Our Story

Ryan Scott Carrell, our founding pastor, and his wife, Jill, started Southeast in 2011 in their apartment living room. Having graduated from Franklin Central High School in 1998, starting Southeast was all about coming home to Franklin Township in Indianapolis and helping people looking for a new kind of church find a place to belong. We talked a lot early on about helping people find a church after giving up on the idea of church. A lot of people talk about this as deconstructing their faith. We understand this because for a long time church has been defined with words like anti-science, judgmental, and political. There’s got to be a better way to be the church. What if we can reconstruct our faith and redefine the word church with words like family, goodness, and love? That’s why we exist and why our mission is to explore the way of Jesus as we learn to love God, love others, and bring life to our community.