History
In 1971, some Lesbian and Gay folks in Kansas City learned the founder of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), Troy Perry was helping LGBT folks open MCC's around the country. The vision for Kansas City's Metropolitan Community Church was born. The following spring, they began to meet together in a grove of trees in Volker Park. In 1972 the first permanent Pastors arrived to help the small group begin their Church. One day, a bar owner, Reggie Greene, took two friends to this church group that met in the park. Reggie dropped off his friends and sat in his car to listen. Later Reggie offered his coffee house, the Asylum, for a dry warm place for the church to meet on Sunday afternoon. In 1973, Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Kansas City was officially recognized as a Charter church of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. Several Pastor's served for a few years. In 1982, Rev. John Barbone became our Senior Pastor and served until retiring in 2009.
Specialties
Spirit of Hope is Kansas City's Metropolitan Community Church. As a global movement Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) has been at the vanguard of human rights for LGBT people since 1968. We strive for justice at the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, economics, aging and global human rights. We performed the first same-sex marriages and are struggling on the forefront towards marriage equality in countries worldwide as we have in the United States since our founding. In Kansas City many of the rights and services LGBT people have come to appreciate, such as The Samaritan Project, are a part of our church legacy. We exist to celebrate God's love with inclusion, acceptance, diversity and integrity while engaging community and beyond! We explore life's questions with open hearts and minds. We raise our voices in sacred defiance against systems that exclude. We reach out to the hopeless in the Spirit of Hope seeking to lift-up the next generation of remarkable, far-reaching spiritual activists. Our work continues today as we invite you to become a part of our global spiritual revolution.