Soma

+ St John's...

Soma's history starts with the people of St John's North Ryde realising the way for the Kingdom of God to grow in the Ryde Area is to plant churches. They started to pray for a church planter to plant in the Ryde area.

 + Pete and Audrey Hughes...

While they were praying, Peter and Audrey were thinking about what they would do in terms of the next phase of their life. Peter had worked with AFES  since 1999, but they had decided to do something as a family and were looking for other options.

It was not long before they saw that God was closing all the options for them except church planting. After seeing an ad in a Christian periodical, Pete talked with the minster of St John's, John Chappell and a partnership was formed where St John's agreed to employ Pete as a church planter.

+ Pete, Audrey, and friends

In Feb 2009 Pete and Audrey invited people to have a lunch with them and see who was interested in joining them. Of the group that met, a team of 13 was formed. This team met weekly to pray, discuss what the church should be like, reflect on what the Bible was saying and what people who didn't want to go to church were saying about church. After some time of tossing ideas around we came up with the name Soma. It is the Greek New Testament word for 'body' since the church is described as the 'body of Christ'. We had a team, some money and all we needed now was somewhere to meet.

+ Soma finds a Home (-a)

After looking at a number of places: like schools, RSLs, function centres we saw the Ranch Hotel as a possible place to meet. We were already to start on the 6th September, 2009 but a few weeks beforehand the Ranch decided they did not want an ongoing booking, so we were back to square 1. 

Another church had been meeting in the Community Room of Macquarie Shopping Centre. They moved out at the end of July and so a great space had been made available and all that was left was for Soma to launch publicly on the 20th of September. As for what's next...come and find out!

All the stuff we discussed and prayed about in all these meetings is now forms our gatherings and communities, and "the 4M's" which you could be a part of!