As specialists around the globe search to find healing solutions to the affects of fragmentation and isolation, there are a multitude of disciplines making convergent discoveries around the critical nature of place and community. PC Sessions are focused participatory talks around the intersection of the gospel and these converging themes. Sessions are curated by highly regarded PC facilitators and partners within various disciplines.
If you are interested in hosting a PC Session with a PC Fellowship Partner please contact us at:
PC Team and Fellowship Session Partners
Paul SparksPaul is Co-Founder and a Lead Consultant of the Parish Collective, a network of over 200 Churches and Community Organizations that are rooted in particular neighborhoods, and linked across the United States and Canada. As a recognized grassroots leader and organizer, he is a frequent speaker and consultant around themes of placemaking and neighborhood networking. Paul is also the Co-Founder of Local Life Tacoma, a non-profit group which hosts and sponsors a multitude of events for educating and nurturing the social fabric of Tacoma’s neighborhoods. Paul is an ordained pastor with over 22 years of ministry and community development experience. He has served on staff with a number of churches and community orgs including, most recently, as Project Director for the Northwest Leadership Foundation. Paul lives in an urban neighborhood at the heart of Downtown Tacoma, Washington with his co-conspiring wife Elizabeth. They curate a growing faith community comprised of friends, artists, and entrepeneurs seeking a common life together with their neighbors.
Tim SoerensTim Soerens is a church planter, social entrepreneur, and co-founding director of the Parish Collective. As co-director of the Parish Collective he convenes ministry leaders, teaches, and consults with organizations seeking human flourishing in particular neighborhoods while also working collaboratively across the city. Previously, he was founding pastor of Cascade Neighborhood Church where he also served as vice-president of the Cascade Neighborhood Council, founding member of Lake Union Opportunity Alliance, and co-founder of the Cascade Farmer’s Market. He is working towards a new church community in the Wallingford neighborhood, while also coaching multiple neighborhood churches. As a social entrepreneur, he is the founding adviser launching the Hub-Seattle, an innovative co-working space for change makers in both non-profit and business sectors. Tim earned a B.A. in Rhetorical Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Masters of Divinity from Mars Hill Graduate School, Seattle. He lives in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle with his wife Maria-Jose Soerens and their son Lukas.
Dr. Dwight FriesenDr. Freisen is the Assistant Professor of Contextual Theology at Mars Hill Graduate School. He was the community-curate of an Eastside emerging simple church for more than eleven years and currently speaks, consultants, and facilitates for churches, denominations and mission agencies throughout the Unites States and around the world on issues of postmodern culture, social systems and missional Christianity. He has authored or co-authored numerous articles and books including Thy Kingdom Connected an excellent book exploring network theory and the way connecting lies at the core of the gospel. He has done groundbreaking work exploring new forms of pedagogy which integrate institutional scholasticism with on-the-ground practice in place.
Ben KattBen pastors Awake, a church rooted along Seattle’s Aurora Avenue corridor where he is involved in scheming with the neighborhood saints about waking up to God’s dream for this particular place. He is co-director of the Aurora Commons, a neighborhood space dedicated to fostering community, facilitating holistic renewal, and bridging neighbors on the margins to resources. He is editor of the hyperlocal news website auroraseattle.com, a partner site of the Seattle Times. He provides leadership to the Seattle Ministry Cluster, a Seattle-area network of churches from the Christian Reformed Church in North America, and he is co-founder of the Parish Collective, a growing network of churches rooted in neighborhoods and linked across cities. Ben is husband to Cherie, a MHGS counseling student, and father to Evie (3) and Jackson (2).
Mark ScandretteMark is the executive director and cofounder of ReIMAGINE (www.reimagine.org), a center for spiritual formation in San Francisco that sponsors city-based learning initiatives, peer learning groups, and The Jesus Dojo, a year-long intensive formation process inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus. Mark is a founding member of SEVEN, a monastic community working as advocates for holistic and integrative Christian spirituality. He is the author of Soul Graffiti and the soon to be released and much anticipated Practicing the Way of Jesus. He is married to Lisa Scandrette, an educator and textile artist. They have three children and live in an old Victorian in San Francisco’s Mission District. Mark is a pioneer of imagination and practice and has been involved in shaping emerging, missional, new monastic, and parish-centered movements of discipleship and mission around the country.
Karen WardKaren Ward, an ordained Episcopal priest, is the founder of Anglimergent.org (a relational network of Anglicans engaging emerging church and mission), and cofounder of Episcopalvillage.org (companioning parishes and leaders in emerging/ fresh expressions of church and mission with a “village” focus). She was the founder and Abbess of Church of the Apostles (Seattle, Washington), an influential emerging mission in North America. She is coauthor of Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives (Zondervan, 2007), and contributor to Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church (Seabury, 2007), and Ancient Faith, Future Mission: Fresh Expressions in the Sacramental Tradition (Canterbury Press, 2009).
Karen WilkKaren is a National Team Member for Forge Missional Training Network, and a Missional Leader Developer for the Christian Reformed Church in North America. She is also a neighbor, wife, mom, and minister who is leading her own neighborhood community. Karen is the Pastor of Community Life and Discipleship at the River Community Church in Edmonton, Alberta, where she actively engages church leadership in moving their congregations out into neighborhoods. She has been pastoring in Edmonton for 24 years and has a Masters in Theological Studies from Tyndale Seminaryand is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Missional Leadership at Northern Seminary. . Along with preaching and teaching in numerous places, Karen has written a number of books including her new one entitled Don’t Invite Them To Church: A Devotional Guide to Pursuing God’s Mission Together in your Neighbourhood which has been commended as a top notch resource for neighborhood transformation.
