Where You Are Is Where God Is Working

What if the healing of the world begins right where we live? In December’s We Conspire series, learn how Tim Soerens and the Parish Collective are helping churches rediscover their deepest purpose: to become a presence of embodied love in the neighborhoods they call home.

Think of a church — it could be any church. Maybe the church that comes to mind is one you’ve attended before. Maybe it is a church close to your home or workplace. Maybe it is a church that you simply walked or drove by recently. What is its purpose? Is there a shared purpose between one of the churches you have attended and one you have inadvertently passed by? Is there a shared purpose between the two churches down the road from one another in your neighborhood or town?

These are the kinds of questions that have animated Tim Soerens and the Parish Collective since its founding in 2012. Soerens, author of Everywhere You Look and The New Parish, believes that though churches may differ in denomination and doctrine, they all have one thing in common: their existence should strengthen the community in which they belong. Yet this important component so often becomes neglected in a church’s focus on growth, entertainment, or doctrine. Soerens believes that if local churches recovered this purpose and partnered with one another to strengthen their communities, neighborhoods around the country would be radically changed. Perhaps churches would begin to achieve their fundamental purpose: healing the world.  

Soerens’s own journey charts a path toward uncovering this core purpose. He attended seminary, in part, because he was inspired by popular megachurch preachers who had impacted his own faith and theology. He had studied rhetoric in college, enamored with how words create worlds. If he was honest with himself, he too hoped he might one day become a “rockstar preacher,” making his impact through exegesis and the art of the sermon.  

But in 2005, while attending seminary in Seattle, Soerens remembers hearing Australian missiologist Michael Frost speak on campus. Frost had once been a rising star preacher in Sydney — charismatic, gifted, on track for a large church platform. Instead, he told the room he had set preaching aside for years while planting a small, neighborhood-rooted community church. Frost’s approach flipped the script for Soerens.  

What if the goal wasn’t filling seats but embedding the gospel in a specific place? 

This shift led Soerens to meet Paul Sparks, a Tacoma pastor who was also disillusioned with “winning” at the attractional church game, where there were decent crowds and lively sermons but little neighborhood impact. They began dreaming up what would become the Parish Collective and soon discovered dozens of others — pastors, laypeople, evangelicals, mainliners, urban, suburban, rural — all asking the same thing: How do we be the church in everyday life? 

“We’re a network of churches and congregations and small groups who aim for embodiment in the neighborhood,” Soerens explains. This embodiment, Soerens says, is different from the mindset that can sometimes lead groups of Christians to swoop into a place with prescriptive solutions. “It’s all about joining in the hopes and dreams of God in a particular place — that’s everything to us,” he continues. “In an age that feels particularly individualistic, increasingly disembodied, and digitally polarized, we’re trying to figure out how we call back the Christian church into an embodied public witness. We hope churches can begin asking themselves the questions: What is God up to here, and how do we join in that work? What does it mean for us to become the ‘Body of Christ’ within that place?” 

Why have churches generally failed at this and remained inconsequential forces for good in their communities? Soerens theorizes it’s because they have struggled to answer the question about their purpose: Why are we here? “If it’s not good news for our neighbors, we are going to have to keep asking the question,” says Soerens.  

Another way to put it: growth has so often been the north star for churches, not faithful presence. Says Soerens, “I think that health does precede growth, but I don’t think that, if you flip it around, growth means there was health. Presence trumps performance every time.” 

So, what does this look like exactly? The Parish Collective’s website provides a simple map: Church + Neighborhood = Parish. In other words, your parish is not only your congregation; it’s your community you are committed to serving. The parish then becomes literal common ground. And, when multiple churches in a community take on this vision of “geographic responsibility,” beautiful ecosystems begin to form.  

Amid the dozens of stories on their website, Soerens shares a recent one from the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago, where New Community Church helped settle Venezuelan migrants. When ICE raids came, the church didn’t just open doors for immigrants — they wove a web of trust across congregations. In the adjacent city of Lawndale, Dr. Rev. Jonathan Brooks has been carrying the mantle of a congregation’s faithful presence for four decades. The result: youth programs, health clinics, and housing co-ops.  

Soerens has visited 500–600 neighborhoods in the last decade. Every time he asks the question, “What is God up to here?” he leaves inspired to join the movements of healing and service within the community.  

“This isn’t a new strategy; it’s a dare toward our common faith,” says Soerens. “We still believe the Body of Christ is the hope of the world… and that holistic flourishing of the neighborhood is the unit of change.” 

Reflect with Us  
Tim Soerens and the Parish Collective invite us to trust that God is already at work in the very places we call home. When churches and neighbors choose presence over performance, growth over spectacle, the ordinary streets and stories of a neighborhood become holy ground. Healing the world begins with learning to love a particular place.

Where might you be called to show up more fully in your own neighborhood — listening, blessing, and joining what is already unfolding there? Share your reflection with us.