We are Sozo

Sozo Communities started when I, Jason Heim, started wondering if this was it. Was I living the radical life that Jesus had called me to or was there something more? Jesus expressed that radical calling in Matthew 10:38 when He said, “…anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” I quickly reassured myself thinking, “how much more radical can you get than full-time ministry?” and yet a growing discontentment continued to well up in my soul. I was intrigued by the stories of radical discipleship I heard from missionary friends. Charles Spurgeon said, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” I realized that I had spent a good portion of 18 years of ministry so busy with church work that I didn’t have margin in my schedule for lost people. As a result of this growing discontentment, I came to realize that God has called each one of his disciples to be missionaries. Orienting my life around the mission of Jesus was the answer I was looking for. I left my established church ministry to start a network of house churches where I could spend less time in an office and more time training believers to make disciples and plant churches.

Satan must have been less than thrilled with our new commitment because one month after we started our 7-year-old daughter ended up contracting the H1N1 Swine Flu, which was similar to the Coronavirus. When her fever spiked at 104.9 and we couldn’t bring it down, we rushed her to the hospital. After a week on a ventilator, antibiotics and treatments my daughter was worse than when we arrived. We knew that this could be the end for our precious girl and we were really struggling. But we knew that even in the midst of the worst storm, God was good. We offered our little girl up to God and told Him that we would still follow Him even if He decided to take her. Through God’s blessing my daughter slowly recovered after spending almost a month in the hospital.

My brother-in-law is a fire fighter and one of his colleges wrote a story about my daughter for their newsletter. The story picked up so much traction that our local Fox news station heard about it and asked us if they could run a story. They sent a news crew to interview us at the hospital. Then the local ABC news station asked to do a story. We found out later that the story was broadcast nationally and even featured in a London newspaper. When our local small town newspaper wrote a follow-up story, they told us that 60,000 people read it within 24 hours. Through this coverage, we connected with a lot of firefighters. When we finally came home from the hospital the firefighters organized a parade for us - 12 fire trucks, classic cars, motorcycles and a news crew. As we drove home, people lined the streets holding “welcome home” signs for our daughter. At our home we found a couple hundred people gathered to celebrate our return. Over 183,000 people watched the video of my daughter’s parade on YouTube. Because of this spotlight on our family, we connected with the group of firefighters that organized the parade. In Genesis 50:20 Joseph said, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” That is exactly what God did through this situation. After returning home, we started our first Missional Action Group with those firefighters and within a few months the group grew from 5 to about 30 adults. We didn’t have room for everyone in our home. So we started a new group and a few of them joined the second group and then a third and a fourth. Finally, God gave us a building free of charge that we did not ask for or seek as the headquarters for our church planting network. Our hope is that God will continue to use our efforts to advance His kingdom through House Church ministry. Our network is committed to making disciples that make disciples and plant churches.