Our Mission

We are a community of LGBTQIA+ folx and allies embodying the liberating heart of Jesus where everyone is invited to come as you are, believing as you do.

Our Vision

Everyone Belongs. With remarkable warmth and bold, progressive worship, we are cultivating a joyful, supportive congregation where you can explore your relationship with God on your own terms. We strive to be a hub for the entire LGBTQIA+ community, creating a liberating movement within and beyond our church walls. Together, we commit to racial and social justice while embodying an optimistic hope for the future. We invite you to bring your full self to unite your spirituality, sexuality, gender identity, and heart for justice. Come, join us!

“Wherever you are is the richest place to be.
Dive in and God will meet you there! ”

What We Believe

We are committed to following the example of Christ and embracing progressive values. To help explain what that looks like, we have adopted these "Eight Principles of Progressive Christianity" that were developed at the Pacific School of Religion:

The Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Saint Louis is a Progressive Christian Community.  By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who…

  1. have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus;

  2. recognize that others have other names for the way to God's realm and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us;

  3. Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us. This includes:

    • believers and agnostics,

    • conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,

    • women and men,

    • all sexual orientations and gender identities,

    • all races and cultures, all classes and abilities,

    • those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;

  4. understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus's name as a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all peoples;

  5. know that our actions toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe;

  6. find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty—more value in questioning than in absolutes;

  7. form ourselves into communities to equip one another for the work we feel called to do:

    • striving for peace and justice among all people,

    • protecting and restoring the integrity of all God's creation,

    • bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers;

  8. recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.

Our History

MCCGSL was founded in October of 1973 by the Rev. Carol Cureton. The church began worshiping at Berea Presbyterian Church at 3010 Olive Street. Until that first worship service on October 28, 1973, St. Louis had no gay organization existing, since the Gay Liberation Front disappeared in 1971. On Monday, March 11, 1974, MCC’s global founder, Rev. Troy Perry, came to St. Louis and spoke to a group of nearly 300 people, declaring that "God does not want you to change that part of you which God created," Rev. Perry admonished the congregation to "learn to love yourself" even if others hated you, explaining that one could not change who they were created to be.

With about fifty St. Louisans attending their services, the congregation became an officially chartered member of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches on April 21, 1974. At the time, UFMCC had about sixty congregations with a membership of about 15,000 people in twenty-eight states, Canada, and England.

In 1974, when members of the Berea Congregation began to object to the use of their facilities by a church group that had a "special ministry to the gay community," MCCGSL began looking for other facilities. On December 23, 1974, the church, with nearly 150 worshipers, left the Olive Street facilities and moved into a new building at 5108 Waterman Blvd.

(Before the purchase of the Waterman building, several church properties were investigated by MCCGSL leadership; however, in some cases, once the owners discovered the mission of MCC, they chose to remove the property from the market. The acquisition of the house/soon-to-be-Church on Waterman, according to the Post Dispatch, was believed to "mark the first time in Missouri that any self-proclaimed homosexual group has owned its own facilities."

On December 1, 1980, Rev. P. Thomas Jordan was called as the new Senior Pastor of MCCGSL. His tenure lasted until February 21, 1988. By the early 1980's, MCC had served or was serving as a meeting place for Gay Alcoholics Anonymous, Washington University's Concerned Gay Students, Parents of Gays, Men's Rap Group, the Gay Hotline, Midcontinent Life Services Corp., Growing American Youth, and Gay Overeaters Anonymous.

After nearly ten years at the Waterman location, in 1984, the Church of about 130 active members, purchased a building in Lafayette Square at 1120 Dolman. Constructed in 1870 as St. John's Episcopal Church, the building was taken over by the St. Mary's Assumption Ukrainian Rite congregation early in the 20th century. Now, it belonged to what the Post Dispatch, in reporting the Church's relocation, called "the only congregation here (in St. Louis) composed of avowed Christian homosexuals."

Rev. Brad Wishon was called as the next Senior Pastor on December 17, 1989. The congregation grew under Rev. Wishon's leadership, through outreach to the growing LGBTQ communities. In November of 1996, the Dolman church was sold, and the MCC congregation began renting space from St. John's United Methodist Church on the corner of Washington and Kingshighway.

On March 1, 1998, the Rev. Teena Carpenter was called as the next Senior Pastor. She began her tenure here on June 8, 1998. MCCGSL experienced tremendous growth during her tenure, with average Sunday attendance stretching from around 100 to over 350 people. During this time the church staff also expanded greatly to accommodate the needs of a much larger church community.

On Sunday, October 26, 2003, Rev. Carol Trissell was called as the next Senior Pastor of MCCGSL. During her tenure, the church saw the decline of the St. John UMC rental property, and began to plan a move to a more permanent location. That search eventually led to a property at 1919 S. Broadway. The historic ground-breaking for the $2M renovation project was reported by the Vital Voice Magazine on Sunday, September 7, 2008. Our first worship service in that building was recorded and occurred on Sunday, June 21, 2009.

Our current Senior Pastor, Rev. Wes Mullins, was called to begin his service to our congregation on Sunday, October 6, 2013. Our longest serving pastor, Rev. Wes has helped us continue to build our ministries and find greater financial health. In 2018, seeking better long-term financial health, the congregation voted overwhelmingly to sell our building at 1919 S. Broadway, and the property is now the home of the Lift for Life Academy Elementary School. Our last service in that building was on Easter Sunday, 2019. Since then we have enjoyed a wonderful partnership with Carondelet United Church of Christ as we share their building at 7423 Michigan Avenue. Since the Covid pandemic, our congregation also worships almost an equal number of virtual members as in-person members. It is an exciting time to see how church and ministry changes and adapts with new technology and transformational times of ministry!