Mosaic Community Development Center

During my first summer in Grove City, I had an internship through the then Project on Rural Ministry, now the Center for Rural Ministry. I was sent to serve under Pastor Nate Kiesel in Jeanette, PA, at Mosaic Community Church, a PCA mission church. This church is unique in the PCA in that it is intentionally cross-cultural. Pastor Nate made clear that they also intentionally reach out to the youth of the community with the hope that reaching the youth with the Gospel will lead to the transformation of the community. By bringing up children in the Gospel, Mosaic seeks to bring up future leaders who will remain in the community. After several years of building rapport with the youth and families of the area, the city of Jeanette’s leadership pushed back against Mosaic. They said that they believed Mosaic was encouraging the kids to act out and break the law. In reality, in school and on the street, these traumatized kids were acting through their trauma in the face of overly aggressive disciplinary actions by the school and police.

The leaders of Mosaic, instead of retaliating in conflict with the city leadership, created another organization called Mosaic Community Development Center. This organization is a good example of a redemptive non-profit. Through the Mosaic Community Development Center, they partner with other local non-profits and for-profit businesses in developing programs for the kids and youth of Jeanette. Instead of one particular church engaging in this activity, it is now more than a dozen local and state organizations that are involved in starting community gardens that the kids manage, after-school programs for students in need, weeklong soccer camps, and training and jobs for teenagers.

Instead of remaining in conflict, however wrong the leaders of Jeanette were acting, the church chose to create a non-profit with the goal of working with the other organizations in the community for the benefit of the children of Jeanette and has had a greater effect than the church on their own did.