pastors and families lunching in Little Rock

Traffic delay on I-40 West kept us from getting to the church on time in Little Rock, Arkansas. So, we only caught the tail end of the worship service at Mosaic Church, enough to sense the energetic vibe of the shopping mall space that used to be a Wal-Mart. During the worship hour in our Xterra, we listened to Gospel music en route and got engrossed by an impassioned Pentecostal preacher talking about having the faith to believe God for moving mountains.

I spotted a worship attender with a video camera scoping the scene, a probable sign of someone doing church reconnaissance. So I struck up a conversation and turns out they (Jay & Mickey Robison) were visiting from Lexington, Kentucky, taking field trips all over to learn more about multiethnic churches. We did lunch together with the Mosaic pastor Mark DeYmaz and our respective families. We ate at a local Mexican place– Senor Tequila— great food and great prices. While the pastors talked shop with DJ, the women talked about more sociable things, and the children sat at a separate table and ate & played away. The Robisons had a son named Jeremy, and an instant bond combusted with our own Jeremiah, social gaming with their respective Nintendo DS. The girls got a spontaneous art class when Rachelle pulled our her collage kit to share.

lunching pastors and families

Mark DeYmaz has a new book coming out in October, Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments and Practices of a Diverse Congregation, published via Leadership Network (for which I work) and Jossey-Bass. Linda DeYmaz (Mark’s wife) is an author in her own right, with her best-selling book, Mommy, Please Don’t Cry, which competed head-to-head for an award right up against one of Rick Warren’s titles. Invigorating conversations since we all have a big heart for multiethnic churches. And, yes, we talked about blogging, for which I highly recommended The Blogging Church as a quick read and primer.

Oh, and Jay, we’ve racked up over 1,750 miles on our cross-country drive so far at the time of this writing.

[update 8/10] Mark DeYmaz is now blogging over at http://markdeymaz.typepad.com/