Worship a few times at Fellowship Saturday Night and you’ve likely heard the term “mosaic” thrown around. It’s an important word picture for us because it’s a great metaphor for Jesus’ Church. Think about it, a mosaic is lots of individual pieces brought together by an Artist who had a grand vision of the finished picture. For us, seeing the church as a mosaic means that we have a passion for three values: all are broken, yet all matter, and only One gets the glory.

There are two kinds of mosaics, commercial & artistic. Commercial mosaics use cookie cutter tiles, all the same– no rough edges or broken pieces. You see these in ordinary bathroom floors. Artistic mosaics are different. They are hand-made from broken fragments of tile or glass that are diverse in color, shape, and texture. Those broken pieces fit exactly into artist’s vision. The church is artistic mosaic, not a commercial one.

In the mosaic of a church, all the pieces are broken. None of us was placed into this work of art because we were whole. In Ephesians 2, Paul opens by saying each of us was dead in our sins, broken in our trespasses. But, God who is rich in mercy, picked us up, cleaned us off and placed us into His mosaic– on purpose! Our only qualification for belonging to this mosaic was that we were broken in sin and we needed the grace & vision of an Artist.

There is nothing particularly pretty about an individual tessala in a mosaic. On the contrary, its true beauty and greater purpose, are found in the context of its relationship to the other tessala that surround it. Only when the individual piece is put together with other broken pieces does it form a beautiful work of art. And without that individual piece the larger work of art would not be complete.

In the same way, every piece of the mosaic in the church of Jesus is needed. All belong and all matter. God joins together our irregularities as individuals to accomplish His purposes. He even cuts and shapes our lives to fit the pattern He’s creating.

In a mosaic, the focus is not on the individual tile but on the Artist’s work. We don’t admire the beauty of the piece. We admire the goodness of the Artist! There’s only one Hero in the Church. His name is Jesus.

We belong because we matter to Him, but He is the only one who receives glory. We’re just a “dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.”, the mosaic which God is creating by His Spirit. Have you ever heard someone say they can’t go to church because it is filled with hypocrites? Our response is, “You’re right! Stick around and I’ll introduce you to some liars… selfish people, critics, cynics, people who struggle with addiction, lust, materialism, and pride… You’ll fit right in!"

That’s the real church. The question is not, “Are we broken?” In the mosaic that is the church of Jesus, all are broken. The question is more accurately, “How is our brokenness redeemed?” The answer is, “By the hand of The Artist.”