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.
Dear Church also features a discussion guide at the back--perfect for church groups, book clubs, and other group discussion.

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

Politics & Social Sciences

Duncan, Lenny

Social Sciences

Fortress Press

Dialogues On: Race Learner Book replicates a conversational experience by giving participants a reader on race in the United States. Each topic is packed with well-researched information and brought to life with the lived experience and stories of people at the center of the topic. 
Dialogues On brings your adult small group together to tackle difficult topics and turn conflict into community. In addition to the learner book, Dialogues On: Race includes: 
- Dialogues On: Facilitator Guide offers a structured guide for leaders to develop new communication skills and lead the session for the week. 
- Dialogues On: DVD features a series of interviews to highlight the topic and help you dive deeper into issues around race. 
This curriculum contains topics for eight weeks of discussion in your small group for adults. Race is the third topic in the Dialogues On series, following Dialogues On: The Refugees Crisis and Dialogues On: Sexuality.

Dialogues On / Race / Learner Book

Religion & Spirituality

HILL, DANIEL

White, Rozella Haydée

Greer, Broderick

Coffman, Kristofer

Jones, Cami

Jacobs, Jim Bear

Christian Books & Bibles

Sparkhouse Press

"This lyrical testament to life as 'a blind date with mercy' will challenge and inspire."--Publishers Weekly [Starred Review] 
In 1991, when he was 13 years old, Lenny Duncan stepped out of his house in West Philadelphia, walked to the Greyhound station, and bought a ticket--the start of his great American adventure. 
Today Duncan, who inspired and challenged audiences with his breakout first book, Dear Church, brings us a deeply personal story about growing up Black and queer in the U.S. In his characteristically powerful voice he recounts hitchhiking across the country, spending time in solitary confinement, battling for sobriety, and discovering a deep faith, examining pressing issues like poverty, mass incarceration, white supremacy, and LGBTQ inclusion through an intimate portrayal of his life's struggles and joys. United States of Grace is a love story about America, revealing the joy and resilience of those places in this country many call "the margins" but that Lenny Duncan has called home. This book makes the bold claim that God is present with us in the most difficult of circumstances, bringing life out of death.

United States of Grace: A Memoir of Homelessness, Addiction, Incarceration, and Hope (Handbook)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Broadleaf Books

Psalms of My People: A Story of Black Liberation as Told through Hip-Hop

When Lenny Duncan wrote Dear Church in 2018, they had a vision for a church that could and would reform itself into something new. After four years, a pandemic, a global uprising for racial equity, and what Duncan describes as "the death of the republic" on January 6, 2021, we now live in a vastly different landscape than the one Duncan wrote about previously. Lenny now contends that we no longer need a reformation--we need a revolution. Dear Revolutionaries is a handbook for a new generation that sees, clear-eyed, the series of catastrophes we have inherited, the road that lies ahead, and the improbability of victory, yet are still ready to build the tomorrow we so desperately want to be born in this world. The institutional church is concerned with reviving itself. God is concerned with reviving the community within and beyond the walls of the church. Dear Revolutionariesis a book for the community who is ready to rise up and build something new from the ashes. Casting a vision for a new spiritual future led by the people, Dear Revolutionaries offers a series of peace-building practices that will give readers the tools to build, guide, and care for spiritual community in a world beyond the church.

Dear Revolutionaries: A Field Guide for a World beyond the Church

"This lyrical testament to life as 'a blind date with mercy' will challenge and inspire." --Publishers Weekly [Starred Review] 
In 1991, when he was thirteen years old, Lenny Duncan stepped out of his house in West Philadelphia, walked to the Greyhound station, and bought a ticket--the start of his great American adventure. But little did he know that his great American adventure would include a winding path through sex work and drug deals, prison, and eventually ministry and social justice activism. 
Now out in paperback with a new afterword, Duncan brings us his deeply personal story about growing up Black and queer in the US. In his characteristically powerful voice, he recounts hitchhiking across the country, spending time in solitary confinement, battling for sobriety, and discovering a deep faith, examining pressing issues like poverty, mass incarceration, white supremacy, and LGBTQ inclusion through an intimate portrayal of his life's struggles and joys. United States of Grace is a love story about America, revealing the joy and resilience of places in this country that many call "the margins" but that Lenny Duncan has called home. Fierce and incisive, Duncan challenges us and America to seek life out of death. "I was born starving for the good," he writes, "and this country can be a feast of good if we open ourselves up to it."

United States of Grace: A Memoir of Homelessness, Addiction, Incarceration, and Hope

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Books by Duncan, Lenny