Many congregations today find themselves wrestling with inherited buildings that no longer fit their present reality—spaces that are underutilized, expensive to maintain, and disconnected from their neighbors. But what if reimagining church spaces could transform these perceived burdens into powerful assets for community flourishing? Tim Anderson and Tabitha Montgomery, co-executive directors of Flourish Placemaking Collective, have spent years helping churches discover exactly that possibility.

In this conversation with host Dwight Zscheile, Tim and Tabitha share their journey from community organizers searching for programming space to consultants helping churches practice what they call "placemaking"—centering the broader community rather than just congregational needs when thinking about church facilities. They discuss the practical steps churches can take when reimagining church spaces, from honest self-assessment to developing a "theology of space," and share inspiring examples like their own Center for Belonging, where a unused church basement became home to seven thriving nonprofit partners. Whether your congregation has 15 members or 150, this episode offers hope and practical wisdom for stewarding church property in ways that serve both faithful mission and neighborhood flourishing.

Are we willing to shrink so that we now step into the new position that God has been calling us from? Because it's no mistake that the congregation sizes are dwindling. It's no mistake that the congregations are aging. There's no mistaking that each many congregations with thousands, tens of thousands of space, square footage of property have millions of dollars of deferred maintenance. And so if that is the narrative and if that is the truth, and then in the same breath, we can say that God's plan is good and perfect. Then whose plan is this shrinking?

Hello everyone and welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the Church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile Many congregations today are wrestling with what to do with inherited buildings that no longer fit well with the Church's present life. These buildings are often underutilized, unsustainable to maintain, and disconnected from neighbors. How might Churches faithfully discern

the re-imagination and transformation of these spaces to serve God's mission in their place, in collaboration with neighbors. Today, I'm excited to welcome to the Pivot podcast, Tim Anderson and Tabitha Montgomery. They are co-executive directors of Flourish Placemaking Collective in Minneapolis. And their work is to walk with churches and other organizations on this journey of collaborative discernment to foster deeper neighborhood connections.

So welcome Tabitha and Tim. So let's begin by having maybe each of you share a bit about your own background, ⁓ a bit about your own story and how you became interested in this kind of ministry.

Thanks for having us.

because neighbors change, neighborhoods change. And so over about 12 years of neighborhood direct service programming with neighbors in our community, we kind of saw this need for, we actually lost space in the parks and schools where we had been doing programming. And that led us to where is there underutilized space in our neighborhoods that might be able to invite us in. And at the top of that list were underutilized church buildings. And that's kind of the history condensed into how I got into this work.

And Tim is being very, I think, humble because Tim is the founder of the organization that I think currently Flourish kind of was birthed out of. And so that big question of even as you're thinking about where can we find space to do our programming to exist as an organization and it landed us or led us to ⁓ this idea of church space in particular, I think it is still this going back to through the work of being ace in the city as for a period of time.

how do you cultivate belonging? And cultivating belonging not only requires the right programming and people who are intentional about wanting to be inclusive and invite everybody in, but also where are the spaces where you can do that? Where are the spaces that can engender this feel for people to feel welcomed and seen and supported? ⁓ And that those spaces are now in our current journey, we're interested in those spaces being well. And when we think about well, we think about wellness and...

the broadest sense of the term, ⁓ property being well and taken care of, right? And oftentimes churches and any community centered organization that has space, property, ⁓ that is a challenge, having the right amount of resources to support and invest in space in a way that it remains welcoming, that it remains vibrant, that it remains accessible and inclusive in a way that people seek it out.

Right, so there's one thing to be in community and that people know you exist and they just don't feel drawn, compelled, interested at all because of the way that the space looks and feels and services them. There's something else we all know, even sometimes I think we think about our favorite coffee shop or our favorite restaurant. I have bathrooms in the Twin Cities that I love going into just because they're so well appointed, right? So space is a real thing in terms of how it receives you.

