Renaut van der Riet

If you want to get to know Renaut van der Riet, you’ll want to start by asking him about his family. Renaut loves to go zip lining with his eight kids through the backyard adventure course they built together. He loves snorkeling and tasting new foods with Brooke, his wife of twenty-five years, and he loves their family’s Saturday-morning waffle breakfast buffets. Some of his best memories are the adventures they have shared at the beach, in a raft riding down white-water rapids, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, or gathered in their living room reading Hinds Feet on High Places before bedtime.

Renaut is an avid movie watcher and a beekeeper. He loves poetry. He walks quickly and talks with his hands and his arms. He drinks a lot of coffee. And if you find yourself at his home, you’re likely to see him carrying heavy bags of food for the chickens or turning compost and tilling soil, because Brooke loves gardening.

He is also a pastor, church planter, entrepreneur, and community leader. In and out of each of these contexts, Renaut is passionate about the Gospel. He loves Jesus, the church, and doing justice.

As an outgrowth of this love and passion, Renaut and Brooke founded Mosaic Church in Winter Garden, Florida, in 2002. With a congregation now in the thousands, Mosaic has become a nationwide pacemaker for fostering and adoption and a sought-after model of how ministries can respond to children with special needs. Renaut’s wonder at the unfolding beauty of the Word of God has led the church on a chronological journey through the books of the Bible. He began preaching from Genesis chapter 1 thirteen years ago and expects to finish the Book of Revelation by 2033.

Renaut’s quest to bring hope to hard places has expanded his reach far beyond the walls of Mosaic. In 2009 he started Love Made Visible, a nonprofit organization that equips families, individuals, churches, and agencies to care for orphans and vulnerable children across the United States and around the world, including in Africa, Latin America, and China. The following year, he and Brooke founded Axum Coffee Company, a growing chain of coffee shops and restaurants whose goal is to fund justice-and-mercy initiatives. It is named after the city in Ethiopia from which they adopted four of their children.

Renaut’s first book, written with PastorServe’s Jimmy Dodd, was published by Moody in 2021. What Great Leaders Get Right is available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and all other major booksellers.