Substack Seminary Q4 starts Monday!
October 5th. The theme is Technology and Collaboration.
To wrap up Q3, we invited Substack Seminary enrollee Thea Curry-Fuson to share her thoughts on Theology and Community. Thank you Thea!
What might God do through you?
God is relational. The truth that God exists in three distinct yet deliberately connected forms expresses how much God values relationships. This relationship expresses itself by moving right into the neighborhood, embodying a desire to know and be known so that creation might see and believe in greater things through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s gracious, redeeming and renewing life comes through authentic, deep and revealing relationships with real people also willing to know and be known.
Growing up in a chaotic and violent home, I prayed for the courage to believe the small voice whispering inside of me, “there has to be a better way.” As a young adult, I found my own manipulative, toxic and abusive relationship immediately inflicting bruises and scars to my body and brain, the voice inside began to scream “you deserve a better way.”
After 5 years of contorting myself to try and fit into who someone else needed me to be so that they could function with peace, I dreamed of escaping to live a new way in a land far far away. It was overseas, in a 70% atheist country of Czech Republic, with little faith in me, I met three women who embodied what I needed: friendship.
During our long walks to the train, through sleet and snow, and over three hour lunches across crumble filled tables, these women were willing to get to know, and let me get to know them, bruises, scars, hopes and dreams. It was through these relationships, each revealed they had a relationship with the God of everything something I never even dreamed was a possibility.
It was under the deep wide Czech sky I realized for the first time God was not distant and disgusted with me, but madly in love with and always present with protection and provision, even on my worst days.
This new connection led me to be able to return home, redeem my broken relationships with my family and learn to recognize and receive real love that shows up as honesty, kindness, mercy and self control. My relationship with God also empowered me to drop my salty nets and join the Jesus mission through pastoral ministry, trusting that God could and would work through even me, a wretched sinner still learning a new way to be.
In church planting, revitalization and daring to dream up something new, God has always shown up through people, willing to co-dream, believe and bring something out of nothing repeatedly.
Noticing this truth, led me to create She Believes Community , a space for women ready to connect with other dreamers, be encouraged by daring believers and held accountable to the goodness of God already at work in wondrous ways. She Believes Community embodies God’s choice to move right into the neighborhood, coming dangerously close to all our weakness, hunger, sickness and selfish ways, yet offering healing, hope and a brand new way instead of running away.
Jesus chose relationships, close proximity and living in the messy middle of human life in order to offer a new way, modeling what mercy looks like and promising that death doesn’t stop God’s will and way. By choosing connection, encouragement and accountability, fellow dreamers can stop wishing for a better reality, like those waiting for God’s kingdom to come, and learn to be the better way, bringing hope, change, comfort and redemption to their families, work place and neighborhoods resulting in a world that shines brighter, beyond isolation, envy and shame.
She Believes Community is a little-Christ, worried less about titles, given authority or the way power tends to work today.
Instead, we focus on being present with one another, boldly sharing our stories and trusting that God is here, now, working towards good in you today. She Believes Community lives out an embodied theology of God’s kingdom that moves us from despising ourselves in our booths, to determined followers of Jesus willing to share the influence this new way of living changes things.
We welcome you to come and see where else God will lead.
Find us at shebelievescommunity.com
Thea Curry-Fuson is the Founder and Executive Director of She Believes Community. Thea also provides content, connection and community to faithful leaders ready to dream and believe in a better reality via speaking, writing, coaching and consulting.
Visit theacurryfuson.com to connect.
Substack Seminary Q4: Technology and Collaboration
We are the case study.
It’s not just the theme - we’re doing it in real time!
Pastor Sierra Ward, Loren Richmond Jr., Fr. Cathie Caimano … and you !- answer these questions in public, via blog and livestream (Thursdays at 3:30pm Eastern)
Week 1 - starts Oct 5: The tech your ministry is built on
Inventory what you’re using and how (your digital ‘stack’!). Favorite platform? One that gives you fits? One you wish you were using/could use? AI (yes/no/how)
Week 2 - starts Oct 12: Who is your network?
Map your collaboration - who you work with, how decisions get made, who supports your ministry and how you support others. Where is the accountability?
Week 3 - starting Oct 19: How do strangers become community members?
Picking up from Q3: Theology and Community - let’s audit our welcome sequence!
How do you use technology to get people’s attention, engage them with what you’re doing, and have them become part of the community?
Week 4 - Oct 26: How do we form people we never meet?
Christian faith and practice is about intimacy and community. How do we foster this in digital space?
Week 5 - Nov 2: What does a Cage Free Minister do all day?
Cathie, Sierra, and Loren will share from our daily work lives - how we use digital platforms in our ministry, who we rely on to help support us, how we support others in their ministry.
Week 6 - Nov 9: What did we build this Quarter?
Before-and-after - what we built this Quarter - what we’re going to take with us as we move forward.
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