An Open Letter To Every Christian Minister In America, From A Former Pastor

For nearly 30 years, I stood in the pulpits and on the platforms where you now stand.

I know the difficulties of the work you do that many people don’t think about: the collective expectations of the people you serve, the incredible pressures that come from both above and around you, the number of opinions you have to respectfully sift through. And I know the tumult that often creates within you.

I understand the dizzying high-wire walk of trying to carry your personal convictions as well as the virtues and values you’re entrusted to steward as part of your position, and I’ve felt the fierce internal whirlwind when those things don’t align.

And I also know how easy it is to find your voice gradually silenced, to grow beholden to a congregation or a denomination; to let the practical fears of losing your job or your health insurance or your livelihood slowly force you to make tiny concessions, usually without even realizing it.

I’ve felt what it feels like to soften your delivery, to edit your messages, to start talking around issues that you know will create conflict or bring turbulence or slow things down, and how tempting it is to rationalize why this is simply part of doing ministry.

And above all, I know that you didn’t begin this work wanting to become a compromised people-pleaser with watered-down words, unspoken passions, and feet of clay.

Because of this, I need to ask you: why exactly did you begin this work?

What is preventing you from doing the one thing spiritual leaders are here to do: letting your faith speak unequivocally, pushback, conflict, and retribution be damned?

What is keeping you from centering the poor and the outcast and oppressed in that way that Jesus calls his followers to do?

Like him, you are here to be Good Shepherds: loving caregivers to the harassed and helpless sheep in your care and the fierce opposition to the wolves who would devour them, wherever they show up and however much influence they have.

The American Church needs you to prove me wrong.

The American people need you to.

Immigrants and trans kids and Muslim families and young black men need you to.

This weary, beleaguered, terrified nation in the throes of Christian nationalism needs you to draw deep from your reservoirs of faith, to clarify your calling again, to ask yourself why you do what you do.

And after doing that, it needs you to find your singular voice and to speak in such a way that the heavens shake and powerful people stagger and sleeping people are roused awake to the urgency of the moment.

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All faithful people here need to be reminded what that faith requires of them, so that they can be similarly courageous where they are.
Non-religious people here need to know that believers aren’t all wall-builders and book-banners; that many are moved by their better angels to acts of beauty and kindness and generosity, not exclusion and cruelty.

This world has enough ministers who’ve been content to stay silent and become complicit in the weaponizing of religion and the ascension of bigotry. We don’t need any more of those. America is at capacity for sanctified cowards who forever straddle the fence of neutrality.

I would never be cavalier with your life or your work. I don’t know your ministry setting, your family situation, your financial condition, or your faith journey. All I know is that if you consider yourself a spiritual leader of any kind, the one thing you have, the only thing of real value, is your authentic voice birthed by your spiritual convictions: not your church’s, not your supervisor’s, not your loudest church members.’

Your singular, irreplaceable gift is your personal burden to heal and help and lead—and your willingness to make that burden known without dilution.

The voices of the religious frauds and performative hypocrites are deafening right now. They are drowning out the compassionate, fiercely loving voice of Jesus, and it is your calling and your responsibility to be a steward of that voice. If you refuse to do that, no matter what reason you give to justify it, you have no business calling yourself a minister.

You don’t need to speak in a way that intentionally harms, that willfully divides, or that resonates nationally, but you can speak to the small world entrusted to you, and with unmistakable clarity you can plead for mercy, demand justice, advocate for compassion, and beg for audacious love to be what believers are known by in these days.

Sunday is coming, friends.

May you greet it with courage.