In 1968, a year before New York's Stonewall Riots, a series of most unlikely events in Southern California resulted in the birth of the world's first church group with a primary, positive ministry to gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender persons.

Those events, a failed relationship, an attempted suicide, a reconnection with God, an unexpected prophecy, and the birth of a dream led to MCC's first worship service: a gathering of 12 people in Rev. Troy Perry's living room in Huntington Park, California on October 6, 1968.

That first worship service in a Los Angeles suburb in 1968 launched the international movement of Metropolitan Community Churches, which today has grown to 43,000 members and adherents in almost 300 congregations in 22 countries. During the past 36 years, MCC's prophetic witness has forever changed the face of Christianity and helped to fuel the international struggle for LGBT rights and equality

For the next Sunday, he scrounged up a phonograph and records of some religious music so that we could all sing to it. Aside from being an ace projectionist, Willie was also a singer, and music director. He made that his job with the new church.

The next Sunday, we were 14 instead of 12. I got up and looked around and said, "If you love the Lord this morning would you say ‘amen!'" They all shouted "amen" back to me. It's been that way, too, since then. I also praised the Lord because we were growing.

The next Sunday we had 16 and I got up and said, "Well look at this. Thank you Jesus, we're on the move!"

But, the fourth Sunday we had only nine, and I almost died. But here again, God had prepared me. He gave me a sermon entitled, "Despise Not the Day of Small Things." And God gave me that sermon for Troy Perry, not for anyone there.

Lee, a friend from my army days, and now one of the regulars, said, "That morning, when you looked out in the group, and saw that it had shrunk, I could tell that you were upset. You got up and you preached, and you preached as though you meant it. I could tell you really meant it."

I said, "Well, that was a sermon God gave especially for me." The next Sunday we had 22 in attendance.

We'd jumped back up in attendance, and we've never dropped since.

As we started to grow and attract people from all kinds of different backgrounds, I knew that we would have to begin settling problems of organization, administration, doctrine and the church services. They had to be settled soon, so that everyone would be able to know and rely on the church, to really be a part of its body, of its identity.

I knew that I was not starting another Pentecostal church. I was starting a church that would be truly ecumenical. I had asked the religious backgrounds of those first twelve. They were Catholic, Episcopal, and of various Protestant sects. I fervently sought to serve a really broad spectrum of our population. It would have to be a church that most could understand and easily identify with, and accept it as not being unusual or odd. It seemed to me that it should be traditional, almost like those they attended in childhood, or not too different from that.