When Mosaic City Church in Huntsville held its first Trunk-or-Treat, they prayed for 150 to show up. More than triple that number came. For their second effort this year they prayed for at least 500, and some 1,000 community members attended.
“Huntsville’s now the largest city in Alabama,” noted Will Faulkenberry, lead pastor, “and right now, it’s estimated that it’s 60% unchurched. That number is only going to go up as the population increases.”
So Mosaic City hosts events like Trunk-or-Treat to reach out to its part of the city.
Mosaic City Church began in September 2019. They celebrated their six-month anniversary and before the next service, COVID-19 struck. They switched to online-only services until Easter, when they began “drive-in” meetings.
Sharing space
Initially, they met at the Baptist Campus Ministries building at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. They prayed for a partnership with Woodland Hill Baptist Church, an older congregation in a culturally and economically diverse area, and when in June 2020 it was getting too hot to continue outdoor services, Woodland Hill agreed to share space.
“Many churches are a lot like Woodland Hill,” Faulkenberry noted. “They are an older congregation. They have the resources, but they don’t have the energy to do an outreach event. We have the people and manpower but don’t have the resources they have.”
“Together, we’re able to do some amazing things that neither of us would have been able to do without the other.
“It’s a partnership that is helping us by providing space,” Faulkenberry added, “ but also, it’s renewing their legacy to be a light in that community.”
God provides
Though they ran out of hot dogs and parking spaces, everyone was patient and had a good time, Faulkenberry said, and the Lord supplied what was needed.
“The candy kept coming,” he recalled. “The Lord continued to provide, like fish and loaves. We never ran out of candy.”
Along with other efforts, a prayer tent was available and drew a lot of interest, Faulkenberry noted. Guests were open and seemed surprised that someone was willing to talk about their problems and pray for them.
The tent provided prayer request slips in both English and Spanish. One of Mosaic City’s vision statements is, “Mosaic City Church is to be known as a community that is made up of all kinds of people who love one another,” so they are developing a Spanish-language ministry.
Beautiful from broken
Mosaic City’s name came from the qualities of a mosaic artwork.
“A mosaic picture is made up of broken pieces from various sources that come together,” Faulkenberry explained.
“A lot of times people [in church] look around and have the feeling that everyone has it together. They think there must be something wrong with them because all of these other people are perfect.
“A lot of times church people put on this church face, this façade, and pretend everything is fine, when the truth is that all of us are struggling, all of us are broken.
“Our invitation is ‘Come struggle with us toward Christ.’”
God’s power
Faulkenberry admitted that if the church had tried to carry out Trunk-or-Treat in its own power, “we could put together an event, but that wouldn’t mean anything for eternity. We needed God’s power, and He blessed and honored our prayers. He blessed above and beyond what we anticipated.”
“Our goal for this event was not just to share the gospel but to make connections that will lead to future gospel conversations,” Faulkenberry added. “We wanted this community in a forgotten area of Huntsville to know there is a church here that loves them and, more importantly, that God loves them.
“[O]ur folks having smiling faces and interacting with them showed a place where people can feel like they’re at home, like they belong.
“God can use even a small church to do something amazing for His kingdom,” Faulkenberry declared.
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