Our Team

These are the guiding voices behind the Parish Collective, including our Staff, our Board, and the Parish Collective Fellowship. The Fellowship consists of 8 people who we believe are leading voices in the Parish Movement. Among this group are brilliant writers, speakers, artists, pastors, and entrepreneurs. Above all, our Fellowship members inspire us in their creative work for the flourishing of their neighborhoods. God is still very much at work in neighborhoods everywhere, and we are all invited to join in, right where we are.

Parish Collective Fellowship

Jonathan Brooks

Board Chair • Fellowship Member
North Lawndale | Chicago, IL
pastahj.com

  • Jonathan Brooks is a member of the Parish Collective Fellowship and serves as our Board Chair. A lifelong resident of Chicago, IL, he currently serves as Co-Pastor at Lawndale Christian Community Church in the North Lawndale neighborhood. He previously served as pastor of Canaan Community Church in the West Englewood neighborhood for fifteen years. As an educator on many different levels and a firm believer in investing in your local community, Jonathan has a deep desire to impress this virtue on the students and young people in his congregation, classroom and community.

    Pastah J, as he is affectionately called, is a sought after speaker, writer, artist and community activist. He has contributed to numerous blogs, articles and books and recently released his book Church Forsaken: Practicing Presence in Neglected Neighborhoods. Jonathan has a Bachelor of Architecture from Tuskegee University, Master of Arts in Teaching from National Louis University and Master of Divinity from Northern Seminary with an emphasis in Christian Community Development. He is married to Micheál Newman-Brooks and has two beautiful children. You can learn more at pastahj.com.

Shannan Martin

Fellowship Member
Goshen, IN
shannanmartin.com

  • Shannan Martin, best-selling author of Start with Hello, The Ministry of Ordinary Places and Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted, is a speaker and writer who found her voice in the country and her story in the city. She believes beauty and justice intersect at street-level, and strives to live with “neighbor” as an embodied part of her spiritual DNA. Shannan works as a cook at The Window, a local non-profit dedicated to feeding its community. Her husband, Cory, works as the chaplain of the Elkhart County jail, focusing on the spiritual and emotional health, practical needs, and robust re-entry support for men and women who have been incarcerated. Shannan lives in the Chamberlain neighborhood of Goshen, Indiana with Cory and their teenagers.

Majora Carter

Board Member • Fellowship Member
South Bronx | NYC

  • Majora Carter is a member of the Parish Collective Fellowship and our board. She is an American urban revitalization strategist and broadcast producer/host from the South Bronx in New York. Carter’s career has spanned environment, economy, social mobility, and real estate development, and her work has won major awards in each sector including a MacArthur ‘genius’ Grant, a Peabody Award, the Rudy Bruner Award Silver Medal, nine honorary doctorates, and accolades from various professional groups. Her consulting clients benefit from her ability to disrupt outdated assumptions in order to uncover better solutions to vexing and persistent problems.

    Carter is quoted on the walls of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture: “Nobody should have to move out of their neighborhood to live in a better one.” She applies this talent-retention lens to all of her work. Carter combines her corporate consulting insights to reducing Brain Drain in American low-status communities. Her firsthand experience pioneering sustainable economic development in the South Bronx, has enabled her to harness capital flows resulting from re-urbanization across age, race, and income levels, to help increase wealth building opportunities across demographics left out of this historic financial tide change. Her work produces long term fiscal benefits for government and leading private real estate developments through innovative economic diversity structures.

    Her ability to shepherd teams through difficult socio-economic conflict has garnered a very long list of awards and honorary PhD’s, including: 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs, Silicon Alley 100 by Business Insider, Liberty Medal for Lifetime Achievement by News Corp, and other honors from the National Building Museum, International Interior Design Association, Center for American Progress, as well as her TEDtalk which was one of six to launch that site in 2006. At Sustainable South Bronx, Carter deployed MIT’s first ever Mobile Fab-Lab(digital fabrication laboratory) to the South Bronx – where it served as an early iteration of the “Maker-Spaces” found elsewhere today. The project drew residents and visitors together for guided and creative collaborations. After establishing Sustainable South Bronx and Green For All (among other organizations) to carry on that work, she opened a private consulting firm to help spread the message and success of social enterprise and economic development in low-status communities – which was named Best for the World by B-Corp in 2014. Majora has helped connect tech industry pioneers such as Etsy, Gust, FreshDirect, Google, and Cisco to diverse communities at all levels. She is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science.

