In the final episode of This Great and Complicated Place, host Rich Pérez offers a reflective, soul-stirring conversation that speaks directly to communities of faith—especially those within the Christian tradition—about the work of building just cities. Through story, theology, lived experience, and the voices of trusted thinkers and practitioners, this episode asks: what does it truly mean to embody love, justice, and presence in the places we call home?

From church planting strategies to gentrification, from personal conversion to community transformation, this episode serves as both benediction and blueprint. A sending out. A call to love in real places with real people—at the pace of presence.

Key Themes

• Church planting, presence, and the power of proximity

• Gentrification and the church’s unintended complicity

• The importance of slow, embodied formation in place

• Faith not as strategy, but as solidarity

• Mutuality: what churches can receive from the neighborhoods they enter

• A threefold conversion: to Jesus, to our people, and to the world through the poor

We’re so grateful you’ve joined us for this series—a layered, needed conversation at the intersection of faith, race, and place.

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