About Soma Grand Rapids

Family of Servant Witnesses

Staff and Elders

A Plurality of Leadership

Aaron Goodrich

Pastor and
Visionary Leader
aaron@somagr.com

Elders

As a church plant of the Soma Family of Churches we have a provisional elder board from the Soma Family. Eventually we will establish local elders from our community.

Anthony Raffa
Soma Grand Rapids Church | Grand Rapids, MI

Clarence Stamps II
Indwelling Church | Grand Rapids, MI

Mike Ely
Soma Detroit | Detroit, MI

Who We Are

The Gospel Informs Our Identity

Family

God is our Father and loves us, so we love one another as family.

God has always desired that his children would love one another in such a way that the world would know what he is like. Jesus said that those who live in his ways and obey his Father are truly his family. Through Jesus we believe we are children of God and brothers and sisters with each other. We show hospitality to one another and eat together regularly. We also invite others who are not yet family to spend time with us by sharing meals and caring for neighbors.

Genesis 12:1-3; John 1:12-13; Romans 12:10-16

Servants

Jesus is our Lord and served us so we have the freedom to be His servants.

Fully God and fully human, Jesus became a servant. We worship him by serving one another and serving in a specific area of our city. This means joyful submission to God and to one another as we serve. Now that Jesus has freed us from our slavery to sin, we are free to serve Jesus: the ultimate servant who freed us from our slavery to sin.

Matthew 20:25-28; 25:31-46; John 13:1-17; Philippians 2:5-11; 1 Peter 2:16

Witnesses

The Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us so that we are his witnesses in word and deed.

The Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God. What God is doing to us He wants to do through us. Jesus was sent into our neighborhood to reveal to us who God is and we are sent to the people of our city. The Spirit empowered Jesus in word and deed and the same Spirit empowers us to witness to Christ through his word and the works he has called us to.

John 1:14; 20:21; Colossians 1:19; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Romans 8

How We Live

B.L.E.S.S. gospel practices help us reflect Who God Is and What He Has Done.

God’s children are richly blessed to receive his Spirit as part of our inheritance and anticipate our future inheritance in him. Our father, Abraham, was blessed to be a blessing (Genesis 12:1-3) and showed generous hospitality. We are blessed to show hospitality through how we B.L.E.S.S. our neighborhoods and community.

Discipleship is leading people to increasingly submit all of life to the empowering lordship and presence of Jesus. We believe that discipleship happens in the every day stuff of life. Practically, we gather for two to three meals per week. These natural rhythms give us a framework to bless in all of life rather than filling our schedules with events.

B

Be Prayerful

Jesus teaches us to pray to our Father in Matthew 6. The first half of the Lords prayer is about loving our Father as He loves. The second teaches us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. As a family, we connect to our Father through prayer. We regularly pray together that our city would encounter the life-giving Jesus.

L

Listen

We listen to the Spirit of God to learn how to disciple others. We listen in our own lives and others to learn the false beliefs so that we can (witness) point everyone back to true belief in Jesus alone.

E

Eat

We learn together as a Family of Servant Witnesses through eating together regularly and inviting neighbors and co-workers to join us. One of the primary places of discipleship (learning) in the New Testament is around the meal.

S

Serve

In the same way that Jesus served us when we least deserved it, we serve others even when some might think they do not deserve it. Serving reveals what we worship and give our hearts to other than Jesus. Our desire is to serve and worship Jesus with all of our heart.

S

Story-formed

Everyone’s life is shaped by a dominant story. We take time to be shaped by God’s story. we regularly reacquaint ourselves with the Story by interacting with God’s Word. Jesus is the focus of God’s story and is meant to be the hero of our story. Our stories reform us best when they are informed by God’s ultimate story.

We will practically B.L.E.S.S. others through living as a missional family who has been blessed. This will involve eating meals together each week and inviting not-yet-believers to eat with us. We will serve neighbors together and show God’s love in tangible expression. We will pray together and study God’s story regularly. The time that we spend together will give us opportunities to listen and be able to identify false beliefs and witness (communicate and demonstrate) it more clearly to our neighbors.

What We Believe

Here are some distinguishing beliefs we hold as a church body.

Theological Distinctives

Gospel-Centered Theology

God is the initiator of Salvation and Jesus is the Hero. God doesn’t respond to us – we respond to God’s initiative and calling. He saves and secures us for salvation and we respond only because of and by his grace. Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Spirit are the center and fulfillment of our faith. It is through him, because of him and in him that we come to be God’s people, are transformed and have hope for final restoration.

Charismatic Pneumatology

We believe the Holy Spirit is alive and active in regeneration, empowerment and ongoing filling for the purposes of God in this world. We believe 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.

Missional Ecclesiology

We believe the church is the family of God sent by the Spirit to make disciples of Jesus to all nations throughout the world. We are saved by God’s power for God’s purposes to bring him glory in all things wherever we are. The church is always being sent by God to accomplish his mission.

Already-Not-Yet Eschatology

We believe the Kingdom of God was inaugurated in Jesus’ first coming and will be consummated in his second coming. We live in the in between where we can experience the reign of Jesus while longing for its completion as we also experience the reality that things are not yet fully as they will be within the new heaven and new earth. We acknowledge the variety of views within inaugurated eschatology and allow for this variety within our family.

Gospel Communities on Mission as our Primary Organizing Structure

We believe the most irreducible and effective structure for making disciples as the church is a Gospel Community on Mission (GCM)—aka Missional Community (MC). This is a smaller group of people who gather regularly and engage in everyday life on mission throughout the week with a commitment to reaching a particular people and place together with the goal of making disciples and multiplying and sending more GCMs.

Ordered Equality in Shared Ministry

We are complementarians in that we believe men and women are created in the image of God equally, yet with unique roles as family and church. We believe men and women are called to use their gifts fully in the ministry of the church under the leadership of biblically qualified elders. Because of this we see opportunities for men and women to preach, teach, and shepherd the community together while the role of elder is for qualified men.