Letter from Pastor Amanda to the congregation on 6-4-2020
I still felt like I was a new pastor here at Emmanuel back in June of 2015, when an armed young white man walked into Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, attended Bible Study with some of its pastors and members for an hour before getting up and shooting and killing nine of the people who had welcomed him, read the Bible with him, and prayed with him.
The Sunday after this atrocity occurred, I preached about it (that sermon from five years ago can be read here). In that sermon I talked about how I, like so many others in our country, was appalled by what had happened. How I felt impotent in the face of such racist evil that has such deep roots in our country. How I knew that something needed to be done, but I wasn’t even sure where to start. At time, my response was to pray, and to invite you to regular prayer gatherings where we would talk about, learn about, and pray about racism in our country. On the first Wednesday I prayed alone, but other Wednesdays a small group gathered and we prayed together, seeking to learn, to grow, to find ways that we could acknowledge the reality of racism even in the systems that we rely on. We prayed seeking to be peacemakers, seeking to be ministers of reconciliation, seeking to be honest about our own complicity in systems that oppress.
It is five years later. And, well, here we are. Trapped. Trapped in our homes by a virus but also trapped in the systems of racism that many choose not to acknowledge and that some have to fear with every fiber of their being.
Of course, the invitation to pray is always open, but we also need to learn. This summer, I’m inviting you to join in reading and discussing a book called, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. by Lenny Duncan. Here’s a little bit about the book and the author from Amazon’s website.
Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make all the headlines, but Duncan sees something else at work–drawing a direct line between the church’s lack of diversity and the church’s lack of vitality. The problems the ELCA faces are theological, not sociological. But so are the answers.
Part manifesto, part confession, and all love letter, Dear Church offers a bold new vision for the future of Duncan’s denomination and the broader mainline Christian community of faith. Dear Church rejects the narrative of church decline and calls everyone–leaders and laity alike–to the front lines of the church’s renewal through racial equality and justice.
It is time for the church to rise up, dust itself off, and take on forces of this world that act against God: whiteness, misogyny, nationalism, homophobia, and economic injustice. Duncan gives a blueprint for the way forward and urges us to follow in the revolutionary path of Jesus.
My plan is for us to read the book and then, to have Zoom discussions about the book using the discussion guide in the book. My hope is that we will have so many people in Emmanuel reading this book that we will need to use Zoom breakout rooms to have our discussions
This is not a book that affirms the status quo, at all. There are things in the book that might shock some us of us, things that might make us squirm, things that will definitely make us uncomfortable, things that will make us think and things that will make us feel. They are the words and the thoughts of someone whose life experience has been very different from most of ours. But he is someone who loves the church, who loves our church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for the same reason that I do; because in a profound way, it introduced us to the God of grace.
I’m going to give us a month to track down and read Dear Church (your local bookstore would be able to find it and it’s available on Amazon and on Audible). Beginning in July we’ll start getting together to talk about it.
Growing up, every week in the confession liturgy of my church (from the “green book” the Lutheran Book of Worship) I would say, in the company of my sisters and brothers in faith at Christ Lutheran Church, “we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Friends, I am feeling that bondage particularly keenly right now and I pray for Jesus to liberate us all.
Until we meet again, peace be with you.
In Christ,
Pastor Amanda
P.S. Sometimes I find it helpful to motivate myself to do something by publicly committing to doing it. If you’re like that too, I encourage you to use this link to sign up here to read and discuss this book: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080D45ADAE2FAAFE3-dear
(Signing up will also help me to plan for our discussions.)