A Piece of the Mosaic

Leeds is a popular place to study, a vibrant city that is home to 120,000 students from all over the world. Chris Mason shares his experience of leading the student team at Mosaic Church, Leeds...

At Mosaic Church we are passionate about seeing the name of Jesus lifted high across the University campuses of Leeds, which means equipping the 120 students that are part of our body to be salt and light in their homes and lecture halls.

My wife Lisa and I began leading the student ministry in October 2005 when we had only a handful of students. The rapid growth that we experienced over the next two years threw us into a ‘fire fighting’ ministry and we struggled to keep up with getting to know, leading and discipling all the students that came through our doors.

It became obvious that we needed to share the load of leadership and we have since begun to develop a number of leaders to work with us. As a student team we oversee various 'mission group' leaders who are also busy training up new leaders within their small groups. The biggest lesson we have learnt over the last few years is that we cannot do it all; we need to invest in our leaders and equip them to invest in others.

This September our mission group leaders were eagerly waiting at the doors ready to welcome new students into the life of Mosaic Church and it was so exciting to see them go above and beyond all that we had asked of them.

Our student work has taken its shape directly from our church vision:

• Love God. Students need to be filled to overflowing with God’s love before they can truly love their mates. We have found that giving significant time to worship and prayer has been essential to our students developing missional lifestyles.
• Love each other. Making disciples takes time and energy, love and patience. We hope that our work allows students the space to make friendships within the church that will develop into discipleship and accountability relationships. Pairing and grouping guys with guys and girls with girls through our mission group leaders is a key way of achieving this.
• Love their communities. We are trying to help our students develop lives that are fully engaged with university life. The balance between church events and uni life is a fine one; there is no generic answer to getting it right, it is an individual thing, but if you want students to have fruitful friendships outside the church, they need the time to do it!
• Love the underprivileged. We have always been keen on our students not being part of a ‘ministry’ but part of the whole church. This allows our students to get involved with other areas of the church, such as serving the poor and needy in our city.
• Love the nations. Singing in other languages, talking and praying for the nations, planning mission trips within the student calendar and supporting the Christian Unions’ international student work are all ways of us communicating and encouraging a heart that loves the nations as God does.

Our students seem to be more engaged with Jesus and the church when they are following one vision. We’ve learnt that aligning our student work with the church vision results in lives being changed and committed to the cause of Christ. We hope that in reading this you’ve been encouraged to inspire students to be more than those who study, but those that impact their university for the Kingdom.

Chris Mason
Mosaic Church, Leeds