The story of God, as told in the Bible, reveals the missional record of who God is and what God is doing in, through, and for the world. It is the true story of the whole world. Discipleship is participating in that story and allowing it to shape your entire life.

When making disciples through community and while on mission, we root disciples first in their new identity in Christ. We believe knowing who you are leads to how you live. If we reverse this, we’ve created legalism apart from the powerful gift of grace to make us new.

We pursue a reliance on the power, wisdom, and presence of the Holy Spirit for all we do. We don’t look to models, gifts, or tools to transform lives, but look to the work of the Spirit operating in us and through us in everything we do.

We believe the context for disciples to be made, to grow into maturity, and sent out on mission is within community. When the Apostle Paul made disciples he did it as part of a community-on-mission. After people responded in faith to the Gospel the first thing that he did was to form them into a community so that they could learn and submit to Jesus’ commands. As they learned as a community to love as Jesus loved they drew others to obedience and to faith.

We strive to ask and answer the following questions – What type of leadership was modeled in the New Testament? What principles did they base their leadership on? What are the implications for us in our culture today?

Leadership in the New Testament was based on teams of co-workers rather than exalted individuals. These teams were made up of both genders and valued various giftings.

Leadership in the New Testament was based on service rather than lording over others. The New Testament shied away from title and privilege and focused instead on role and mutual honoring.

Soma believes therefore that leadership should be team-based, include both genders, value various giftings, and look to serve the church rather than gain status or privilege.

We pursue multiplication because we see it in the New Testament. God is a missionary God and we are His people – our community is saved and given gifts so that we could be a valuable part of making disciples who make disciples.

In order for multiplication to happen churches need to be part of a community of churches who are pursuing Gospel Saturation together. They also need to have a simple, reproducible discipleship pathway that is seen by both the leadership and the membership.

As we do the work of being missionaries to our communities in our generation we acknowledge that our work carries on in the great traditions of the missionaries/apostles in years gone by. Some of these missionaries left all they knew, learned a new language and culture, and became Irish, or German, or Chinese, or African, in order to reach a community with the Gospel. Others figured out how to reach people in their family, neighborhood, school, or co-workers. Regardless of the distance traveled all of us ultimately imitate our savior, Jesus, who lived as a sent-one in order to reconcile the world to its creator.

We don’t believe we’ve arrived. In fact, the process of discipleship is growing in repentance and belief as we follow Jesus. We humbly walk in repentance as a way of life that leads to changes in how we behave, how we lead, and how we speak.

We pursue partnerships, connections, and genuinely shared ministry with other churches, organizations, and nonprofits. We choose the kingdom over logos. Regional leaders particularly bear the responsibility to work for peace and cooperation between Soma churches and other believers in the region.