Last week I (matt) had the opportunity to go to Soma School up in Tacoma, WA.
It was a great time of learning, doing, and dreaming and I want to Thank GSCC so much for making it possible for me to be there!!!
Learning...
Essentially they immersed 30 or so church planters into some killer training on how to start a missional church based primarily on small groups that live out some solid community and reach out into their neighborhoods to include others into that community. It was some solid teaching and fascinating methodology, but super challenging as to how the church should relate to the world and live on mission in it.
One of my big take aways was that, "we need to live in a way that demands a gospel answer." This really made me think how I need to be so radically shaped by the gospel that my life is so different and so other worldly that people want to know why I do what I do. That I might actually do what the Bible says and put others and their needs above my own.
Doing...
Part of Soma School was experiential as we got to got to live with people who are a part of their church community for the week. We also got to go to their home groups and see what they do. They even gave us an opportunity to serve with them as they went to a park to volunteer some time making it look prettier. Andrej, Terry, and I got to help eradicate some blackberry bushes. It was good to help restore an area of the park that hadn't been worked on in 25 years. I think God loves to make things new and restore beauty to brokenness, so we enjoyed joining in a tangible way that day.
(its hard to see but short sleeve shirts were a bad idea when fighting blackberries)
Dreaming...
I had the privilege of hanging out with Terry and Anrej, who both came from Slovenia for this training. It was amazing to talk about the things we were learning and how they could be implemented in Slovenia. Honestly, I learned so much just listening to those two talk about how to reach SLO and hearing their hearts for that country. I can't wait to serve alongside and learn from men like that.
