Egg #10 - SOMA, Culver City

The Lord has a way of putting your life events in order so they make just the right sense. Soma, the last place we visited, provided a sort of synthesis of all the other places we have visited on our trip so far:

They understand the importance of having meals with gatherings like Church of the Sojourners.

They practice intentional and gracious hospitality like Riverbend Commons.

They focus on serving the neighborhood they are a part of like Harambee.

Of course, they take these values and enact them in a way that is unique to their body of believers and the area where they live. The folks of Soma meet together on Sundays as what they call the Expression: the body of believers loving God and loving the people of Culver City. One of the leaders shares a message, they take communion, and share a meal.

As you talk with people of Soma, the theme of story immediately emerges. They look at the story form of the Bible

-Creation [What is my purpose? Who am I?]

-Fall [What is keeping me from my purpose?]

-Hope/Redemption [Who or what is my Savior?]

-Restoration/New Creation [What is my new hope? What will my new reality look like?]

and teach members to not only see their life in the form of the story but also to listen to the story of those around them and help them to see how the Story of God intersects the story of whoever they are talking with.  Quickly, the importance of listening and intentional, consistent relationship becomes incredibly obvious.

During the week, they gather as missional communities. MC is a time where a few members of Soma gather together along with their neighbors for a meal and conversation. One family/house hosts, while another Soma member leads the time. At the MC we attended, it was clear that even the people who weren’t believers or a part of Soma were very much at home and comfortable with the stories of faith being lived by the other members…and with the fact that they share that faith in almost every other sentence. One of the members of the MC we visited is leaving to start a new MC in the neighborhood he and his new wife just moved to. In celebration of his last evening, the leader of the MC had everyone share how they had seen Christ in Patrick in the time they had known him. Everyone shared. And those who would self-profess to be non-believers (at this point) freely and willingly shared the Christ-traits they had seen in Patrick. It was amazing how they could identify and articulate Christ-traits without knowing Christ. Also amazing was how they repeated how inspired they were by those traits, which reinforced to us that God has indeed placed in us an ability to know what is right and what is wrong.

There is a final tier of the Soma community called DNA. It stands for discipleship, nurturing, and accountability. These are same-gender groups of 2-4 people who meet once a week or every other week to do just what DNA stands for; they disciple, nurture, and hold each other accountable. It is through DNA that new leaders are trained, supported and then sent out to lead their own DNA groups.

All this reaching out can seem overwhelming to some of us who already feel like our schedules are jammed. When we asked how they avoid burnout, their answer was as multifaceted as their approach to sharing the gospel is. DNA allows for new leaders to be trained up and given opportunities to train others. MC is a time of training Soma members how to do community dinner so they can further train new community members how to serve.  They seek to live out their name: Soma means body and they work to have every part of the body engaged in making the body run smoothly and helping it grow. It’s not just you being on mission by yourself. We all are on mission together, supporting and encouraging each other in every way.

Missionaries who are on mission without a support team are not as successful as those who either go with other people or who have a strong support team back home. America today has an inaccurate view of what church should be. Too many of us are on mission by ourselves. We burnout, become heretical and hypocritical without accountability, and miss out on living the way God Himself exists: in community.  This is complied with church being viewed as a consumable: I come on Sunday to consume good music, good teaching, my friends, and good coffee. Then I leave and go about doing my own mission, on my own, my way, my timing (with a healthy dose of God with my morning breakfast cereal).

As we sit here in Yosemite looking up a GIANT rock faces, Becca recounts high school mission trips that ended here with great fondness. What made those trips so meaningful was that the entire group was focused on the same mission and they were working at it together. That variety of people would never have bonded so closely under any other circumstance. But the combination of unified heart, focus, and time spent together, with laughter and fun woven throughout, proved to be just the glue that was needed. What if church was like that now? Not weeklong trips, life-long journies together? What if God has called each of us to take those around us, to unify our hearts and focuses on Him, looking to see His fingerprints of direction in the world around us, and set out together in that direction, inviting everyone we met to join us?

When Jesus left His disciples, His command was to GO and SHARE the gospel. Trip, the leader of the expression of Soma we visited, challenged us to really think like missionaries. If I’m a missionary and I know that God has called me to partner with some of my fellow body parts to invite others to be part of this body, then I will ask Him to open a door for me to move to the community we are reaching. I will be willing to go, no matter the cost, trusting that He will provide…in faith that He has already provided and will bless my obedience, because that’s what He does.

Below are a few pictures from the outing to the Santa Monica Pier we took with Trip his wife Jess, and their four delightful girls.

                       Their girls know no fear. They all petted the snake with no hesitation.

They also have a flair for the dramatic. If you look closely, you can see that they have taken the stockings generally used for trying shoes on and have converted them to face masks. Who knew one could have that much fun with a sock?

                 Best part of a wonderful day! Ice cream cookie sandwiches from Diddy Riese!