Mosaic Community Church – Jeannette, PA

Jeannette is a city located about 20 miles southeast of Pittsburgh that was built around the glass industry, lovingly nicknamed “Glass City.” During its height, it had four glass factories that were producing upwards of 80% of the world’s glass. It had an impressive downtown with beautiful architecture and an amusement park to which people would travel from all around, and where it is reported the Three Stooges got their start. When foreign competition drove the glass industry out of Jeannette, it collapsed the economy, and Jeannette has been in decline ever since.  There are areas in the city today, like West Jeannette where our family lives, that have poverty rates as high as 34%. When we moved into the community over 10 years ago, we recognized quickly that the social structure that typically forms in an under-resourced community to serve people in need did not exist in Jeannette. We have big city problems without the big city resources. While there are still some signs of life and small sparks of hope for change, largely the residents of Jeannette are suffering with lack of opportunity, resources, and most significantly, hope. We believe the fuel that will set ablaze the hope for change in Jeannette is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our vision is to be a cross-cultural church that visibly demonstrates the power of the gospel to not only reconcile us to God, but also to reconcile people to people, and people groups to people groups, even across racial, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic lines. We believe God loves cultural differences and we want to embrace and celebrate these in all that we do. We also want to reflect God’s heart for the poor. But we are not happy with people remaining in poverty. Our goal is to move people from a place of need to development. We think the way to do that is to include them into the life of the church.

A significant part of our hope for Jeannette lies in our greatest asset, the potential of our young people to be the next generation of community leaders. Our vision is to invest in our children and youth, to raise up a generation of leaders with a love for Jesus and love for their community, and that love is greater than their desire to leave. Our goal is that they would see taking up their cross and following Jesus as sacrificing greater opportunities elsewhere to serve this community by being the next community, business, school, government, and church leaders here. Thank you for your support and prayer as we seek to see God glorified in our City.