Lenny Duncan - Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US

For my mother, Loretta, who Im sure is harassing Jesus about everything happening under the sun.

It takes a cast of thousands to make a first book happen. I wont be able to thank you all. But specifically, I want to thank my partner, Bree, and my daughter, Jenna, who watched me stare at a screen for the first three months of my call, as the dark circles under my eyes grew, yet had the courage to tell me to take a break. Im scary when Im obsessed with a project. To all the churches that loved me along the way. To my peers in the church who are doing much more incredible work than I ever could. Seriously, I am in awe of you. To Katie Colaneri, who helped me start writing another project; her affirmation of my work gave me the courage to put something down on paper. Katie, your constant refrain of when are you writing a book finally conspired with the Holy Spirit to make this book happen. To Lisa Kloskin, who was an incredible midwife in the birth of this. If you are looking to write a book, get you an editor like Lisa Kloskin. Im seriously afraid I can never work with anyone else on a writing project. Finally, I want to acknowledge the great liberator Jesus Christ, who continues to challenge a sorry excuse for a Christian to be better, to say more, and lay it all on the line.

Dear Church, how the hell did we get here? The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the whitest denomination in the United States. Many of our congregations are in decline, and our society is becoming more and more divided. We dont know what the future holds for this church, so how did we get here? It might be simpler for me to answer how I got herebecause the story is just as surprising. Im a pastor, but if you looked at my life story, I think wed both agree I was more likely to end up in prison than the pulpit. In fact, its a miracle Im still alive. Im a former drug dealer, sex worker, homeless queer teen, and felon. How the hell did I get here? I got here because I met Jesus when I met you, Church. Whenever I think of my first experience in the ELCA, I get goosebumps. Rev. Tim Johansen at Temple Lutheran Church in Havertown, Pennsylvania, stood at the Communion table and declared, This is Jesuss table; he made no restrictions, and neither do we. I was smitten immediately. There was no membership meeting, no checking my theology, no friendly talk with the pastor before I approached the table of grace. I was welcome, and this was revolutionary to me. You were everything I wanted, Church: unabashedly progressive in your theology and willing to proclaim itfrom the pulpit no less. Your leaders were under the usual congregational siegeoverworked, underpaid, and underappreciatedbut they werent put on a deadly pedestal. They handled it all with a sense of grace I found edifying.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I walked up the aisle. I mean, you loved me, you really loved me. This welcome to the table was something I had never experienced before. I didnt even know what it was. It awakened the shadow side of my relationship with God that I hadnt had the courage to look under. It was like a knife that cut instantly through years of shame and brokenness and released me from those bonds. Grace is like a knife sometimes.

In one sentence, ELCA, you had done more for me than any church had ever done. I approached the table with my head held high and love in my heart. For the first time in my life, I wasnt filled with the fear that I was dragging to the Communion rail everything that I had ever done. Of course, I still carried those things, but somehow you welcomed me anyway. You showed me that my past didnt make me unworthy to receive the nearness of God in the elements. I could stand before the table of grace a whole persondeeply flawed and still incredibly valued, handmade by a loving God.

You loved me. I loved you.

You loved me first, too. It was amazing to me that I didnt have to traverse an emotional, social, and theological minefield to get to you. There was a clear path. It was direct and wide open. I remember standing among these people who didnt look anything like me and thinking I had never felt more at home.

I was standing there in my usual Sunday best probably a T-shirt and jeans with about thirty tattoos littering my arm. I had on skate sneaks at thirty, because I had never worn anything else, so why start now? Stretch piercings in my ears. The only other black person in the sanctuary was a little girl who was clearly adopted. Everyone was welcoming, but not in that creepy way that reeks of desperation. You know exactly what I mean if you are under fortythe wild-eyed look of welcome because a young person hasnt walked inside the church for months. I got quizzical looks, but I was used to that. I often went to different churches with a baseball cap on and sat up front and in my unique, tone-deaf way belted out tunes louder than anyone else. I would raise my hands and dance and squirm and snap at sermons like I was at a jazz club, listening to poetry in 1958. Thats just how I did church. I would do that at a Catholic mass or a nondenominational praise service. It didnt matter to me. I was there to worship, and its what I did. I took pride in being a free-agent Christiana worshipper without a permanent home. I would throw 10 percent of whatever Id made for the week in the basket and didnt much care where it went.

I have been told more than once that I needed to change who I was to be member of a church. Ive heard a pious Young man, take that hat off as I sat down in a pew. Ive been pulled aside after saying, Love is love is love, only to be reminded that sometimes real love is punitive and correctiveand then invited to a Bible study to improve my biblical knowledge. Ive received blank stares when I sat and told a pastor my whole story. One woman clutched her purse at a small-group meeting when I shared about my incarceration, as if my whole plan in joining was to get to her checkbook. My wife was excommunicated from her church for dating me.

When I first met you, ELCA, I was loosely affiliated with a church-planting movement of Evangelical-style free churches. They had a dont ask, dont tell policy about most of the marginalized identities I carried with me, and that was cool with me. When I did share, most people received it in the way most Christians do: What great testimony. Whatever the hell that means.

But not you, ELCA. You took it all in stridemy story, my tattoos, my brokenness. You embraced the whole me, even my passion for radical black liberation. At the time, I had a burning desire to serve the church, which you would later help me figure out was a call to ministry. I had to walk in discernment with others to uncover that call. I said I was hearing God; you said lets listen together.