The parish movement has been growing and spreading all over the world. The parish movement is not an academic movement nor is it driven by any one culture, tradition, Christian denomination, etc. Rather this is grassroots followers of the Jesus Way seeking to follow the Spirit in to discovering and practicing faithful presence with one’s place and all its inhabitants. Parish Collective is the organization I’ve recommend you connect with if you want to deepen your, or your group’s expression of your love of God through the love of neighbor and neighborhood.
Below are a series of short videos describing what appear to the the five primary signs of the new parish movement. So, what are the 5 Signs of the Parish Movement?
First Sign of the Parish Movement
Centering on Christ: We seek to center our lives on Christ as a collective expression of the love of God in our place.
In love, Jesus the Christ moved into the neighborhood and inhabited an obscure village called Nazareth. As an Afro-Asiatic, first century Palestinian Jew, he embedded his life in the sacred ordinary of his place, growing in wisdom and truth as he accompanied the displaced, dined with the disinherited and taught his friends and followers how to look again at those invisibilized by society. Christ through the Holy Spirit invites us to be an extension of this heavenly love, an embodied presence to work for the repair, healing and flourishing of all things. Inhabiting zip codes all over the globe, we seek to center our daily lives around the life and love of Christ, joining together with people and places through the transformative work of God’s Kin-dom.
Written by José Humphreys III and Christiana Rice
Second Sign of the Parish Movement
Inhabiting Our Parish: We actively inhabit our neighborhood, joining the liberation story of God in, with, and for our place and its inhabitants.
Becoming rooted people in the same proximity, we seek to join the liberating story of God in, with, and for our place, its inhabitants, and those who stewarded the land before us. All of us are made in the image of God, which means our worth is imbued with gifts and abilities. However, we recognize there will be systems and structures that devalue some inhabitants because of their identity or heritage. We will stay alert and engaged against injustices around us that might exist. Rather than seeking power or wielding control, we begin with an intentional effort to know and be known by our actual neighbors – to actively participate in listening, loving, and caring for the land and people where we live. Learning together how to faithfully embody kinship and equity at street level gives us wisdom to discern our limits, strengths, and responsibilities elsewhere.
Written by Michael Mata & Shannan Martin
Third Sign of the Parish Movement
Gathering to Remember: We gather to weave our parish into the larger story of our faith and remember the massive story of God.
We gather to weave our parish into the larger story of our faith. Trusting that God has always been at work we draw together in worship to encourage one another in love and discernment to be present to the Spirit’s activity all around us. This discernment leads us to engage in our communities. We have discovered that the more active we are in our neighborhoods joining in God’s renewal, the more crucial it is for us to step back together and remember the massive story of God. We so easily forget. We come together to name the brokenness around us, bear our collective burden, celebrate our common hope, and be transformed together in the neighborhood.
Written by Coté Soerens & Jonathan Brooks
Fourth Sign of the Parish Movement
Collaborating for Renewal with God: We trust God will invite us to weave new relationships and projects for the common good in our shared common ground.
We trust God will invite us to weave new relationships and projects for the common good in our shared common ground. It’s never been more important to foster unity between all the diverse followers of Christ within our local contexts. Joining God’s renewal within the broken systems of our world, we seek to reconcile fractured relationships and celebrate differences by collaborating across cultural barriers and learning to live in solidarity with those in need. If ever there was going to be a robust movement of unity in the 21st century church it will likely be lay-led, local, and in the neighborhood. When unity and trust grows between us, it is amazing how we can work together and build peace for the common good.
Written by Majora Carter & Tim Soerens
Fifth Sign of the Parish Movement
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.
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.
Written by Paul Sparks & Sunia Gibbs
Peace, dwight
