Dear Church,

Look, I know you’ve gotten plenty of letters like this in the past ten – if not twenty or thirty – years.

I know you’re used to hearing it by now – you’re irrelevant, you refuse to change, you just aren’t any fun.

But I never minded those things about you.

In fact, I liked that you were counter-culture. I like that you stood up for what was right instead of what was popular.

That’s what I was looking for, after all.

A community that would take a stand. People who were fed up with letting terrible things happen.

I stood up for you for years.

I invited my agnostic friends to come sing Christmas carols and to volunteer at the soup kitchen. They never came, but I kept encouraging them all the same.

I believed you’d show them your true colors.

I believed you’d make them believe the way you had won me over with how you loved the poor and disenfranchised, with how you cut through the ideology with love for the hungry, the homeless, the lonely.

I was just a kid when we met.

I was a wiz on the Bible drills, and I have the ribbons to prove it.

I have a scrapbook full of youth group memories at Christian music festivals, at Sunday night youth group, and at the winter camp retreat.

I remember learning to care because of adults around me who cared – who spent their evenings after work making space for my friends and me to feel loved and valued, who planned the most epic scavenger hunts you’ve ever seen.

But now I’m 30 years old.

Now my best friends have deep scars from your good intentions.

My mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother all talk about how hard you are to get along with.

They quote Bible verses to me and ask me what the hell is going on.

I tell them people are difficult to get along with, that it’s the sum of our parts that makes us whole.

But are we whole,church?

Are we about to make a difference or are we about to make a fool of ourselves?

Are you about to make a fool of me?

Because most days it looks like taking your side is taking the low road.

My friends are about to stop listening when I say you love them.

My family is about to stop waiting for you to care.

Where are we going, church?

I want to help you fix this.

But we both know help only comes to those who help themselves.

Please get moving.

Your friend,
Sarah