Jesus
Chief Shepherd | Lead Pastor
ELDERS
Adam Sloggett
Vision, Preaching, Theology
John Grechus
Shepherding
Mike Walsh
Elder Emeritus
Storyformed way
living within God’s story of redemption
EVERYONE LOVES A GOOD STORY
There is a lot of confusion about what the Bible is and isn’t. First things first, the Bible is a collection of books written over a long time by many different authors. We believe that the Spirit inspired them to write each of their writings, and we know that each book (and even parts of books) where meant to be read differently. To put it simply, the Bible is a brilliant literary work. The Bible isn’t just a great literary work, though; it’s 6 six-act story, and we are living in this story today!
Below is a primer for understanding how to read the Bible as a story.
What would the world look like if it were the way it is supposed to be?
The story begins with one God who created everything and everything he made was good, right and perfect. He placed humans in a garden at the center of His creation. God called these people to be servants who would reflect his goodness as they lovingly cultivated the world under God’s loving care and protection.
If God created the world good, right and perfect, why is there so much evil, wrong, and brokenness?
Rather than trusting God’s goodness and greatness, the humans chose rebellion against God, serving themselves instead of God. The consequences were massive as the entire creation fell under a curse. Sin, like a parasite, entered into God’s good creation and began eating away. God’s good creation fell further and further into despair. The people who were supposed to lovingly cultivate went further into hatred and violence and selfishness.
What would God do to sort out this mess?
God gave a promise that He would deal with the problem of sin and death that were infecting His good creation. He called one family to be his servants demonstrating and declaring His good reign. This family became a great nation charged to carry this blessing to every other nation. He rescued… them over and over and over again. But they continually rebelled until finally God let them go. Years turned into decades, decades turned into centuries. The people dreamed and hoped for the day when God would return, and all creation would be restored.
Would God ever return and fulfill his promises? When and how and through whom would God rescue his people and his creation?
Jesus was God’s servant who would straighten out the mess, rescue his people, and carry the blessing to all the other nations. If Jesus was the one to bring redemption, that meant the other powers weren’t and they didn’t like that. Jesus was killed on a cross, bearing the sin of the world in his flesh. But two days later, Jesus was raised to life. The long awaited restoration had dawned!
If the restoration meant that everything was again good, right and perfect, why is there still so much evil, wrong, and brokenness?
The story wasn’t over yet. That the killed and raised Jesus was King over all the earth was good news and must be announced to the whole world. Jesus sent his followers (church) out into the world to be servants who would demonstrate and declare this good news. They were to live together as a foretaste of what has already dawned and will soon by fully revealed.
But isn’t the end of the story that we go up to heaven and live forever?
Jesus will return one day at the end of the story. He will put an end to all the evil, wrong, and brokenness once and for all, finally and fully. He will win. He will rule. He will bring restoration, and the humans will finally be able to serve the creation and reflect God’s goodness and greatness to the world again forever.
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Gospel saturation so that every man woman and child has a daily encounter with Jesus in word and/or deed.
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We are a family of missionary servants being disciples who make disciples for His fame.
DEFINITION OF A DISCIPLE: Someone who is learning to increasingly submit ALL of life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
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We believe the gospel is the good news of what God has graciously accomplished for sinners through the sinless life, sacrificial death, and bodily resurrection of his Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, namely our forgiveness from sin and complete justification before God; this gospel is also the foundation for our confidence in the ultimate triumph of God’s kingdom and the consummation of his purpose for all creation in the new heavens and new earth.
This gospel is centered in Christ, is the foundation for the life of the Church, and is our only hope for eternal life; this gospel is not proclaimed if Christ’s penal substitutionary death and bodily resurrection are not central to our message.
This Gospel is not only the means by which people are saved, but also the truth and power by which people are sanctified; it is the truth of the Gospel that enables us to genuinely and joyfully do what is pleasing to God and to grow in progressive conformity to the image of Christ.
The salvation offered in this gospel message is received by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone; no ordinance, ritual, work, or any other activity on the part of man is required in order to be saved.
(Mark 1:1; Luke 24:46-47; John 3:16-18; Romans 1:16-17; Romans 1:18-25; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 2:2; 15:1-4; 2 Corinthians 4:1-6; 9:13; Galatians 1:6-9; Ephesians 1: 7-10; Colossians 1: 19-20; 2 Timothy 1:8-14; 2 Peter 3: 11-13; Jude 3-4; Revelation 21-22)
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We affirm that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, not on the basis of foreseen faith but unconditionally, according to his sovereign good pleasure and will.
We believe that through the work of the Holy Spirit, God will draw the elect to faith in his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, graciously and effectually overcoming their stubborn resistance to the gospel so that they will most assuredly and willingly believe.
We also believe that these, the elect of God whom he gave to the Son, will persevere in belief and godly behavior and be kept secure in their salvation by grace through faith.
We believe that God’s sovereignty in this salvation neither diminishes the responsibility of people to believe in Christ nor marginalizes the necessity and power of prayer and evangelism, but rather reinforces and establishes them as the ordained means by which God accomplishes his ordained ends.