Yeah. So tell us a bit about this term placemaking ⁓ that's part of your title, your organization. But what is placemaking?

You know, I think honestly it is about how do you think about any place or space? And ⁓ for us, place making is this idea of making it as welcoming and inviting and as vibrant as possible in the place that it exists. So not being cookie cutter, place making isn't maybe in South Minneapolis isn't gonna be the same as in ⁓ North Minneapolis or

⁓ in ⁓ North Dakota or South Dakota, nor should it be. But it is this idea, the construct is how do you think about place and make it as vibrant and as welcoming and as inclusive as possible. I think the idea of placemaking, although there is not a one size fits all, I think the parameters of placemaking are the same, meaning we would not believe that placemaking that is not about being as... ⁓

as possible or as welcoming as possible or as inclusive as possible, then that's something else. You could have beautiful spaces that are well-appointed in our private clubs, et cetera. That's to us not placemaking. That could be a very well-appointed space and place. Placemaking is, I think, again, about broadly approaching spaces and property and places with the broadest degree of love and support possible.

And I think with that, I think how we would, talk about this on our website and with our, churches and institutions we work with of, it's really a shift in the movement to ensure that the community is centered to the conversation. So for so often, ⁓ churches oftentimes when they think about their space, they're thinking about it in terms of their congregation. And that's not bad. That's a very real thing. think place making though requires us to think the tab at this point more broadly.

to say how we think about this space should be centered not us as a congregation, but us as part of this broader community that we are placed.

You're in the ecosystem. Like you're somebody's neighbor, right? Even though you have a very specific mission, maybe goals, objectives, and so on. I don't think that that has to change for you to lean into this other idea of who else is here, who else is around me? What are the other needs beyond my needs, beyond my goals, beyond my priorities, so that I exist within this ecosystem of place well, so that I contribute to the making of place in a manner that you know, that meets the moment, right? Wouldn't that be amazing if...

every space met the moment of what is needed, whether it be resiliency hubs, that language is now popular in terms of having places where people could shelter in place if we find ourselves in emergency or go to a place to receive resources that needed to be distributed because something could have happened in community, or the language of third space, which is really community-centered spaces, libraries and zoos and parks and anything that is very much welcoming of public presence, right? Sometimes for private use as well.

But I think that that is, for us, this idea of place making is ⁓ not a one-sided dance. It is very much caring about the steps that your partner takes as well.

So some years ago as part of the new student orientation that we do here at Luther, I took a kind of busload of students around on a kind of a tour of parts of Minneapolis with the director of economic development for the city at the time. And I remember him stopping, we stopped in front of one church that looked, know, we were there kind of on you know, Monday afternoon or something, looked pretty shuttered and, you know, the congregation wouldn't come in on Sundays and

lock the, to get inside, lock the door and then leave. And I remember him saying to the students, I'd rather have a liquor store on this site than a church because a liquor store would be paying its taxes. It would be well lit at night. He's like, what do you think is going on on the steps of, of this church to all dark at night, you know, and all this stuff. And kind of blew the students mind, but, to have that community perspective on these buildings.

So I'm curious about, your offices actually are in a space, what you call the Center for Belonging. Tell us a bit about that and the journey of how that church space became what it is now.

Yeah, so as I mentioned before, we were doing direct service programming for a while in the parks and schools. And COVID probably would have resulted in this anyway, but right before that, we lost our space for change of leadership and policy. And so we were like, well, again, where is there space in our neighborhood? And sure enough, we had a couple church partners that we had been partners with us for a long time who had space underutilized that we're using Sunday morning.

and renovated 7,500 square foot of space, basement space at the time, into the center of belonging. And so at the time it was a community of about seven nonprofit partners who kind of shared space together. And the short story over the last five years has been a story of, unfortunately, a lot of institutions and churches of just struggling to post-COVID kind of resettle.