Michael Mata

Board Member • Fellowship Member
Koreatown | Los Angeles, CA

  • Michael Mata is a member of the Parish Collective Fellowship and our board. He began his ministry career 40 years ago by moving into his Los Angeles neighborhood to work with youth. In recent years, he has focused, through formal and informal training, on enhancing the capacity of faith-rooted leaders to effect positive change in marginal and distressed urban communities — locally, nationally and globally. He brings into the Parish Collective his extensive experience in urban pastoral work, background in theological education and urban planning, and engagement in community transformation.

Rev. José Humphreys

Fellowship Member
East Harlem | NYC

  • Rev. José Humphreys is is a member of the Parish Collective Fellowship. He is a native New Yorker, ordained minister and Co-founder of Metro Hope Church, a multiethnic and multicultural church in East Harlem, New York City. He is also a social worker, consultant and author of the award winning book Seeing Jesus in East Harlem: What Happens when Churches Show Up & Stay Put. Rev. José continues to participate in shalom-making and trauma-informed healing work through coaching and facilitation with churches and organizations.

    As Co-lead Pastor of Metro Hope Church, Rev. José has cultivated partnerships with East Harlem churches to provide whole-life mentoring circles with people impacted by the criminal justice system. The church is also locally engaged in economic justice through mobilizing church members, churches and residents in collaboration with the Buy Local Initiative, to support locally owned small businesses in a gentrifying East Harlem. Rev. José currently resides in East Harlem with his wife, Mayra and fourteen year-old son, Javier.

Tim Soerens

Executive Director • Fellowship Member
Ravenswood | Chicago, IL
timsoerens.com

  • Tim Soerens is the co-founding Executive Director of the Parish Collective and a member of the Fellowship. His latest book is Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church, Right Where You Are. 

    He co-authored his first book The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Transform Mission, Discipleship, and Community.

    Tim lives in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Maria-Jose and their sons Lukas, Joaquín, and Benjamín.

Drew Jackson

Fellowship Member
East Village | NYC
drewejackson.com

  • Drew Jackson is a poet, speaker, and public theologian. He is author of God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God’s Unexpected Coming and Touch the Earth: Poems on The Way. His work has appeared in Oneing from the Center for Action and Contemplation, The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad, Made for Pax, The Journal from the Centre for Public Christianity, Fathom Magazine, and other publications.

    Drew received his B.A. in Political Science from the Univ. of Chicago and his M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He currently works as the Director of Mission Integration for the Center for Action and Contemplation, and lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and daughters.

Parish Collective Board

Jonathan Brooks

Board Chair
North Lawndale | Chicago, IL
pastahj.com

  • Jonathan Brooks is a member of the Parish Collective Fellowship and serves as our Board Chair. A lifelong resident of Chicago, IL, he currently serves as Co-Pastor at Lawndale Christian Community Church in the North Lawndale neighborhood. He previously served as pastor of Canaan Community Church in the West Englewood neighborhood for fifteen years. As an educator on many different levels and a firm believer in investing in your local community, Jonathan has a deep desire to impress this virtue on the students and young people in his congregation, classroom and community.

    Pastah J, as he is affectionately called, is a sought after speaker, writer, artist and community activist. He has contributed to numerous blogs, articles and books and recently released his book Church Forsaken: Practicing Presence in Neglected Neighborhoods. Jonathan has a Bachelor of Architecture from Tuskegee University, Master of Arts in Teaching from National Louis University and Master of Divinity from Northern Seminary with an emphasis in Christian Community Development. He is married to Micheál Newman-Brooks and has two beautiful children. You can learn more at pastahj.com.

Dwight Friesen

Board Member
Lake Hills | Bellevue, WA
dwightfriesen.com

  • Dwight Friesen serves as a member of our board and is co-founder of the Inhabit Conference. Dwight J. Friesen (he/they) serves as Professor of Practical Theology at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. With a rich history in pastoral work, church planting, and directing the Leadership in the New Parish think-tank, Dwight is also a founding board member of Parish Collective and co-founder of the Inhabit Conference. He is actively engaged with the Urban Shalom Society and Faith for Cities, contributing to the United Nations' "Sustainable Development Goals," UN-Habitat's "New Urban Agenda," and the "The City We Need Now!" campaign. As an author or co-author, Dwight has written several works, including Thy Kingdom Connected, Routes & Radishes, The New Parish, and 2020s Foresight: Three Vital Practices for Thriving in a Decade of Accelerating Change. Currently residing in the Lake Hills neighborhood of Bellevue on Seattle’s Eastside.