(John 1:12-13; 6:37-44; 10:25-30; Acts 13:48; 16:30-31; Romans 3-4; 8:1-17,31-39; 9:1-23; 10:8-10; Ephesians 1:4-5; 2:8-10; Philippians 2:12-13; Titus 3:3-7; 1 John 1:7,9)
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The Holy Spirit is fully God, equal with the Father and Son, whose primary ministry is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. He also convicts unbelievers of their need for Christ and imparts spiritual life through regeneration (the new birth).
The Spirit permanently indwells, graciously sanctifies, lovingly leads, and empowers all who are brought to faith in Christ so that they might live in obedience to the inerrant Scriptures.
The model for our reliance upon the Spirit and our experience of his indwelling and empowering presence is the Lord Jesus Christ himself who was filled with the Spirit and entirely dependent upon his power for the performance of miracles, the preaching of the kingdom of God, and all other dimensions of his earthly ministry.
The Holy Spirit who indwelt and empowered Christ in like manner indwells and empowers us with spiritual gifts he has bestowed for the work of ministry and the building up of the body of Christ. All of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are still available today, but not one of them in particular is required to give evidence of the baptism or filling of the Spirit. The gifts are divine provisions central to spiritual growth and effective ministry and are to be eagerly desired, faithfully developed, and lovingly exercised according to biblical guidelines.
(Matthew 3:11; 12:28; Luke 4:1, 14; 5:17; 10:21; John 1:12-13; 3:1-15, 34; 14:12; 15:26-27; 16:7-15; Acts 2:14-21; 4:29-30;10:38; Romans 8:9; 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 12:7-13; 12:28-31; 14:1-33; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Galatians 3:1-5; Ephesians 1:13-14; 5:18)
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The kingdom of God is any place or person where the rule and reign of Jesus Christ is expressed and experienced. We believe Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God in his bodily ministry on the earth and continues to establish it by his Spirit through his body, the church, today.
We live in between the inauguration and consummation of Jesus’ Kingdom. Presently, the Church serves as a foretaste of the future reality when all will come under Christ as Head. As the Church submits to and serves Christ today, the world gets to see and experience a preview of the future under the full rule and reign of Jesus Christ.
The consummation of the Kingdom will be fulfilled when Jesus returns.
(Mark 1:15: Luke 17:20-21; Ephesians 1:10; 22-23; Revelation 20-21)
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Both men and women are together created in the divine image and are therefore equal before God as persons, possessing the same moral dignity and value, and have equal access to God through faith in Christ.
Men and women are together the recipients of spiritual gifts designed to empower them for ministry in the local church and beyond. God’s intent for the church is for both men and women to be encouraged and equipped to minister and serve in accordance with the gifts He has given them.
In the home, both husbands and wives are responsible to God for spiritual nurture and vitality, but God has given to the man primary responsibility as the head of the household along with his wife in accordance with the servant leadership and sacrificial love modeled by Jesus Christ.
The Elders (plural) of each local church have been granted authority under the headship of Jesus Christ to provide oversight, set an example of what is normative for the church and serve the church through prayer and equipping. The office of Elder is restricted to men who are an example of what a godly man looks like leading a household.
(Genesis 1:26-27; 2:18; Acts 18:24-26; 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 5:22-33; Colossians 3:18-19; 1 Timothy 2:11-15; 3:1-7; Titus 2:3-5; 1 Peter 3:1-7)
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The Church is the people of God, saved by the God’s power for God’s purposes in this world. We follow the logical flow of the Gospel by answering the following four questions from the Scriptures:
Who is God? (Being)
What has He done? (particularly in Christ) (Doing)
Who are we? (The Church) (Being)
How should we live? (Doing)
The first three questions are biblical indicatives (or statements of fact). The fourth question consists of biblical imperatives that identify God’s intent or commands for His church.
The order of Scripture and makes clear that God’s being informs His doing. His doing informs our being. Our being informs our doing. The order matters and the implications are significant. Not the least of which, in response to “Who are we?” we come to discover We Are The Church. We don’t Go To Church. This is not semantics. It’s ontological. Along these lines, Soma Churches emphasize the following three Gospel Identities.
We are…
Family – God is our Father, so we love others like brothers and sisters.
Servants – Jesus is our King, so we serve the least of these as Jesus served us.
Missionaries – The Holy Spirit is our power to be witnesses to Jesus in word and deed.
The Scriptures reveal several more identities of the church such as: Saints, Beloved, the Bride, the Body (or Soma in Greek), which when emphasized, bring out the rich dimensions of what God has created in Christ. We intentionally teach this biblical, theological framework:
to be biblical, keeping God and the Gospel functionally central in our churches
to emphasize being before doing as a guard against legalism and activism
to emphasize our identity is both individual and collective
to clarify for the church who We Are from God’s perspective, keeping us from a litany of errors conceptually and practically as we seek to be faithful in worship and discipleship.
