Our Story

How It All Began

Our executive leadership team is made up of three couples — Kyle & Tessa Redel, Aaron & Holly Snell, and Sam & Audrey DeFord.

These three couples have been dear friends for over 15 years, consistently sharing the joys and hardships of life, raising family alongside one another, and discovering dreams for the future. It was within this context of brotherhood and sisterhood that the story of The Parks Church began. Over the years and through many conversations, it became clear that the Lord had burdened each couple’s heart for church planting, and it was their desire to one day share in this work together.

The Launch

After several years in 2010, the Lord saw fit to turn the three couples’ attention to the city of McKinney and led them to pack up their families to plant a gospel-centered church there. By the end of 2010, interest and prayer meetings had begun, and in April of 2011, The Parks officially launched with a group of thirty people in a small shared church building on Sunday nights.

The Growing

We spent the next several years meeting in elementary and middle schools, weekly loading and unloading the equipment needed for Sunday into a box truck we were gifted. It was an “all hands on deck” type of season, and those early days of the Lord’s faithfulness, small community, and shared meals after every service laid a strong foundation. We saw the value in knowing one another and being known, realizing that no matter what numerical growth would eventually occur, we had to strive to keep our church community saturated by the gospel and not be overly programmatic but intimate and vulnerable for the sake of our spiritual growth.

Beyond the regular weekly worship gathering, we prayerfully focused our attention on the needs of McKinney, asking the Lord to show us which areas to devote ourselves to in his restoration of our city. Several city initiatives were born during this stage of our development and continued to link our hearts to the well-being of our city both spiritually and physically.

Today and the Future

The Parks Church currently meets in the heart of downtown McKinney at our more permanent home of the McKinney Performing Arts Center. We know the Lord has strategically placed us where East McKinney meets West to proclaim the good news of the gospel to a people he is drawing to himself. We continue to prayerfully seek his will for our city and spur each other on to faithful gathering, learning the Scripture, and submitting ourselves to one another and Christ in confession and repentance. Jesus is building his Church, and we are overjoyed to be a part of his making all things new in McKinney and beyond.