Christine and Tom SineChristine and Tom are consultants for Christian and secular organizations around the world. Christine is a master gardener, activist, and contemplative. She is the author of several innovative books encouraging participants to recognize encounters with God and the gospel story that occur in every aspect of life. As a physician she spent twelve years as a medical missionary with YWAM. Tom is the best-selling author of Mustard Seed vs. McWorld and Mustard Seed Conspiracy. He is a futurist and pioneer to those exploring imaginative forms of faith in turbulent times. They live in the Mustard Seed House, an inter-generational, new monastic, intentional Christian community in Seattle, Washington.
Clark BlakemenClark Blakeman, is founder and director of Second Stories, which works to transform neighborhoods by equipping churches to practice the whole gospel in community partnerships. Bringing together a robust theology and Asset Based Community Developoment, Second Stories trains churches and community groups, and creates in-context learning experiences designed to develop urban leaders. Together with their youngest daughter, Clark and his wife, Cathy live missionally in SE Portland.
Dr. Sean BeneshDr. Benesh is currently planting the Ion Community in Vancouver, BC. He leads urthTREK, an outdoor adventure non-proft focusing on lower income and the marginalized. urthTREK connects people with outdoor adventures and gives them their first experience whether that be through longboarding, hiking, mountain biking, advocacy, or environmental education. Sean is an adjunct professor at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary in Cochrane, AB teaching in the area of theology of the city, community transformation, and cultural engagement in urban contexts. He also leads the Epoch Centre for Urban Renewal offering classes and lectures on church planting, community transformation, and ministry in urban contexts. He has been involved in church planting both as a planter and a strategist as well as his favorite, being a hiking and mountain biking guide. Sean is the author of Metrospiritual: The Geography of Church Planting.
Becky TuckerRebecca is a pastor, spiritual director, and creative liturgy consultant. Her greatest gift and interest is in how creative worship can anchor us in neighborhoods and help us live transformatively. To this end, she has cultivated and pastors a small faith community in Midtown Sacramento that integrates faith, art, justice, and love of neighbor/neighborhood. She leads them in worshiping creatively and living justly, sustainably, and communally in their neighborhood. Becky is an advisor to the Parish Collective regarding liturgical arts and its relation to practice and place. She has a Master of Divinity from Mars Hill Graduate School and a Master of Arts in Religion from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. She also teaches FEATS, a seminary alternative for the Evangelical Friends Church Southwest – where she integrates questions of justice art and culture into biblical study courses.
Brandon RhodesBrandon has lived in various expressions of intentional Christian community since he was 19, and his breadth of experience is being applied in a number of ways. He is a vowed member in Springwater, an Anabaptist community church rooted in Portland’s eclectic Lents neighborhood. Brandon also serves on the Parish Collective staff on the West Coast as a Grassroots Storyteller and Field Guide, which is a fancy way of saying he gets to visit lots of innovative neighborhood-rooted churches and write about what he’s learning. Brandon is also applying his intentional community experiences through collaborations with the Nurturing Communities Project and through study at George Fox Evangelical Seminary as a doctoral student exploring church localism. He is currently writing a chapter on contextualizing Christian community for a project with Baker Books. Over the years, he’s facilitated workshops on creation care and church history, has worked as a community organizer and lobbyist in the creation care movement, and written regularly for a variety of websites. Brandon enjoys vegetable gardening and bicycle camping.
Kelly BeanKelly Bean is Cultivator of Third Saturday organic community which has gathered in her living room for 24 years. She is co-planter of Urban Abbey, an egalitarian inter-generational intentional community in North Portland. Urban Abbey is forming with values of sustainability, earth-keeping, authenticity and reconciliation with a commitment to learn from and root in this ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood. A pastor, speaker, writer, mentor, activist and artist, Kelly is passionate about creating environments that seed deep community with diverse group. Kelly has been creating and leading strategic networks for women in ministry for the past 10 years, four years with National Emerging Women Leaders Initiative and six years founding and leading Convergence, a network for women leading in the Way of Jesus. She is authoring a book with Baker Books, How to Be a Christian Without Going to Church, is contributor to a Fuller Seminary publication on the Church in Contemporary Culture and has written for E-Florescence, Mutuality and Idea-Lab magazines. She is co-founder and Executive Director of African Road, an International NGO partnering in friendship with African leaders who are creating community collectives and working for transformation, empowerment and sustainability with people on the margins in their communities.
Howard LawrenceHoward is one of the pioneering leaders in the parish movement, serving as a consultant both to the church and the public realm regarding neighborhood development for many years. He has served as a denominational Missional Church Consultant as well as the Canadian Consultant for the Connecting Church. He is on the National Team for Forge Canada, is the Director of Neighbourhood Life – an organisation which facilitates the development of communities of “Shalom” within neighbourhoods, and is the Executive Director of the Keller Neighbourhood Development Corporation – a social enterprise which embraces both New Urbanism and Asset Based Community Development principles in its approach to neighborhoods. Howard dwells in the Highlands neighborhood in Edmonton, Canada with his wife Carmen and their three children. He is actively engaged with his neighbors and the community of faith that lives within his neighborhood.