And so over the past five years, the church made a difficult decision to close its doors, which raised a lot of uncertainty as far as what happens to us? We're still here. We're still thriving. We believe in flourishing. so ⁓ fortunately, when the church decided to close its doors, the denomination took over the building. And they're like, we don't want to be managing this property. And they loved our work. And so they were very generous with us.

in ⁓ kind of the sale of the property. And so now we are owners of ⁓ a 22,000 plus square foot building that is now fully the center of belonging.

happens in there and how do neighbors connect into it? mean, give us a little more of a sense of that.

Well, you know, right now, think one of the, two of the primary ways is like with long-term tenants, right? So again, that's not new to probably your listeners about this idea of churches allowing ⁓ institutions, organizations that they believe in their mission could be a food show for pantry for us, food access, daycare, child services, afterschool programming, not new. Roller rinks have been in churches, gymnasiums have been in churches. And so right now for our model, given the fact that we're also

very much as an organization focused on trying to provide coaching and care consultancy to other churches to do this work of thinking through the steps of getting to a place where you can activate space differently is long-term tendency and short-term rentals, right? That's how I think that the community right now probably sees our space and there's more of the, what I would call probably opportunity for us to make the broader community aware of how the more short-term rentals.

can be accessed for this particular property. And we're growing into that because again, we just acquired, became the property stewards in the fall of last year, right? So we're like six, seven months in and learning a lot and still building out the infrastructure to do the things that we often are coaching our clients on doing is how do you steward a property well? Well, you have to assess, right? Like there is a formula we have. We have an annual event now for the past two years called R3. So...

Reclaim, reimagine, repurpose. That ⁓ exists on a continuum and it's a continual body of work of reimagining, reassessing how your space fits into your mission and how your space fits into the ecosystem of community. And then taking the time to reimagine, which is really that work of planning. If we're gonna reimagine something, how do we do that? And then repurposing is the actual act that could be having the resources to actually take the steps to invest in the property in a different particular way. So I would say,

Honestly, we are trying to model every facet of the work that we support our clients on. And right now, I think we believe and understand that the ways that the space that we currently are stewarding could be accessed is very broad and vast. And then we're also trying to manage what our current resources and capacity can allow us to do. So long-term tenants, think we're fully leased in terms of people with annual leases to be in the space to do their missionally centered work.

and then really trying to now in the next phase grow into how do we activate the gym? How do we activate the sanctuary beyond our church partners who are currently still using it, maybe on a Sunday or a Saturday for their congregational purposes and so forth.

And so that's where, you know, just day to day, and I'll speak for this week, we have a church that worships there every Sunday. So they were in there yesterday. have, to tap at this point, we're fully leased. We have no more space, which is a good problem. Year round, fully exclusively leased space. ⁓ This week we have in our gymnasium space a middle school volleyball camp that is every ⁓ Tuesday, Thursday throughout the summer.

You're out.

We have on Tuesday mornings, right now there is a group working with women coming out of addiction that happens every Tuesday morning. Every Wednesday afternoon has been our flourish food shelf, which is an accessible food market for the community. ⁓ And so again, what we're trying to model is what does it look like to have open doors beyond just a Sunday or a Wednesday night? How do we make a space that feels and communicates love and ⁓ throughout every day of the week?

And what we're energized by, I'm gonna force Tim to be energized by it. But you know, like there's times where things that were ⁓ old school becomes new school and becomes cool, right? Like, you know, back in the day, food trucks wasn't all that cool. Food trucks had been around forever, like servicing major metropolitan markets, et cetera. And now when you even hear food truck, you probably can't imagine a time where they weren't dope, where they weren't cool. Same thing with food hall.

