My congregation turns 150: 7-16-15
July 16, 2015
Today I am celebrating here my own congregation, Second Presbyterian Church of Kansas City. That's because it is celebrating 150 years of ministry, having been founded on July 10, 1865, with seven women and three men as its first members.
We've been celebrating in various ways all year, though this past Sunday (while I was off in St. Paul, Minn., preaching at an interfaith service), Second devoted the whole morning specifically to commemorating its founding and recommitting to a future of mission and service to others as a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination.
You may or may not know that in the Civil War, some Presbyterian churches were so-called "Old School," which meant, among other things, an unwillingness to work against slavery. Second, by contrast, was founded as a "New School" congregation, meaning its members opposed slavery and were willing to do what they could to stop it and, after the war, to work toward reconciliation of the races.
First Presbyterian Church, located in Downtown KC, was an Old School church.
It no longer exists. What happened to it? Well, God has an ironic sense of humor. So when old First Church finally folded in the late 1960s or early '70s, what was left of it became part of a St. Mark's Church, a multi-denominational congregation then forming that was predominantly made up of African-Americans. It is located next to what used to be the Wayne Miner housing project.
So a once-pro-slavery church got merged into a black church. Nice.
Meanwhile, Second, which in its early days had been located downtown, moved to the Brookside area almost 100 years ago -- and there we have stayed, southeast of the Plaza, near UMKC and Rockhurst University, just down the street from Central United Methodist Church. It has turned out to be a fabulous location that allows us to do ministry all around us as well as all around the country and the world. Indeed, several of our youth just returned from a mission work trip to Oklahoma, and others are about to depart for a similar trip to Thailand.
Over the years, the DNA that the founders brought with them -- a willingness to confront difficult social issues like slavery -- has stayed with us. Our outreach work in the community touches on many of the hot-button issues of our day, from AIDS to hunger, education to racism to abuse of children and more.
What we also recognize is that we can't do it all alone. So we sometimes have working relationships with other congregations and we encourage interfaith work. Indeed, one of our members helped to found the Kansas City Interfaith Youth Alliance.
Our pastor, Dr. Paul T. Rock, has been moving us in new directions in his five years with us, and this month he'll be joined by a new associate pastor, Kristin Reigel. (Here is a Prairie Village Post story about Paul and our congregation.)
Mainline Protestant congregations like ours have suffered membership declines over recent decades, and Second has, too. But in recent years our membership numbers have been stable and even growing a bit. (We currently have about 630 members.) More important than numbers, however, is the sense of family and community at Second -- a sense the founders brought with them 150 years ago along with a commitment to share the good news of Jesus Christ. I've been grateful to be part of this fabulous group of people for 37 years. So cheers today not just for Second but for all congregations of any faith that have continued to be faithful to their ministries over the long haul.
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MANCHESTER CENTER, Vt. -- While I'm on the road for a week visiting family and meeting with the editor handling a book of mine to be published in a year or so, I won't be adding the usual second item here on the blog.
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