Our Story

Our church started with a dream – the dream of becoming a truly missional church. We wanted to be a church not just for ourselves but for those around us, so that God would be glorified. We had a sense that, ‘This can’t be it… this can’t be all there is in the Christian life.’ We were yearning for something better, something more. 

We realised that many Christians share this dream. We hear about the early church in Acts 2. They were devoted to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship and prayer and to eating in one another’s homes throughout the week. They were devoted to sharing all things in common and God added to their numbers daily those who were being saved… We hear that and think, ’Could we be a bit more like that? Could we experience more of that?’

So what happened was, we set out to see if we could discover a better way to be a church on mission. We didn’t know what that would look like or how that could happen. We were simply saying, ‘Jesus show us.’ We were also saying, ‘Let’s pursue this together?’ 

So we started with a large team of people and we set out on this journey. We began Soma Blue Mountains … and then Soma Australia … and we discovered that this is something that is bubbling up all over the world!

This is what we discovered:

Jesus

We came to believe that above all else, we had to be absolutely centred on Jesus and the Gospel. We wanted to worship him by imitating his life and ministry. We realised that both our theology and practice should be relentlessly Christ-centred. He’s our model, mentor, hero, Mediator, Saviour, Judge, King and Ruler of All. He’s our everything! All of our values flow from what we understand about his character, concerns, and the shape of his mission.

Gospel Communities on Mission

We came to believe that the most potent way of being church was very small. ‘The church released’ – not a big gathering where people come and watch one person – with many centrally organised programs to attend. There’s a place for that, and God uses that, but we believed Jesus was calling us to something different – something radically different in terms of releasing and empowering people.

We got excited about this idea of small micro-churches, called ’Gospel Communities on mission.’ A group of people who worship and follow Jesus together – who give themselves to Jesus as the leader of their lives and have deep relational community with each other. A collection of people who are committed to the mission of God together in one form or another. That’s church in its most basic and potent form.

We said, what if we started forming these, inspiring these, and then serving these small ‘micro churches’ on mission… and saying, ‘We’ll just be a family of those.’ The heart behind this is what we wanted to release… we wanted to release the most powerful form of the church, the most relational form of church, the most transformative form of the church… which is this small version of the church.

Bigger Community

Thirdly, we didn’t want to give up all the advantages of being a part of a bigger community. I mean, if you look at churches with 200 or more, they have a lot of money to work with, because they work together. They have things like facilities and theologically trained staff. One tiny micro church can’t provide all those resources.

So we though, ’We want both. We want to be part of both worlds.’ We want the advantage and strength of these small micro communities as an expression of church but we also wanted to be a part of a bigger family, where we get things that we need (like facilities). A church where we co-opt together to get things that we couldn’t otherwise have… funding, that kind of thing.

Everyone Gets to Play

So we’re supportive of the traditional church. And at the same time we’re a bit of a critique of the church as spectacle; as a thing that people just watch. We’re a critique of the church being a thing that others organise and we just attend – or serve on a roster. 

We took on the motto of, ‘We don’t just go to church, we are the church.’ If you’re part of Soma, hopefully it’s because you want to play. It’s because you want to get in the game. Church is ultimately not just something you attend. Church is a living community in a dynamic relationship with God, led by him into a watching, dying, needy, broken world, called to heal, to change, to redeem with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

That’s what we are trying to do – to empower, equip, and send people out to be the church among every pocket of people that we can work among… where everyone is an active part of that.

What we’ve discovered is: our version of church is hard… our way of doing it is harder… but it’s beautiful and it’s worth it!