You are welcome here. We mean it.

Dinner Church @ MOSAIC seeks to include everyone from all walks of life and to give everyone who comes through our doors a sense of belonging, as well as, ownership in our mission. Our mission, simply, is to build diverse community. This, in particular, includes centering the voices of people too often not heard by our culture. 

This means giving everyone, whether newcomer or longtime congregant, the agency to use their gifts by sharing them in the work of making Dinner Church: welcoming each other at the door, setting tables, preparing food, singing, praying, lighting candles, sharing the eucharist, telling our stories, praying, cleaning up, and more. At the conclusion of each service, with full awareness of our gifts reawakened and refreshed, we seek to carry these connections and discoveries out the door and into our daily lives. 

So, what are our practices? 

Our core practices reflect a recognition that people arrive at Dinner Church from diverse religious backgrounds and experiences. Some have gone to church their whole lives, while others have no prior connection to religious communities or have left them, having been hurt or otherwise alienated. Our practices also reflect a commitment to centering the experience of those who are pushed to the margins by oppressive systems. Most of all, we anticipate that these practices will grow and change as our community grows and learns together.

Our practices are important at Dinner Church @ MOSAIC because our church places practice before belief, trusting that eating, praying, and singing together moves us deeper into faith. Instead of trying to figure out what a shared orthodoxy (right belief) might be, we are trying to find what shared orthopraxy (right living) looks like.

What's at the core of who we desire to be as God's holy people?

As we grow and evolve and specific practices may change, we are informed by the following core principles:

• Instead of fixing people, we accept people wherever they are on their life’s journey, and celebrate the gifts that come forward from who they are and who God has created them to be.

• We share agency broadly by giving away the work of making the service.

• We will offer an open and welcoming space into which newcomers and those who have had negative experiences of church can find a safe space in which to risk sharing their stories.

• We will eliminate distinctions between insiders and outsiders (e.g. regulars vs. visitors, Lutherans vs. non-Lutherans, Christians vs. any other category of belief or unbelief).

• We will center learning, discernment of gifts, improvisation, experimentation and growth in leadership capacities. We will lift up and encourage participation by many, rather than masterful performance by a few.

• We will create a place where people can share and learn from each other’s experience.

None of this can happen without God transforming us, through individual relationship and that of the whole community. After all, God is a relational God and has created us to be relational beings. 

There's more to come...

We're working on a formal document that lays out all of this and more. We hope to have it available here soon. Because we want to be fully authentic about who we are, the core of our beliefs, and how we are seeking to live these out in Dinner Church and beyond. 

Hours:

Every Friday during the summer, 6-8p

Beginning Sunday, Sept 8th, Dinner Church will move back to 4p. Join us!