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In Provo, appearances can be deceiving.
“This is a beautiful community,” says David Gaskins. “Our nickname is Happy Valley. Every lawn is perfect. Every home is immaculate. But that’s the wild thing — Happy Valley is a sarcastic nickname because almost nobody is happy here.”
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David and Sara Gaskins are church planting missionaries in Provo, a town David describes as “the heartbeat and hub of the Mormon church.” In this city of 130,000 where only 0.5% of the population is evangelical Christian, everything revolves around the Mormon, or Latter-day Saint (LDS) church.
‘Legalism on steroids’
“Their system of belief is essentially legalism on steroids,” David Gaskins says. “They believe every single aspect of your life needs to be perfect before you can earn the love of God and that attitude of perfectionism influences everything here. Your marriage needs to be perfect; your kids need to be perfect; your career needs to be perfect. But behind all these people trying so hard to be perfect is pervasive lostness and sadness. This is a dark, dark city where the joy of the true gospel is not present.”
In what might be the most statistically unchurched city in all North America, it was fortunate for David and Sara that when they came here in 2019 to plant a church, they didn’t come alone.
“We knew it was going to be a tall order,” David says. “That’s why we’re such a fan of really healthy sending churches. We were sent here by Calvary Church in Englewood, Colorado, and for them, being a Sending Church was about so much more than just signing a piece of paper. They’ve been with us every step of the way. They invested in us before we came; they send mission teams out here all the time. I can call and text the pastors there any time I need to. They’ve just been an amazing support to us. I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like trying to plant a church in Provo without their support.”
Much to do
When they first arrived, the Gaskins did indeed have their work cut out for them.
In Provo, there are nearly 400 Mormon churches compared to only five evangelical churches. And their adopted hometown is not only home to Brigham Young University’s overwhelmingly Mormon population of 35,000 students, but also the location of the Mormon church’s missionary training center.
“Every single Mormon missionary you see knocking on doors and wanting to tell you about the Book of Mormon was trained here in Provo for six to eight weeks before they were sent to your hometown,” David says.
What eventually became Mosaic Church started, understandably, small and slow.
“In lots of other places, a new church can come together in one or two years,” Sara says. “But a church plant doesn’t just magically come together in Provo. The average time it takes someone to really leave the LDS church is seven years. And even if they start coming to our church and decided to follow Christ, still they’re baby Christians and they need help learning about the Bible. So what we have now is beautiful and wonderful, but it definitely didn’t happen fast.”
Mosaic Church grew slowly but surely because as it turns out, people who know the real Jesus stand out in Provo.
“When we just displayed the fruit of the Spirit, whether that was joy, peace, or kindness, that was incredibly attractive to this community because all they’d ever seen was fake.” David says. “But when people here started coming in contact with somebody who’d been actually transformed by the Holy Spirit, it would truly stop them in their tracks.”
A different feeling
That’s how Mosaic Church grew to be a congregation that’s now made up largely of young Provo residents who made the very costly decision to leave the Mormon church.
“When someone leaves the Mormon church here, it’s a really big deal,” David says. “It’s less about leaving a religion and more about leaving a community, and when you walk away from that community, you walk away from everything. We’ve had people get cut off from their family. We’ve had people lose their jobs. We’ve had people get kicked out of school. For me, it’s truly humbling. I’ve not lost half as much as some of the people at Mosaic have by coming to Christ.”
Now, David says, “this church is all many of these young people have.” Perhaps that’s why he and Sara say Mosaic’s Sunday morning worship feels different than anywhere else they’ve ever been.
“In this congregation, there’s just this passion I’ve not experienced at other places,” Sara says. “Every Sunday when I hear them sing, I cry because the Spirit is overflowing in that room. It’s almost like in the book of Acts when it talks about the early church. There’s such a hunger and a desire to know and worship the real Jesus. It’s incredible to see.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Tony Hudson and originally published by the North American Mission Board.