Like, can we talk about it? Like, cafeterias, like, ⁓ I want to go around and look at all these different options with a tray, you know. But now I was just at Malcolm, shout out to Malcolm Yards. I was at Malcolm Yards last night. And just again, the vibe on a Monday felt nuts and just vibrant and how people are wanting to be in community together, not really maybe breaking bread together, but certainly enjoying any number of meals together in the same space. And what happens when

church space becomes doped, cool, and reimagined where people, again, are coming to them in different ways for, I think, connection, to feel included, for variety. what we just, Ready, Set, Smile is a wonderful nonprofit organization that is a long-term tenant with us at the Center of Belonging. But again, it is the variety, it is access, it feels like certain moments in our history speaks to what I think is this natural inclination for us to be

was going say, the best compliment that we get is where folks come in. A lot of people have baggage with church, baggage entering church buildings. And the best compliment that we get, and we get it actually quite a bit, is when people step into the basement of the center belonging, they say, wow, this doesn't feel like a church basement. Like, we know when we hear that that we are part one toward successfully kind of living into the vision and mission that we have.

Well, so talk a bit about the process then. Say there was a congregation that faced itself with, again, underutilized space that was maybe a bit dated, right? What kind of journey do you take them on to do the discernment and the reimagining? What does that look like?

Well,

let's imagine that all the leadership is on the same page. Let's start there. Let's just start that all the clients are kumbaya-ing and are excited that we're there. And I think that part of the first step is really internal reflection of assets and capacity. What do you have? What are you doing? What's going on? It's not to come in and say, here's a formula. Here's a playbook. These are the six businesses you should go recruit. These are the things in your community that we know that the community needs. So this is what you should do.

Let's do

Third

assumption.

It really first starts with looking in a mirror, looking deeply and being, because there's such a disconnect sometimes between how you understand your history, what you know about your present to what you're willing to do about your future. They stand in direct, oftentimes, ⁓ dissidence between you love the history, you grew up in this church, we were just on call last week, people naming, signifying, my parents and me have been there for 20, 30 years.

ties.

Here.

I was married here. mean, they run the list, right? And then in the next breath, and we now have a fraction of the congregation that we still have. And then in the next breath, still somewhat, and we really don't want this property not to be a church, kind of like, still kind of, it needs to be the church that I remember church being. And there is ⁓ what I would call ceremony.

right, that we all have to go through in key life events, whether it be weddings or funerals, ⁓ graduations or whatever, that I think now is indicative of the practice, the muscle that we're trying to encourage clients to go on, is to welcome the ceremony of change of this particular life moment, which requires this ⁓ allowing you to celebrate what you had and everything that you know that brought you to this point. And at the same time, with a very open hand, be willing to receive what God has for you next, right? Not with a clenched.

So that is kind of the first step in the work is reflection, understanding assets, resources, capacity, and then being able to celebrate what you had and be open to what's next, right? Because sometimes, and that is not to say there is a perfect way to do that outside of naming it, creating space for people to think about it for themselves in hopes that they receive the opportunity to be in all the other conversations and the decisions of those.

the leadership in the congregation will need to make next.

Mm-hmm. Congregations need to understand where they're at. mean, that is the bottom line. We've heard it ⁓ more frequently than we'd like of churches having big visions, but then understanding the capacity that they have. It's like, well, how do you plan to get there when you're down to 15 members and $2,000 in the bank account? Like, we need to understand where we've been and where we are now if we want any chance to get to there, wherever there is.

And to be a good neighbor. You know, don't invite a neighbor over for, let's have an amazing backyard barbecue. It's gonna be great. Don't worry about, you know, you don't have to bring anything and you show up and they just have mushrooms on a girl. Well, that doesn't seem like that that met what you said. was going, you know, I'm like, ⁓ okay, we're at least give me a hot dog or something. mean, like, so part of it ⁓ is trying to align, you know, desire.

with the current reality, but not to dishonor what you've had in the past, right? Like there's ways to still know and celebrate what you did and then accept that where you're at today requires, really just mandates the next thing.

So how do you help congregations do the spiritual practices of discernment around that? Like, asking the God questions, like, what is God's will for us in this next season? And then how do you listen to the, how do you help them listen to the neighborhood?

