From the chancel and in written communications recently, I have not heard an apology from church leadership regarding the process. I hear no humility, compassion, or reaching out for reconciliation. Instead, all I have heard from church leadership is defensiveness, self-justification, blaming DeReau, criticizing the protestors… It would go a long way toward transparency and healing if church leadership would allow honest and open reflection to replace defensiveness in the restorative process.

DeReau is a brilliant, wise, gracious, compassionate, incredibly talented, and unapologetically Black and Queer person with a deeply counter-oppressive lens who isn’t afraid to use his voice. He has been taken down by a blatant white supremacist system and by individuals who seem to be incapable of approaching the situation with any measure of humility, decency, understanding of privilege, or professionalism, all the while preaching about many of these things each week. He noticed your white privilege, he called it out, and you're angry.

DeReau also helped our music community and greater church community to reckon with the white supremacy prevalent within our church as well as everywhere else in our society. Music was his primary medium for this reckoning. Hearing and singing the messages of liberation have been powerful tools to help begin change at First Church—for me more powerful than words alone.

I witnessed DeReau live into the values he preaches and why that matters. I saw him place community above individualism like this time and again. This is the leadership that builds a true and safe beloved community that I want to be a part of. I don’t know yet how to reconcile this truth with the dark implications we’ve been fed surrounding DeReau’s resignation.

It never occurred to me that I would have a memorial service until I came here and sang for some of my past choir members and I realized what a beautiful thing that is. So I’ve been thinking about, what music do I want for my memorial service? What hymns? I won’t be there, but it will be my final gift to my beloved community. And the hymns I’ve chosen, the songs I’ve selected, I realize they all came to me from DeReau, every one of them.

We gathered in a circle before singing on the chancel. DeReau’s homilies connected us deeply to the theme of the worship service guided us. I felt lifted and connected to the church.

I write to you because of my love for DeReau and my hope for clarity and peace. I write to you because of his sudden departure. I write to you because of the surrounding rumors and harsh criticism of DeReau’s work as my music minister.