Deering Community Church

 
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Pastor:
Rev. Barbara  Currie

Pastor Barbara was born in Portland, Maine, and was nurtured in the Congregational Churches of Raymond and Cumberland Center. After finishing high school at Greely Institute, she went on to the University of Maine in Orono, receiving a BA degree in Sociology. The next step on her journey was Hawaii, where she finished a Masters in Social Work at the University of Hawaii, married her first husband, Roland Luckett, and gave birth to her first child, Jason. The family, including a daughter, Josslyn, settled in Southern California. The Lucketts were divorced in the late ‘70’s and remained close in rearing their children. For the next 30 years she worked as a clinical social worker, mostly with adults diagnosed with severe and chronic mental illness. During this time she was very active in the Irvine UCC, helping lead that congregation to become and Open and Affirming Church. In 1991 she took an early retirement and went on to fulfill a dream of living in an intentional Christian community (So Others Might Eat in Washington, DC) and doing outreach to the homeless, targeting those with mental problems. It was here that she met and later married Neill Currie, one of the other volunteers in the community. Upon returning to southern California, they worked and lived with the homeless on Skid Row in LA and later lived in a boarding house for people with mental illness, which Neill ran.

After leaving DC Barbara was unable to find a place in lay ministry and went through a dark night of the soul. She began regaining her faith in an inner city Episcopal Church of mixed racial background. She then returned to the United Church of Christ in an African American church in LA. (Her first husband was an African American from Jackson, Mississippi.) It was during this time that she felt God calling her to ordained ministry. In May 2003, she received her Masters of Divinity with honors from Andover Newton School of Theology. In September she received a call to be the minister of Deering Community Church. Her ordination was on November 23rd and her installation on February 8th, 2004.

Pastor Barbara’s theology is on the liberal side of the UCC. She is drawn to this denomination because of it’s emphases on unity amidst diversity, its strong commitment to mission partnerships, the priesthood of all believers, and the covenant of mutual responsibility among God, the individual, and the faith community. Her theology is very much influenced by Liberation Theology and Progressive Christianity. Her passion is to create a faith-based community where all can serve and care for each other as well as reaching out, especially to the marginalized with the love described by Jesus and Paul.
Copyright © 2003 Deering Community Church
Last modified: 03/06/2006