I mean,

I'll start with at least part of listening as we see it is, and this gets back to Tabitha's assumption that she made of like assuming leadership is on the same page, of just really providing space for collective discernment, right? This should not just be a senior pastor's vision. This shouldn't just be the elder team's vision. This shouldn't just be the, you know, one passionate congregant who has a lot of ideas. This needs to be something discerned together.

And so I think that's where you distill and you hear God's voice is when it's done in time and space together.

I gotta say, one of the other things that we were able to partner with another consulting group out east, Vandersall Collective, who's wonderful. And one of the things in service of a client that came up there in regards to the God question was this language around the theology, right, of space, the theology of property. What is the true understanding of how our faith and our understanding of the tenets of our faith is wrapped into this moment? And so sometimes you...

It becomes super easy when we allow ourselves to, one, believe that God's plan is good and perfect, to under-truly, if we believe that we are one body in Christ and all members need to be well, but you don't want a broken foot to still continue to contribute to how the body moves. ⁓ If you believe that we're here to exhibit certain fruits of the Spirit, we could go on. think that there's any number of ways in scripture that it speaks to even how Christ moved

in his ministry, it wasn't that we now are believers because there was a building. Man, I mean, it blows your mind. Like, but when did we put Christ in a box? Man, it turns up. And then we become so committed to that box and not the work of what it means to be a part of the Great Commission and what we're really called forth to do. And so I think that it's not because it's illogical.

It's because I gotta say shout out to why we feel so deeply. is the rhythms of life when you go through years and decades of building the muscle of practice, of going to worship and church in a particular way, it definitely builds a muscle in a particular way. What we're talking about is trying to go to a new fitness ⁓ gym, if you will, and build new muscles that it's not about once those muscles are built that we forget.

And so I think that it is not our wisdom by which I think that we get congregations to understand the answer to that question. It is by God's grace and encouraging prayer reflection. We're simply, I think, on this journey for our clients, creating space to sometimes in the midst of busyness of doing the rhythm and the practice in the doctrine of church to take time out to say, now let's think about the impact of our.

faith in community and how that shows us.

And that's where the listening, I mean, that's where we start with listening, when churches understand where they've been, where they are, they'll name particular ministries that have held significant meaning and value to them, both in the past and in the present. And I think as they do that, that's where some of the listening starts, where we, again, place making is this idea of putting community at center. So we turn to those partners and we say, how about you dream of this space? What would you see happen here?

and give them the voice into what happens in this, what should be community space, ⁓ is kind of how we direct. Because we are not, you we have been doing some work again in the East Coast, and we're not, ⁓ we are never gonna be experts on Hartford, downtown Hartford. But the church that's placed there should be, even if they're not. And so it's really guiding them through who are their neighbors, and then let's equip you to go talk to them. ⁓

Be

honest. Turns out if you were ever David or Goliath, you never want to be David. Nobody just wants the three rocks and the slingshot. like, yo, we out here, we were giants. We had hundreds, thousands of congregants. And now you want me to be excited to be David?

And yet that's where we are.

And yet, we only resist becoming David, we forget what David did. And by whose grace and power David did it. And see, part of it is being okay, even when you allow space for them to dream into what's next. Sometimes that's big vision that you don't have resources to support. And so then it is after the ideation, then blending it to what is possible.

and not believe in what's possible is less in God's plan. Sometimes it's a lessening, bless me with less. But who says that prayer? Lord, bless me with less. Right? Nobody is out here saying that, but should we? Yes. In the spirit of, then can I think we recalibrate who is really out here winning? Who should really get the glory? Was it ever the edifice?

