"We Believe It Will Change the Whole Church”
"My brother, I really want to start my ministry to the bishops in the internal province with a SOMA mission."
by Kyle Spradley
National Director
I reconnected with Bishop Abraham Nhial at the New Wineskins Mission Conference in 2025. We were standing in front of SOMA's display table, catching up on life and ministry, when he mentioned that just the month before, he'd been elected Archbishop for the Internal Province of Northern Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan. As our conversation continued, he asked whether SOMA might come for a mission in 2026.
When he asked, my mind immediately started running through our calendar. I knew 2026 was already packed, and I politely told him it would be a real challenge to lead a team then. He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, "My brother, I really want to start my ministry to the bishops in the internal province with a SOMA mission."
How could I possibly say no?
That conference took place this past June, and what happened in the relationships between the bishops and their wives could not have been planned. The Holy Spirit unexpectedly took our topic of marriage somewhere none of us could have predicted. It started when a team member shared a humorous comparison between a gas burner and a charcoal stove, which sent the room into laughter, and then into something deeper, intimate relationships. From there, 1 Corinthians 7:4-5 became the foundational verse for the next two hours.
One thing has always been true of SOMA's ministry: we don't bring Western culture, and we don't bring one African culture to correct another. Teams bring Kingdom culture. Scripture tells us that God's word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow (Hebrews 4:12). It's that word, not our opinions, our customs, or our wisdom, that pierces the veil of culture. And when it does, God's culture begins replacing old beliefs with fresh Kingdom perspective, and with healing.
That's exactly what happened in Northern Bahr el Ghazal. "Some of the bishops would wake up at night and talk with their wives about what they had learned," Archbishop Abraham told me. In the local culture, there are topics husbands and wives had simply never spoken about openly, not because they didn't matter, but because they were culturally taboo. Walls that had stood in marriages for decades came toppling down in a matter of days.
"For the first time, our wives were open with us, and we were open with them," Archbishop Abraham said. "The open communication changed our life. Sometimes we get up at two in the morning and talk until morning comes; we don't go back to sleep," he said. "my wife and I keep talking about how helpful this teaching was, how important it was to us."
The ten bishops and their wives are now strategically planning how to carry these life-giving scriptures forward. Each bishop will bring the message to his priests, their spouses, and their families. Each church leader will, in turn, lead their own congregation through the same teaching, effectively launching a cultural transformation across an internal province of one million people.
Archbishop Abraham said, ”We believe it is going to change the whole church."
This is the essence of SOMA's engagement, and its powerful outcomes: not just teaching in a session-based conference, but the Holy Spirit moving through it. By God's grace, marriages were restored, silence was broken, and the gospel took root in the most private corners of diocesan leaders' relationships. Because of your partnership, SOMA was able to say yes to this mission. Heaven only knows how far the ripples of that "yes" will reach.