Later in the discussion, McManus said he came to L.A. and Hollywood because it was “the hardest place to make Jesus relevant.” Because he is “purposely reaching people who are the furthest left in the world,” the pastor said, he must “recraft the message, the culture, the nuance.”
During the pandemic, for example, McManus closed Mosaic for 18 months. He pushed back against critics, saying he knew his own people—and knew they’d label him as irresponsible for holding in-person worship amid COVID-19.
Creative Worship and Communication Frequencies
At Mosaic, creativity is a core value because Scripture champions “human uniqueness,” according to McManus. His church evolves and never looks the same, he said, because leaders are always “reinventing the experience.”
As the pastor’s own children grew up, they told him their generation wanted “simpler” worship encounters. So McManus stopped using dance, art, and film in worship.
Each congregation feels more like a “boutique” than a megachurch, McManus said. “I adopted every traditional form” of worship at first, he explained, and then figured out what was helpful. “I did everything and went, ‘Wow. This is like Saul’s armor on me. This doesn’t fit,’” so he threw it out.
In New York City, for example, Mosaic meets once a month. The pastor also looks for “unexpected places” to hold worship, such as art galleries, studios, and nightclubs. A bunch of different people speak, he said, “because we’re a community of voices.”
As a new Christian, McManus’ advantage was that he “didn’t have an orthodoxy to protect.” Instead, “I opened up the Bible, and I did not have preset beliefs. I let the Bible tell me what it actually says.”
The challenge of being an innovator, however, is that’s “it’s been a pretty lonely journey.” Being a pioneer means “you’re pretty much choosing to walk alone a lot,” McManus told Lecrae. The pastor also became a target in the early 2000s, receiving death threats from a “group of reformed Calvinists who felt like I was being destructive to Christianity.”
Because Aaron McManus, McManus’ son, was so shaken by that threat, the pastor took a six-year break from writing and many pastoral tasks. He launched film and fashion ventures that went so well he “never thought I would come back” to church leadership.
