HOW DOES SOMA PLANT CHURCHES?
Soma is committed to planting missional communities and churches amongst the unreached until every man, woman, and child has a daily encounter with Jesus in word and deed. Missional Communities are the seed form of church planting. We believe in the Small/Big Principle of faithfulness (Lk 16:10)…those faithful to make disciples in a smaller Missional Community are ready to be trained for a larger disciple-making enterprise. We are committed to making disciples of all nations, mobilizing everyday people, training faithful disciple-makers church planting, and sending teams of missionaries to start new churches of missional communities among the unreached.
Serial Church planter and trainer Peyton Jones has observed that much of what passes as church planting in N.America is actually “church starting.” Even more descriptively we may term this “church service starting” which increasingly has proven to be less evangelistically effective with modern generations. Jones makes the following distinction, Church planting means starting with the seeds of the gospel itself and letting them grow organically. Reach the lost with the gospel. Church planting starts with the lost. The seed of the plant is the gospel itself. When those seeds are sown and watered, the fruit of that will be a church plant. When you start with the lost, you start where God starts. That was Jesus’s mission, after all, to seek and save the lost. Church starts, by contrast, is beginning with the church in mind, which neither Paul nor Jesus ever did. Both of them just started with the gospel and people. Churches begin naturally when we engage people in meaningful spiritual conversations that center on the gospel.
To that end the Soma Family of Churches — in collaboration with To Every Tribe, a global missions agency that excels in training for Apostolic Region reaching church planting. We mobilize local Soma Churches to train proven disciple-makers to be sent as a team to plant churches that will partner to reach regions. Our prayer is to help potential pastors and planters thrive in your unique ministry giftings, make and mature disciples in your context, and start and lead sustainable, multiplying churches for the sake of gospel saturation.
We see church planting as an integrated step within the broader Missionary Pathway of the Soma Family of Churches.
- Telos – Begin with the end in mind: I Tim 1:5 The Goal of our Instruction is Love
- Be a Disciple (building on Gospel foundations we are becoming mature in love)
- Making Disciples in Missional Community (life on Life, in community on mission)
- Multiplying MC’s + Coaching (Expression Leadership)
- Church Planting (Soma Church Plant Residencies)
- Establishing and Strengthening the Local Church (Greek “Storidzo” in Acts – Soma Strengthening – Strong Church + Strong Leader)
- Apostolic Teams leading Areas towards greater multiplication
- The Goal of our Instruction is Love – multiplying communities filled with disciples mature in love.
We network churches to reach regions in a coordinated way. We believe that local churches plant churches. Area coordination amongst churches can lead to even strong outcomes when done in skillful way.
Resident planters in training need apostolic fathers in the spirit of Paul described in 2 Timothy 3:10-11. We train with D.E.E.P.E.R immersive training experiences as the backbone to ensure planters are practicing, getting exposed and developing along the way.
We train in mission, for mission. Life-on-Life, Life-in-Community, Life-on-Mission. Sitting in a classroom is cross purposes with doing the work of church multiplication in mission. We utilize the proven Apostolic 8 Phases in Pioneer Church Planting developed by Steve Leston from To Every Tribe.
We send missionary teams with examined, complimentary giftings. Jesus and the NT Apostles who followed His example sent out missionaries in teams. Perhaps the Enemy’s greatest victory in recent memory has been the pastor-centered, pulpit-centered, Sunday-centered church. The NT present APEST diverse equippers who train and mobilize the entire church to make disciples that make disciples in the everyday stuff of life.