(Matthew 20:25-28; 25:31-46; 28:16-20; John 1:12-14; 13:1-17; 20:21-22; Acts 1:8; Romans 8:14-17; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Ephesians 1:3-10; 2:10; Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Peter 2:9-12; 1 John 3:1; 4:7-12)
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Soma Churches are committed to making disciples in Missional Communities. Missional Communities are a central environment for us to Be The Church as the priesthood of believers.
Disciples of Jesus increasingly submit to Him in all of life, are being changed by Him, obey Him, and teach others to do the same. Discipleship is the process of bringing all of life under the lordship and empowering presence of Jesus Christ.
In order to accomplish the mission of making disciples, Missional Communities create and environment where life-on-life, life-in-community, and life-on-mission can occur.
Life-on-life. Being together in the everyday allows for visibility and accessibility. We see each other’s lives in the everyday stuff so that people know what it looks like to follow Jesus in all of life. With familiarity and accountability, we are able to assess and encourage growth in discipleship.
Life-in-community. One on one discipleship will lead to a disciple looking like the one who discipled them. Community discipleship will lead to disciples looking more like Jesus as he works through the diverse people and gifts in his body. Community is also the context in which we care for each other as a good family and live out the one-another passages of Scripture (e.g. bear one another’s burdens, pray for one another, submit to one another, etc.)
Life-on-Mission. Mission reveals areas of life that need repentance and ensures we are equipping people to make disciples who make disciples. In order to lead people to see all of life as worship and discipleship, we must equip disciples to engage the everyday with Gospel intentionality–doing what they would normally do differently in light of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.
When a discipleship environment maintains a faithful tension in regards to Gospel/Scriptural truth, community, spiritual disciplines, accountability and mission, we see the fruitful advance of the Gospel. This looks like evangelism and edification, new believers coming to trust in Jesus, and maturing believers being conformed to the image of Christ.
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God has reconciled all peoples into a multiethnic family in Christ (Eph 2:11-22). God has also given us a ministry of reconciliation. This means we follow Jesus’ humble example in the Incarnation. Jesus emptied Himself and came to our turf and communicated on our terms so the Gospel could be communicated without cultural hindrance. Soma Churches attempt to remove any unnecessary cultural offenses to the Gospel as we seek to be a welcoming community for all-comers in the places God has sent us.
Every team of leaders and cultural context is different. God will grant each group a unique combination of capacity, calling and gifting that suits the context he sends them to for the work He calls them to do there. Just like every family member has things in common while expressing their commonalities in unique ways, Soma expects to see our common convictions expressed with great diversity and contextual consideration. To reveal this beautiful theological reality in a North American context, we intentionally pursue a multiethnic expression of the church that approaches the diversity of the average public school in our context.
We also believe we are responsible neither to retreat from our culture nor to conform to it. Instead, we are to engage culture boldly with humility and through the Spirit and the truth of the Gospel as we seek its transformation and submission to the lordship of Christ.
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The Soma Family of Churches is committed to the pursuit of Gospel Saturation in North America and beyond until we see every man, woman, and child have a daily encounter with Jesus in word and deed. We believe the local church is God’s means for bringing this about. We see God’s heart for unity in the church when we observe Jesus’ prayer in John 17, and we desire to press into God’s desires. We observe the Apostle Paul’s “concern for all the churches,” evident in both the content and tone of his letters, and this global concern was a powerful force used by God in building the early Church. Finally, we recognize that Gospel Saturation is too big (i.e. every man, woman and child) for any one church, or family of churches, to tackle so we eagerly pursue Kingdom Collaboration with other partner churches, networks, ministries, nonprofits and individuals. For all these reasons we believe it right and good to care about all of God’s church and not just our church or family of churches.
The Soma Family pursue’s partnership with other organizations that adhere to Christian orthodoxy. Each city is unique. Leaders in each context prayerfully discover areas where partnership increases strength and fruitfulness. Among them may be shared commitments like: pastoral connection events for building relationships and trust, centralized justice initiatives, sharing resources (e.g. facilities, sound equipment, etc.), city-wide prayer gatherings, or church-based theological education (Porterbrook, Antioch/BiLD, Surge, etc.).
(John 17; 2 Cor 11:28; Eph. 1:22-23; Phil 2:1-2; Col. 1:3, 27-28; Gal 2:10)
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“The church is reformed and always [in need of] being reformed according to the Word of God” (Van Lodenstein). The passive verb phrase “always being reformed” speaks to the Spirit’s work through the Word of God to bring about greater faithfulness and fruitfulness. We are always on the receiving end of God’s self-revelation, and because we see through a glass dimly, we need help from the Scriptures, the Spirit, our contemporaries, and other saints throughout church history to help us get it right. We aim to have the humility to admit when we have gotten it wrong and to turn. Michael Horton has observed that the phrase,“The church is reformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God….keeps us from making tradition infallible but equally from imbibing the radical Protestant obsession with starting from scratch in every generation.” Practically, this looks like taking time as elders to evaluate our Family of Churches, to learn from others, and to make adjustments as necessary. When sin is involved, this could look like the the Soma servant leadership team, the Soma board, or Soma elders repenting publicly of ways we haven’t trusted God or loved well.
