The Thriving Rural Communities Initiative foresees and works towards the day when North Carolina’s rural clergy, rural churches, rural communities, and rural countryside thrive in the way God intended.
Get Involved
How You Can Be a Part of Thriving Rural Communities:
- Participate in a TRC event or program.
- Communicate the vision of God’s love for North Carolina’s rural communities. Resist speaking in ways that paint rural North Carolina as a second-hand or barren place.
- Take the initiative, and tell us how you think we can better support rural leaders.
- Pray for Thriving Rural Communities – for the Spirit’s power and for Christ’s living presence.
TRC Leadership and Staff
Brad Thie
Director, Thriving Rural Communities
Rev. Brad Thie, a 1998 Duke Divinity School graduate, has pastored United Methodist churches in North Carolina, and he has extensive experience ministering as a chaplain and spiritual counselor in prisons, hospitals, and retirement communities.
Before joining Thriving Rural Communities in 2013, Thie served as pastor of Friendship UMC in Newton, N.C., a partner church with Thriving Rural Communities. “I have witnessed the transformative power of the ministry,” Thie said. “Rural Fellows have blessed our church, our laity has grown through Duke learning events, and Friendship UMC has been encouraged in her ministry within the community.”
Thie has an M.B.A. from Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Fla., and a B.A. from Bowling Green State University.