Rosa Lee Harden

Board Member
Asheville, NC

  • The Rev. Canon Rosa Lee Harden is a self-described serial-entrepreneur. Her vocational life has included being publisher of weekly newspapers, trade journals, a business journal and CEO of a ‘Silicon Valley’ start-up. She was ordained as an Episcopal Priest in 2000 and served as Vicar of Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in San Francisco for ten years. She also served as the Canon for Money and Meaning at All Soul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Asheville, NC. In 2003, she developed ‘via media,’ a video curriculum about basic theology for the Episcopal church, developed at a time when the church was under great stress. Purchased by more than 1000 churches, it brought healing and connection across the denomination. In 2008, she and her husband, Kevin Jones, launched the global SOCAP (Social Capital Markets) conference, the conference at the intersection of money and meaning. In its 11th year, SOCAP18 brought more than 3,000 people from more than 60 countries to San Francisco to accelerate the good economy.

    Now, Rosa Lee is leading Faith + Finance: Reimagining God’s Economy, a conference to enable the varied and disconnected parts of the Christian church to learn a language for making theological sense of money and its uses. She is also executive producer of Neighborhood Economics, a convening in Indianapolis that brought together leaders and practitioners in the field.

Majora Carter

Board Member
South Bronx | NYC

  • Majora Carter is a member of the Parish Collective Fellowship and our board. She is an American urban revitalization strategist and broadcast producer/host from the South Bronx in New York. Carter’s career has spanned environment, economy, social mobility, and real estate development, and her work has won major awards in each sector including a MacArthur ‘genius’ Grant, a Peabody Award, the Rudy Bruner Award Silver Medal, nine honorary doctorates, and accolades from various professional groups. Her consulting clients benefit from her ability to disrupt outdated assumptions in order to uncover better solutions to vexing and persistent problems.

    Carter is quoted on the walls of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture: “Nobody should have to move out of their neighborhood to live in a better one.” She applies this talent-retention lens to all of her work. Carter combines her corporate consulting insights to reducing Brain Drain in American low-status communities. Her firsthand experience pioneering sustainable economic development in the South Bronx, has enabled her to harness capital flows resulting from re-urbanization across age, race, and income levels, to help increase wealth building opportunities across demographics left out of this historic financial tide change. Her work produces long term fiscal benefits for government and leading private real estate developments through innovative economic diversity structures.

    Her ability to shepherd teams through difficult socio-economic conflict has garnered a very long list of awards and honorary PhD’s, including: 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs, Silicon Alley 100 by Business Insider, Liberty Medal for Lifetime Achievement by News Corp, and other honors from the National Building Museum, International Interior Design Association, Center for American Progress, as well as her TEDtalk which was one of six to launch that site in 2006. At Sustainable South Bronx, Carter deployed MIT’s first ever Mobile Fab-Lab(digital fabrication laboratory) to the South Bronx – where it served as an early iteration of the “Maker-Spaces” found elsewhere today. The project drew residents and visitors together for guided and creative collaborations. After establishing Sustainable South Bronx and Green For All (among other organizations) to carry on that work, she opened a private consulting firm to help spread the message and success of social enterprise and economic development in low-status communities – which was named Best for the World by B-Corp in 2014. Majora has helped connect tech industry pioneers such as Etsy, Gust, FreshDirect, Google, and Cisco to diverse communities at all levels. She is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science.

Michael Mata

Board Member
Koreatown | Los Angeles, CA

  • Michael Mata is a member of the Parish Collective Fellowship and our board. He began his ministry career 40 years ago by moving into his Los Angeles neighborhood to work with youth. In recent years, he has focused, through formal and informal training, on enhancing the capacity of faith-rooted leaders to effect positive change in marginal and distressed urban communities — locally, nationally and globally. He brings into the Parish Collective his extensive experience in urban pastoral work, background in theological education and urban planning, and engagement in community transformation.

Parish Collective Staff

Ken Alvarado

Grounded Faith Chicago Area Convener
Little Village | Chicago, IL

  • Ken Alvarado is a community engagement leader passionate about place-based transformation and cross-sector collaboration. Ken is dedicated to developing strategies that connect people to purpose through grassroots initiatives. Bilingual and mission-driven, he fosters equity, trust, and sustainable impact in communities— rooted in Christ's hope and promises.

    From Costa Rican parents, Ken was born and raised in Chicago's southwest side. He enjoys playing in the fire hydrants in the summer with his beautiful wife Danielle and 2 small daughters - Jhalina and Micaela.

Eunice Lin-Sawyer

Grounded Faith Seattle Area Convener
Queen Anne | Seattle, WA

  • Eunice Lin-Sawyer is the Seattle Area convener for the Grounded Faith Initiative. Prior to moving to Seattle, she spent 7 years as a social worker before entering full-time ministry in her home church in Singapore where she led the young adult ministry and set up her church’s local outreach and justice ministry. She loves being able to pioneer new work, bridge differences, challenge the status quo, and be a tad subversive in all she does – which is why she’s really excited to be part of the Grounded Faith Initiative team!

