Celebrate
We gather
together to celebrate God's extravagant blessings.
God calls people to
regularly celebrate his goodness and grace. We gather weekly in missional
communities and regularly as a larger family, to share stories and celebrate
all that God is doing in and amongst us. We invite everyone to these
celebrations as a way of displaying God's glory.
My wife and I helped out with a "National Night Out" neighborhood gathering last year, and we had 20-30 people. This year we had 120 nametags, and we ran out. We set up barricades on the street. We've lived there for three years, and it's been amazing to see the transformation, the community we have with our neighbors, and how we take care of each other. We wanted to celebrate that, join with them, serve them, and we wanted to meet any of the neighbors that we hadn't met already. Now we know the names of the people on our block and a few other blocks. It takes time to get to know people, and we've seen it grow. It's become a rhythm of our life now, not just a once a year party, as we talk to our neighbors regularly.
Another way we've gotten to know some guys from the neighborhood is our unofficial tobacco pipe club. Friends bought me a pipe a few years ago, and then we bought a neighbor a pipe for his birthday. After that, another friend bought the most expensive pipe he could to show us up! So we have gotten together a few random times, but we're hoping to make it a regular thing every month. One night we had six or seven people from other blocks too. The funny thing is, we've ended up talking about marriage almost every time we've gotten together. Several people have gotten back with their ex-spouses. It's not like I've planned to come talk about something, it's just happened. It's not hard to celebrate like this!
Todd – Lincoln District, Tacoma
I've been working with Step by Step for 10 years. I work with families that are on state medical help through their pregnancy and then the first year of their baby's life. We get to know these families well and try to begin doing things together so that the families feel they belong to something. Wednesday nights at the Soma downtown building we hold Life Skills classes for six weeks. It gets the moms out of the house, provides them with dinner, and helps them to deal with common feelings of isolation. We have a craft and a fun thing for the moms, too. Volunteers watch the children, and it's a good opportunity to celebrate the family, let moms share with other moms, and equip them with skills for taking home.
Besides working with Step by Step, we have five children of our own, and we really want them to see that birthdays are a celebration that can have a big impact. My son and his really good friend had started having birthday parties where people bring money or donations for something instead of birthday presents. Now my son who is eight has decided to join in with that. My boys and my husband went to Africa last year because my husband's sister is a missionary over there, so the boys decided to raise money for that orphanage at a great big shared birthday party. We made up flyers and gave them out to all the classmates, soccer teams, baseball teams, and we rented the Tukwila Community Center ball fields. It was an amazing event. Friends helped out that night, too, so it wasn't just my husband and I! There were about 60 people, and though some of the community and ball teams knew each other, they hadn't all gotten together like this before. The boys raised over $800 that day! I love that for the boys it wasn't all about a $10 toy that won't last. They were celebrating much more than just themselves and drawing the community into it as well.
Robin –Sea-Tac
When my wife and I moved to Tacoma, our primary way to get to know our neighbors was having a Sunday brunch. Some of our neighbors had never met each other, even though they had been living near one another for many years. We have Cambodian neighbors who were kind of absent at first in the Sunday brunches. They said we were good neighbors because we did something with our yard, so we could tell they were watching what we did. I asked them if they were born in the United States, which I knew they were not, but that opened them up. I know a little bit of Cambodian history, so we talked. I asked if they had escaped from Cambodia, and they said yes. "Tell us the story," we said, and got out the map. The man sort of woke up; he doesn't speak English too well, but as soon as we asked that, he was pointing all over the map. They came to the second brunch late, so I had a chance to introduce them to everyone else and say, "We feel so privileged to live beside them because they are really heroic people. It's just a real honor to be with them." They even brought along their university age son. He hung out for the last hour of the meal. A week later he was knocking on my door at quarter to 11pm. He said, "I would like you to come to my graduation at the University of Washington." My wife and I dropped everything and went to his graduation. He introduced us as "Don and Bunny, Parents of the Day." After we came home, Bunny thought to throw him a graduation party. At the party, I asked to offer him a blessing, and I got a good chance to pray for him. The connection with this family continues – we trade fruit and thank yous. The friendship is developing. We're thankful for the chance to celebrate who our neighbors are.
Don – Proctor District, Tacoma
One of the things that I love about being part of Soma is the regular celebrations and partying we are always a part of. About a year after I became part of the “family”, Soma had a HUGE party at the Brickyard on the south side of Tacoma. My wife and I came a little early and brought a couple of our friends to meet everyone else. Aaron Spiro and his band was still checking their sound and getting ready to rock the party. They sounded great!
I remembered coming to the Brickyard for a birthday party when Soma was just getting started and pretty much everyone who was a part of Soma back then came that night to celebrate Devonna’s birthday. That was about 35 people. I was wondering how many folks would end up coming to this Soma celebration? Over 200 showed up that night as our awesome community enjoyed each other, great food and a few micro-brews. What a party we had! The Brickyard was PACKED and the staff there all loved having Soma there. Our people were great tippers and we were invited to come back and have all of our parties there. One of the waitresses was crying at the end of the night and asking who we all were. I thought that was cool.
Caesar (one of the Elders) talked that night about why we were throwing such a big celebration. He reminded us that as the family of God we will get to live forever and show the world what God is really like. This should give us a great reason to celebrate! He showed a video highlighting a little bit of stuff from each of Soma’s missional communities all over Tacoma. That was hilarious, but really inspiring too. How different all the groups looked, but they were all working out what it means to be on mission together. Pretty cool.
I am always looking forward to the next big celebration that Soma will have. It is probably coming soon… :0)
Frank - Stadium District, Tacoma
