Parish Collective Staff

Tim Soerens
Tim 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.



Paul Sparks
Paul 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.



Dr. Dwight Friesen
Dr. 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 Katt
Ben 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).



Karen Wilk
Karen 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.



Howard Lawrence
Howard 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 co-founding a Neighbourhood Development Corporation – a social enterprise which embraces both New Urbanism and “Abundant 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.



Becky Tucker
Rebecca 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 Rhodes
Brandon 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 practicing 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 and his wife Candice enjoys vegetable gardening and bicycle camping.