The Residency in Place
Designed to identify thought-leaders and guiding voices who are deeply invested in the neighborhoods they call home. Parish Collective brings them together to invest in their creative and neighborhood work while initing them into conversation with one another.
Some of the most significant work in the church today isn't happening in big institutions or on national platforms. It's happening in specific neighborhoods like Little Portugal and Appalachia, the Georgia Piedmont and Durham's West End, Milwaukee and San Diego. It's the slow, faithful work of people who have planted their lives somewhere and let that somewhere shape everything.
Designed to identify thought-leaders and guiding voices who are deeply invested in the neighborhoods they call home, Parish Collective is bringing them together to invest in their creative and neighborhood work while inviting them into conversation with one another.
Meet the 2026-2027 Residents
Amar D. Peterman
Bluemound Heights | Milwaukee, WI
Amar is an author and constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. His first book, Becoming Neighbors, was published in March 2026 with Eerdmans.
“What drives my neighborhood work is a recognition of the love-worthiness of every individual and a desire for every neighbor to flourish in this mutual love as we build communities of belonging.”
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Amar D. Peterman is an author and constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He holds an MDiv from Princeton Seminary, where he studied American religious history and public theology and is a current PhD student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Amar is also the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC, a research and consulting firm working with some of the leading philanthropic and civic institutions, religious organizations, and faith leaders in America today. His first book, Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local, was published in March 2026 with Eerdmans.
Angel Brown
West End/Lakewood, | Durham, NC
Angel is is a storyteller, speaker, and steward in Durham, NC, whose neighborhood work centers lived experience, children, families, and co-building systems of care that meet our collective needs. She has served her home church, CityWell UMC, for over ten years.
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Angel S. Brown is a mother, wife, daughter, sister, neighbor, and person of faith. Her middle name, Sylvia, honors her paternal grandmother in Jamaica. As the child of immigrants, she embodies the values of dignity, community, and love.
From her childhood in Houston, Texas, to playing Division I lacrosse at Duke University, her creative work has centered on facilitating, stewarding, and crafting stories that spark compassion, confidence, and consciousness in children and families. Her writing and storytelling focus on the chaotic, poetic, and comical realities of multigenerational households, cultural traditions, and identity.
Angel has worked as an educator, community organizer, neighborhood steward, and consultant. For the past ten years, she has served in nearly every role at her home church in Durham, North Carolina, CityWell UMC, except pastor. In her intergenerational home, she can often be found reading a novel in the window seat, tending the garden with her children, playing dominoes with her father, Latin dancing with her husband, or running in nature.
“Long-term residents have the lived experience to define what is right and wrong in their neighborhoods and to determine the solutions. Our role in the neighborhood church is to steward resources so that those closest to the pain are closest to the power.”
Jennifer Allen Craft
Lakemont | LaGrange, GA
Jennifer is a theologian, placemaking scholar, and visual artist. She is Professor of Theology and Humanities at Point University and author of Placemaking and the Arts (IVP Academic, 2018).
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Jennifer Allen Craft is Professor of Theology and Humanities and Department Chair of the Humanities at Point University. She is author of the book Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life (IVP Academic 2018) and is currently writing a book on the theology of place and displacement. Her wider academic work focuses on the role of the visual arts in Christian life, theological aesthetics and ethics, and the placemaking work of the church. She is also a visual artist and has two children, Flint and Eden, both named after rivers in places that have shaped her heart.
"The church's work of confession, peacemaking, reconciliation, thanksgiving, and praise are practiced within the particularity of our places. These liturgies should also be reflected in the liturgies of our neighborhood placemaking. As the church roots itself in its neighborhood and place, it is able to live out the call of Christ to practice peace and love toward all those we encounter."
Nathan Daniel Blake
Gateway Parish | North Wheeling, West Virginia
Nathan is a writer, storyteller, and community builder. He is the lead facilitator at Seven Story Studio and Abbot of the Appalachian Order — a dispersed new monastic community drawing on Celtic, contemplative, and place-based Christian spirituality.
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Nathan Daniel Blake is a writer, storyteller, and community builder from Wheeling, West Virginia where he the lead facilitator at Seven Story Studio and serves as Abbot to the Appalachian Order — a dispersed new monastic community that draws on Celtic, contemplative, and placed-based Christian spirituality. If you’re looking for him on the weekend, he’s probably working toward turning his yard into a natural food forest, or deep in the forest living out his lifelong aspiration of becoming wildling hiker trash.
“Being born and raised in Appalachia, I’ve always been deeply aware of the way what we believe about God and community can be affected by the culture and nuance of where we’re from. I believe that if church history teaches us anything, it is that we are most effective when we move into communities instead of asking communities to travel to us."
Steve MacDouell
Little Portugal | Toronto, ON
Steve is a writer, pastor, professor, and co-founder of Good City Co., a civic organization that helps citizens invest in the places they call home.
“My neighborhood work looks like moving close, contributing to bottom-up forms of community development, participating in the grounded rhythms of a local church, and writing at the intersection of urbanism and faith. “
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When Steve isn't teaching history at Fanshawe College or pastoring with FreeChurch Toronto, you can find him writing about urban life and inviting everyday citizens to leverage their time, their ideas, and their creativity for the sake of their neighbourhoods. He’s the co-founder of Good City Co., a civic organization that creates projects, platforms, and activations that help citizens make a greater investment in the places that they call home. Back in 2021, he completed his graduate work at the University of Toronto by looking at what urbanist, Jane Jacobs, has to teach the local church about faithful presence in the neighbourhood. Along the way, Steve has written about the intersection of urbanism and local presence for Strong Towns, a media organization and movement that advocates for a bottom-up approach to urban development.
Chelsea Kim Long
Golden Hill | San Diego, CA
Chelsea is a writer, lay theologian, and lead convener of the Residency in Place. She coleads an intentional neighborhood faith community in San Diego and is the author of the forthcoming Faithfully Dissident Daughters (Westminster John Knox Press, September 2026)
“I helped create the Parish Collective Residency in Place because I am someone deeply rooted in a specific place. I’ve felt the isolation of doing creative and faith-driven work that doesn't fit neatly into existing institutional structures. The Residency is essentially the network I wished existed — a small, relational cohort of people doing this work in different places, who can speak into each other's work and amplify it.”
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Chelsea Kim Long is a writer, lay theologian, and meditation teacher exploring Christianity through the lens of women’s embodied experiences and contemplative spirituality. Her work invites readers to reimagine Christianity beyond patriarchy and toward a more expansive and inclusive expression of faith. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three kids, where she coleads an intentional neighborhood faith community grounded in belonging and justice. Her first book, Faithfully Dissident Daughters: Reclaiming Christian Womanhood beyond Patriarchy, publishes Sept 8, 2026 from Westminster John Knox Press.