to time for celebration and encouragement but the focus will not be on these larger gatherings.

So that is the vision for Mosaic Niagara.  Does any of this sound interesting to you?  Maybe you’re wondering what our needs are and how you might be able to help.  Here are a few possible ways.

• Follow  us on social media.  We will try to keep our Facebook and Instagram pages updated regularly.  We will also try to keep you up to date with what’s happening through this blog.

• Pray for us.  As Kim and I follow what we believe God is calling us to, we have stepped into something brand new.  We have moved into Welland – a city where neither of us have ever lived – and are beginning to find our place here.  We are not doing this as part of a team.  It is just us.  So you can support us by praying for us to figure out how to meet people, how to get to know our neighbours, where we can get involved in helping to make our community a better place, and for us to see where God is already at work and inviting us to join in.

• Join a prayer team.  As much as we appreciate people individually praying for us, sometimes we need personal, face to face time with people who support us in prayer.  We would love to set up a prayer team that can meet together from time to time to share with, to pray with us and to encourage us.

• Join a missional community.  Maybe this new/old way resonates with you.  Maybe you have been feeling the same kind of “holy dissatisfaction” with traditional church that we have.  Consider joining in a missional community with us to see if it is for you.  If you are already part of another church, we definitely don’t want to take you away from that.  We see Mosaic Niagara being part of the wider church and partners in the mission to help people discover and grow in their relationship with God.