Was it because of our size, our six pastors, all with very impressive titles and pedigrees, is that what should get the glory? Or are we willing to shrink so that we now step into the new position that God has been calling us from? Because it's no mistake that the congregation sizes are dwindling. It's no mistake that the congregations are aging. There's no mistaking that each many congregations with thousands, tens of thousands of spates.

square footage of property have millions of dollars of deferred maintenance. And so if that is the narrative and if that is the truth, and then in the same breath, we can say that God's plan is good and perfect, then whose plan is this shrinking?

Hmm.

Whose plan is this,

down to social media right there.

I mean, we should be curious. At least we should be curious, but we get angry. We get sullen.

Well, that's where the tights sit. That's where we hold on. That's where we hold on.

Mm-hmm. Well, so, ⁓ let's talk about resources for if these buildings are being redone to be kind of neighborhood spaces and, what's a business model for that or what are business models for that?

They're varied. know, I think that there is the co- let's start with, I think a lot of times what many congregations believe is still possible, not knowing if it is co-location, that they can still very much have a vibrant congregation, that there's still very much space dedicated and or shared mixed-use space in that building that doesn't require them to be out of the building because of the way that they can currently consider the body of Christ is still somewhat sometimes in the building in space. So co-location is very much sometimes

a business model that is sought. Can we get the right mix of tenants that still allows us to also be a tenant and the primary owner, steward of this space? Then it's what happens when we are no longer co-location, the dominant owner of the space. We've given, sold the space to someone else and now we're simply a tenant, can become a model that works for some because now there is a different developer or partner who really needs 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 square feet of space that could be a particular.

option, then it's on the spectrum of what is possible. ⁓ We no longer require a space to still be a congregation of believers and to be committed to this work. we're going to sell, gift, release ourselves from this space, and maybe attach ourselves to another body and or still be a body of believers, because you're at the point where you realize that the property itself is not a condition or prerequisite to be a body of believers in Christ. And so there's clearly other

models and other structures that can happen within that. But generally, one of those three, oftentimes when you are at the point where you need to sell the property, that is really a reflection of so few resources financially, so few resources from a capacity perspective that sometimes that's actually not a choice. That is what you now, your final act of being a good steward of the history of what that

The choice has been made for you. You should have been asking these questions 5, 10, 20 years ago. And now the choice is made.

There is no coming back. The 10 of you cannot steward 50,000 square feet of...

I think one thing that we're trying to do as well, and we encourage congregations to do this as well, is to try to have conversations at the denominational, judicatory level of what's going on in and around you as well. Because more than likely, we know this to be true, if you're asking these questions, you have others, brothers and sisters in congregations near you who are asking and facing similar things. And denominations and judicatory bodies are trying to wrap their head around what does this mean for our group?

of bodies, what do do, how do we support them. And so I think that's not a model, but it is a conversation that we always try to point congregations to is what's going on above you and around you.

So with all the churches you've worked with over the years, do you have a story or two maybe that come to mind of just story of transformation of a particular church that you might want to share with our listeners and viewers?

Yeah, think there's one that, and again, all of these, it's in process, right? So churches are always figuring out what does it mean today to be a good neighbor in this way. We worked with a United Methodist Church in the Maple Grove area here in the Twin Cities. And they surprisingly came out of COVID in a very strong, missional, and financial place, which they recognized was a blessing. ⁓ And in doing so, they renovated their kitchen.

into a beautiful community licensed, commercially licensed kitchen. Now with that, and a lot of ⁓ people who work for churches are gonna understand that it's a beautiful vision, but then it comes down to decision-making. It comes down to the administrator then having to decide, well, what prices do we set our rates at? Who are we saying yes to? And so that was a process, six month process, right? Like I think oftentimes we are trying to slow the bus down a little bit so that we can eventually speed up.

