News and Views

By Melissa Lauber

Bishop LaTrelle Easterling has appointed the Rev. Wanda Bynum Duckett to serve as superintendent of the Baltimore Metropolitan District.

Duckett, pastor of Mt. Zion UMC in Baltimore, will begin this ministry July 1, taking over for interim superintendent, the Rev. Ed DeLong.

In discerning who might lead the district, the bishop said she sought “a pastor who is spiritually mature, embodies their faith and leads with integrity.” She lifted up Duckett as a proven leader who has a demonstrable record of fruitfulness and is capable of crafting a fresh vision for the future.

“Both the Cabinet and the Superintendency Committee unanimously agree that Rev. Dr. Duckett is overwhelmingly qualified to assume this leadership position,” Easterling said.

“I’m humbled by the opportunity to serve, and by humbled, I mean blown away,” Duckett said. “I really look forward to getting to know better what the needs and the gifts of the churches are and to working with them to support, resource, pray and serve with them, so that we can be the best we can be for God.”

Duckett’s knowledge of, and love for, the region is already immense. She is a daughter of Baltimore, as “homegrown as it gets.” She was born in West Baltimore’s McCulloh Homes housing project, attended Baltimore City public schools, and spent most of her life in the city, spending 22 years working with the Department of Defense.

Her spiritual life was also lived out with Baltimore as a backdrop. She accepted Jesus as her savior at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. She preached her first sermon in a nondenominational church in East Baltimore where God called her to preach, she sensed, in a dream. That sermon led her into a journey pursuing the ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and classes at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute of Theology in Baltimore.

There, the Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, a professor and then superintendent of the Baltimore Metropolitan District, hired Duckett to pastor Monroe Street UMC in 2006, and later to serve as a Hope Fellow in Baltimore.

Monroe Street, near the Pigtown neighborhood of West Baltimore, was a community rocked by racial tension, extreme poverty, rampant drug addiction, violence and hopelessness. “I wasn’t unacquainted with these things, but I had never such a deep concentration of some of the city’s most dire issues like that before,” Duckett said. “Monroe Street was a place to learn and grow in terms of compassion and the application of the Gospel to the least of these in a very real sense. And, at the same time, to meet and serve with some of the most wonderful people. The strength of that ministry was in the necessity of partnering. The work was so heavy nobody could do it alone.”

After being ordained as an Itinerate Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2010, she was was appointed as full time pastor of Mt. Zion UMC.

At Mt. Zion, she continued to build on the idea of partnerships in ministry – starting a Zumba health and wellness ministry for the community, a vital Fresh Visions young adult ministry that feeds the homeless and does innovative worship and outreach, and a new day care center restart which is expected to open soon.

While at Mt. Zion, in 2014, she also received her doctorate from Wesley Seminary. Her dissertation was entitled “Sacred Slam: Spoken Word Poetry as Sacred Art for Sacred Space.”

This poetic combination of soul with jazz, the blues and hip-hop gave Duckett a different language for sharing the Gospel and has opened doors to new venues of sharing her faith.

Her poetry also winds its way into her style of leadership, reminding her that authenticity and creativity are essential parts of “who God is calling me to be under the realms of grace and obedience,” she said. “Poetry has helped me to realize I can’t lose my voice or I’ll die. I can’t lose my personality or the uniqueness of my experience for the sake of being complicit in other people’s expectations or in trying to fit in or trying to hide.”

As a spoken word artist, Duckett was invited to deliver an original poem, “For Such a Time as This,” at Bishop Easterling’s welcome service in September. At that time, she never dreamed she’d serve on the bishop’s Cabinet. “She’s so authentically herself, so warm and so open, and yet so very capable,” Duckett said about the bishop. “I’m ecstatic about the possibilities to serve in this capacity.”

Duckett said she is also excited about building on DeLong’s dynamic ministry and the work of Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi, who was superintendent of the Baltimore Metropolitan District before she was elected as an episcopal leader in July.

“I have a lot of thoughts,” she said. “I have a lot on my heart about the city,” she said. Much of it revolves around ministry that is “urban, relevant and targeted at seeing people whole and free.” Duckett envisions empowering churches to address the issues of violence and the cradle to prison pipeline that keeps so many men, women, and families in bondage.

She is confident and hopeful that the United Methodist presence in Baltimore will grow in its transforming power. “We just need to be who we say we are,” Duckett said.

In assuming the role of superintendent, Duckett is quick to acknowledge the love and support of her family.  She is the mother of two adult daughters and one son in college, the grandmother of a four-year-old girl, a sister, and the daughter of a woman who supports all she does in ministry. “My family is my outlet, my strength,” she said.

Duckett admits she’s excited, and a little surprised, about being asked to serve as superintendent. She invites others to share in the district’s ministry as the people of Baltimore seek to continue their work to bring glory to God.

“In short, Duckett said, “I love God; I love Baltimore; and I love the church.”

The Baltimore Metropolitan District, which includes the city of Baltimore and a few surrounding suburbs, like Towson, is made up of 77 churches, with 71 active pastors and 18,716 members. The average weekly worship attendance is 6,685.