This is a guest post by Jeff Vanderstelt. He is a pastor at Soma Communities, an A29 church in Tacoma, WA. He is leader of leaders and a coach and trainer for church planters. His background includes music, business management, working with youth, training youth workers in North America and Europe and starting new churches.
“This is Jeff, that pastor I told you about that is not like a normal pastor,” Amy said as she introduced me to Clay. Clay and Christie had children who attended our local elementary with Amy’s children. Amy had told us many times that she didn’t believe what we did. However, she regularly introduced us to her friends thinking they might be interested.
We’d lived in the neighborhood for three years with the intent of bringing good news to this community, and that the syllables and sentences were meant to be enfleshed. We started by hosting a cookout every Friday night. At first we were told people didn’t do that in our neighborhood. However, the kingdom of God has the power to break in and create a new culture. It happened. Dinner parties became more normative, as did other celebrations.
