We are Mosaic MSC and we wrote HUMAN in 2019 and recorded it live in January of 2020 at the Los Angeles campus of our church, Mosaic.
The questions that shaped every song we wrote were essentially these: how do we make worshipping Jesus the most simple? How do we make the language the most clear? How do we make the language inclusive to everyone, not just for people who know ‘church’ lingo? In short – how do we make these songs the most human?
Mosaic is unique in the way it has shaped its ethos. Most churches want someone to believe in God and Jesus before they can belong to their church. At Mosaic, we want everyone to know they can belong before they believe.
This creates the vast difference in our language from most worship music; whatever we sing on a Sunday, we want to make sure the person closest to God and someone farthest from Him can both understand it and relate to it in a personal, authentic way.
So many of the people who call Mosaic home found Jesus at one of our physical campuses or through Mosaic:Online, and we are the only example of church they know. It’s usually someone who grew up in church that comes to Mosaic and asks why we don’t sing more about the ‘crucifixion’ or the ‘lamb of God’.
It can be easier to find comfort in the language you know than solely through the intention of a song. In a surprising way, we’ve found that the more colloquial the language, the more it can challenge an older ‘Christian’ to be vulnerable in worship. There’s nothing to hide behind.
We worked and sweated and fought for these songs more than we have on any other record, because we wanted to bring our best. We did two writing retreats – one in Malibu where we got to bring a large portion of our Mosaic worship team to join us, and one in Wyoming, with a smaller group. We attempted to take large, sometimes complicated concepts and make them intimate and personal.
“Fountain (I Am Good)” is about the trinity and God’s love for us in each of his persons. “Can’t Refuse” is a very soft and defiant prayer challenging God to show up for you like he promised.
“Steady” is a testament of love, while “You Never Fail Me (All My Life)” is a statement of faithfulness. Millions is a sweeping expression of gratitude, and Not Going Back is a declaration of leaving the past behind.
Now, at the end of 2020, it’s bittersweet to reflect on the time we wrote and created this record. The entire world has changed since then. We recorded the record over two nights, in front of over 1,500 people singing loud and passionate with us.
So many of the songs we never sang live in a regular Sunday gathering with our church, and we only have those small glimpses into what they sounded like sung by the people we wrote them for, as they first entered their hearts and minds. In another respect, it’s a beautiful memory of the world we had before this global pandemic and what we created in what’s now the ‘before’.
The stories of people who reach out to us to let us know how one song spoke to them, changed them, drew them closer to Jesus… every person who has shared how these songs we brought to the world brought them a piece of hope or joy or catharsis – it means the world to us. We love Jesus. We love singing to Him in worship.
It is our privilege and an endless source of thankfulness that we get to make music together that brings us and others closer to Jesus and the future he wants to create through us. We love that no matter what we face as a community, a country, or a planet, that when it comes down to it we all have one thing in common: we are loved and designed by God. Beautifully and wonderfully human.
Listen to HUMAN below!
Great article! Thank you!
Wow! I never their background. I loved this piece thank you