Parish Movement Sign 5:

Written By Parish Collective Admin

Linking Across

We’ve been walking through the 5 Signs of the Parish Movement together, each one helping us imagine what it looks like to be the Church in the neighborhood. Along the way, we’ve explored:

Now we arrive at the final sign: Linking Across. It’s a call to grow unity-in-difference by connecting with parishes beyond our own, celebrating the unique ways God shows up in every place.

Together, these five signs sketch a living picture of the Parish Movement. A movement centered on Christ, rooted in place, and woven together in love across neighborhoods and cultures.

Sign 5: Linking Across

Committed and compelled to growing unity-in-difference we actively connect across parishes to celebrate and grow together from unique local expressions of the church outside our own.

Growing Together in Difference

"This is the most interconnected moment the world has ever experienced. While this reveals Divine diversity, the dominant stories of our time often unravel local cultures and diminish our differences, producing false homogeny and erasure. We must produce an alternative by reimagining our connections."
 — Paul Sparks & Sunia Gibbs

We live in a time when you can know what’s happening across the globe in seconds. With one click, we can scroll through stories from communities in every corner of the world. This interconnectedness is both breathtaking and risky. On one hand, it shows us the vast diversity of God’s creation —> different languages, cultures, songs, and ways of gathering as the church. On the other, it tempts us toward a false sameness, where churches begin to look and sound identical, no matter their unique neighborhood or culture.

That’s why Sign 5: Linking Across matters so much. In the Parish Movement, we believe that unity doesn’t mean uniformity. Instead, it means intentionally building relationships across parishes and cultures in ways that honor difference, not erase it.

Intentional Connection, Not Easy Affinity

As Sunia Gibbs points out in the conversation, it’s easy to connect with people who look, think, and act like us. But the gospel calls us into something deeper: linking across difference. That requires intentionality, commitment, and love.

It’s not always comfortable. Linking across can mean facing our biases, listening when we don’t fully understand, and sticking with the relationship when language or culture creates gaps. As Paul Sparks and Sunia model in their friendship, the gold comes when we dig deeper, when we choose to stay at the table long enough to be changed by one another.

Why Linking Across Is Essential

When parishes connect across boundaries, a few powerful things happen:

  • We see the truth of divine diversity. Homogeny is a lie. God’s creation is already wildly diverse. Linking across helps us step into that truth.

  • We grow more creative. Encountering how another parish embodies the gospel in their neighborhood opens up fresh imagination for our own.

  • We confront inequities. Linking across exposes the power structures and biases we might not notice in isolation.

  • We weave together the Church. Across time and place, linking creates a multi-faceted witness of God’s beauty.

As Paul reminds us, this linking is more than just enrichment for our own communities; it’s a way of making a new path visible. In a moment when many feel the church has only two options (stay the same or deconstruct entirely) linking across offers a third way: a neighborhood-rooted church, connected and alive in its local culture, yet in relationship with others across differences.

A Call to Commit

The practice of linking across isn’t a quick win. It takes commitment. Without it, our relationships risk becoming superficial or even voyeuristic, taking from others without truly entering into mutual transformation.

But when we commit, when we show up across divides with love, humility, and persistence, we find treasures we could never have discovered alone.

This is the invitation of Sign 5: to build bridges between parishes, not so that we all look the same, but so that we might grow together into the spacious, diverse, and beautiful body of Christ.

👉 Watch the full conversation with Paul Sparks, Sunia Gibbs, and Christiana Rice to hear how linking across plays out in real life.

👉 Discuss with your parish: Who are the neighbors, parishes, or communities you’re being invited to link across with? What biases do you need to lay down to make those connections possible?

 

Sign 5: Committed and compelled to growing unity-in-difference we actively connect across parishes to celebrate and grow together from unique local expressions of the church outside our own.

 This is the most interconnected moment the world has ever experienced. While this reveals Divine diversity, the dominant stories of our time often unravel local cultures and diminish our differences, producing false homogeny and erasure. We must produce an alternative by reimagining our connections. As we intentionally build relationships across contexts, we are seeking a spacious gospel that illuminates and confronts our biases, convinces us of generous inclusion, and honors the unique way the Good News manifests itself in places different from our own. The practice of linking across parishes exposes our inequities, expands our creativity, and weaves together a church across time and place that can manifest the multi-faceted beauty of God.  

Sign 5 Definition written By Paul Sparks & Sunia Gibbs

➤ Google search and make a list of local expressions of church in your context

➤ Visit neighborhood or parish-based churches in different parts of your city  

➤ Plan a meeting with one faith community leader and ask if they will allow you to join them as a listener and learner

Parish Collective Admin
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