Deep in the heart of the self-proclaimed live music capital of the world, in a converted attic of one of Austin’s oldest churches dwells the community of Mosaic.
Birthed three years ago in a nondescript living room, the metro missional church cultivates its branches within the vast art community found in the South’s most European influenced city.
Mosaic is planted in Austin Texas with a missional engagement towards culture, specifically the arts and social justice.
“For us, that was one of the big things that ignited our flame as far as planting,” said pastor Don Vanderslice.
“A lot of our missional stuff isn’t that we want to have this great art gallery and at the end it has this tract with the four spiritual laws on it. We want to be more integrated.”
In the church’s young history, they haven’t intentionally engaged the art culture as much as organically integrated into it by way of the artists in the church naturally expressing their gifts in their various settings.
Mosaic has cultivated relationships in the art culture by cooperating with one of Austin’s art venues, the Church of the Friendly Ghost, and in the summer and early fall of 2005 lending out their space to UK artist Rob Pepper for work on his Doxology exhibit.
“The Church was the curator of the arts, and at some point that stopped and it almost became this antagonistic relationship,” said Vanderslice. “We want to be a community where people are given permission to be what God made them to be and to tell the stories they feel they need to tell and to paint the pictures they feel they need to paint and to explore what that means and how the gospel relates to that.”
Church website: www.mosaicaustin.org