    She also spends much time reflecting on how to root deeply despite feeling transient and being a foreigner in this country. Since 2020, she has had the privilege of working alongside Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil to train and consult churches and Christian organizations in racial justice and reconciliation. She’s very much looking forward to completing her Master of Divinity and MA in Reconciliation & Intercultural Studies at Seattle Pacific Seminary this year.

Lauren Goldbloom

Director of the Grounded Faith Initiative
Cliff Cannon | Spokane, WA

  • Lauren Goldbloom serves on the Parish Collective staff as the Director of the new Grounded Faith Initiative, a collaborative project with the Whitworth Office of Church Engagement made possible by the Lilly Endowment. Grounded Faith seeks to connect young adults and parish-focused churches for the sake of the common good of their neighborhoods.

    Lauren lives in Spokane, Washington, where she and her husband Matt and their six kids have embedded their lives in the fabric of the Cliff-Cannon neighborhood. She pastors Common Well, a hyper-local community of neighbors learning to follow Jesus in their everyday lives, and teaches as a substitute in the local schools.

Tim Soerens

Executive Director
Ravenswood | Chicago, IL
timsoerens.com

  • Tim Soerens is the co-founding Executive Director of the Parish Collective and a member of the Fellowship. His latest book is Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church, Right Where YouAre. He co-authored his first book The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Transform Mission, Discipleship, and Community.

    Tim lives in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago with his wife Maria-Jose and their sons Lukas, Joaquín, and Benjamín.

Juli Kalbaugh

Director of Operations
Spicewood II | Bloomington, IN

  • Juli brings a love of systems, strategy, and soul-care to her role as Director of Operations for the Parish Collective. With a wealth of experience in organizational leadership, grant management, entrepreneurship, and community building, she’s known for her ability to curate spaces where innovation, imagination, and relationships can flourish. Juli’s natural curiosity and desire to learn drive her to find creative ways to improve communication and processes, always seeking to deepen relationships and enhance organizational flow for the common good.

    She is a breast cancer survivor, marathon finisher, NCAA basketball fan, and road trip enthusiast. Always on the lookout for good books, vintage treasures, and the best cheeseburger in town, you might find her dancing with her daughters, redecorating her house, or quietly watching the hummingbirds. Located in Bloomington, Indiana, Juli lives in a delightful neighborhood with her husband Corey, daughters Novella and Evia, and cats Greta and Willie. Juli is thrilled to join the Parish Collective, where she’s eager to help support local leaders create interconnected communities that reflect holistic flourishing.

Claire Strunk

Grounded Faith Spokane Area Convener
Cliff Cannon | Spokane, WA

  • Claire Strunk is the Spokane Area convener for the Grounded Faith Initiative. She's worked in large churches and tiny churches, new church plants and long established congregations, traditional liturgy and contemporary, theologically conservative and theologically liberal churches. She's served as a pastor to college students and young adults, as a pastor to young families, and as a pastor to a congregation of seniors. But she is most interested in thinking about how churches can thrive where they are; how they can best love their actual neighbors.

    Claire lives in the Cliff-Canon neighborhood on the lower south hill of Spokane with her husband Bill, and their kids, Jude and Greta.

Stasi McAteer

Grounded Faith San Diego Area Convener
Ocean Beach | San Diego, CA

  • Stasi has lived in and served the community of Ocean Beach, San Diego, since 2014. She’s a founding admin of Buy Nothing groups, an avid volunteer in local schools, and has been a storyteller at SD's library. She hosted Friday Family Meal, a weekly community dinner, from 2014-2018.

    Stasi holds an MDiv with a concentration in Worship, Theology, and the Arts from Fuller Seminary, and went on to do doctoral work in liturgy at the GTU. She especially loves creative preaching and curating meaningful rituals.

    Stasi's family includes kids Maggie & Kieran with her philosopher husband John. You'll usually find them engaged in discussion (about movies, theology, or the Trolley Problem), playing (in the ocean, around a board game, or with their pet Cleocatra), or entertaining (friends, neighbors, & visiting angels).

Nate Tubbs

Grounded Faith Chicago Convener
The Island | Chicago, IL
natetubbs.com

  • Nate Tubbs is a communications professional, organizer, and entrepreneur with a passion for his neighborhood and partnership in the city of Chicago and beyond. He has worked in the non-profit sector for many years in design, marketing, consulting, and community organizing.

    You will find Nate at neighborhood meetings, his local school council, his block’s community garden, or playing with his kids. Nate and his wife, Jamie, and their three children live in The Island neighborhood on Chicago’s west side.