the painful process of naming... (part 1 of 4)

So you want the TMI (too much info) on the naming process of the Middle School Ministry?

Well... it all begins with a conversation that Brandon had with Rudi one of the African delegates at the International Center

You see, Rudi is one of Africa’s leading youth ministry gurus and he and Brandon started talking about how Christian students really live in four different worlds. These worlds consist of their church, friends, family, and the culture.


The problem with this is that often students are a different person when they are in each of these worlds. Since, however, Jesus is interested in the whole person, not just who they are at church, it becomes the imperative of the student ministry to help students find a faith that bridges all of these worlds and helps students to be the same person in each of them.





Naturally this led us as a middle school ministry to re-think the way we interacted with students. It is not enough to “own” their church life... we want to find the place where all of these “worlds” intersect and try to help students find a faith the works in all of the contexts they live in.



This led us to seek a name and identity that would help us to communicate our passion to find and minister at the nexus (shameless ministry plug!) where all these worlds intersect.
An early prototype of our mosaic logo should make it pretty clear where our inspiration was coming from. And, to be honest, our final Mosaic logo is only slightly less overt.

The symbol is created from the shape that is formed from the overlap of the four circles... the extra lines are supposed to represent this shape being in motion... because that is how life is... always moving.







As for the name Mosaic, its a form of art made from small broken pieces of tile, stone, or glass.

Although the pieces are imperfect, when placed together within the greater mosaic, their true beauty shines and their incompleteness is hidden by the strengths of the other pieces.

This is a great description of the community of faith that makes up Jesus’ body on earth.