And so it was a six month listening work with this congregation of who are we? Again, where have we been? Where are we right now? What is our capacity? What is our building saying? And again, what is possible is the question that Tabitha asked all the time. What is possible here? And so we did that with them where they were able to, again, it comes down to, at the end of the day, very functional day-to-day decision making of when you get now three requests.

for the kitchen on Tuesday, you have to say, you wanna say yes to one of them, maybe all of them, but how do you do that? And so that really, you wanna distill that down into who we are, what are our values. And so that's been a beautiful example of a congregation building the systems and the structures to make decisions well. And as they do that, they're seeing more people come in, not necessarily, and this is big for churches who wanna go back to yesterday, when they ask the question of how many people

can we expect on Sunday morning? We say that. We are trying to push that to say, don't know. And actually what we're most concerned about is who's coming through your doors anytime. Whether it's for the thing in the commercial lessons kitchen or the thing on Sunday morning, more people are feeling loved, seen, valued in this space. And we think that's a great mission and neighborly posture.

The one that comes to mind is with the Southern New England Presbyterial and Southern New England and the Martin Luther King Community Church. ⁓ So here's the memo. This is still unfolding and yet ⁓ this church experienced ⁓ a hate crime. The building was burnt down, the sanctuary due to arson and it was rebuilt and this was.

all happening around the same time, think, as COVID, ⁓ within the recent history. And what I would say is, we came in as consultants to help after the building itself, the sanctuary, was well on its way to being restored. And yet there's still all of the questions of programmatically, same of the challenges that we've talked about today, dwindling and aging, congregational numbers, ⁓ the area in terms of where the church is planted.

changes in what's happening there, the vibrancy of the overall ecosystem of the community, raising new questions. This was ⁓ one ⁓ congregation, a part of the Southern New England Presbyterian. There were two other, I think, churches that we also did some direct one-on-one coaching, consulting, support for to kind of begin to ask these questions. What's next? What path do you take? And this is where I would say the rebuilding of that church and that property

was an essential act of faith, an expression of faith about what you cannot take world, you cannot take this. And yet the longer term question of the solvency of that particular building, not the congregation, there is still much to unfold because the other two congregations that was a part of this more direct one-on-one support, one could argue each of them are at different spaces, stages of being well.

right, whether it be numbers or property status, et cetera. And yet one of the things that we acknowledge even at the denominational level is the work of trying to engender collaboration across church bodies. Even though it's clear that it's needed, right, and that sometimes the things that we're willing to do in what we would call our day-to-day lives, for instance,

Mm-hmm.

I live in Maplewood, I drove to the Fritley Costco for olives. I can just say that, it's an addiction, it's a thing, but this is what happened. And so that wasn't close, okay? And sometimes though we are only willing to do that for things in our, what people call our secular lives, but we can use that as an excuse as to why we can't imagine how these churches who are in different geographies can come together to work together given the dynamics of the moment to be.

greater together in this moment in service of the plans that God has for us. So that's still something that we see as a theme that is very real in our world and our congregational life today is still wanting to figure it out independently. And yet there's clear signs that I think we're being pointed to collective action in service of ⁓ God's ultimate aim.

And yet we're still very much navigating the power and the moment of silo within our faith expression. And again, what happens when collective congregational action becomes cool and popular and exciting. We're hoping to be a part of what seeds the possibility of what does that mean? What does that look like that people don't fear it, that it's not immediately avoided because it doesn't seem convenient.

that it's wrapped into, I've always had my own, we've always had our own, that's not for us, that's a black church, that's a white church, that's a this church, that's a that church. There is a way where I think that we are hopefully on the cusp, some of it is often out of, there are no other options. We are, think, on the cusp of, I think, the collaborative church movement, and for various reasons, and not what I think is often has been the independent singular church.

expression of our faith.

Well, Tim and Tabitha, thank you so much for this conversation. So where can our viewers or listeners learn more about your work and connect with it?

Yeah, you can find us on our website, flourishplacemaking.org. We're also on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, but definitely check us out on our website and reach out if you have questions, ⁓ wanna have a conversation, we would love to have that with you as well. That is part of our work.

To our viewers and listeners, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review, or share Pivot with a friend. See you next week.