What's Soma? – Part I

Soma Waxahachie, what’s that mean? Is it an acronym? 

Next to, where’s your building, that’s probably the question that I get asked most often about our church. And if it’s not that, it might be, did you know that Soma is a muscle relaxer, or, …an intimate apparel store for women.

Yes, we know.

Soma is not an acronym but it does stand for something. Or better yet, it represents what we stand for as a church. 

In Paul’s letter to the disciples gathering in Ephesus, he writes, “And the Father put all things under Jesus’ feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22–23)  

See that word that I’ve emphasized for you, the word body in verse 23? That word, in the language that Paul originally wrote this letter, is the word soma. So soma in Greek means body in English. But pay attention to how Paul uses that word because it’s really important. He says that the church is the body of Jesus.

And that’s why we’ve taken the name Soma Waxahachie as a local gathered community of disciples in this city. We are Jesus’ body for Waxahachie. 

But there’s more to it than just that. Paul goes on to explain something about the body that ought to affect the way we think about ourselves as a church. 

He writes, “…his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” In other words, the fullness of Jesus fills up all of his body. So in the same way that Jesus filled his physical body he now also fills his church body, by means of the Holy Spirit. So when you think of the word church and what it means to be the body of Christ, you need to think of us as a community of believers who are filled with the fullness of Jesus. And that means that wherever we go as the body of Christ we take the presence of Jesus with us.

When we think about what it means to be the body of Christ for Waxahachie and to bring his presence to this city, we’re not just thinking about what happens on Sunday morning. We’re thinking about what happens in our Mondays thru Saturdays too. If we are to flood this city with the knowledge of the glory of Jesus by bringing his presence with us into our city, we won’t be very successful in accomplishing that if we’re only gathering as a community for two hours on Sunday mornings. So we are a church without walls, walking as Jesus walked, and gathering in missional communities throughout Waxahachie every day of the week.

That’s what we think of when we hear the name Soma.

Our name might sound a little funny and you might not even recognize it as representing the name of a church, but it represents us for who we are as a people gathered in Jesus’ name. We are the body of Jesus for our city. We aren't a building and we're not just a Sunday service. We are the church.

We are Soma Waxahachie.