| MCC San Francisco was formed in 1970, barely 2 years after the first
MCC service was held in Rev. Troy Perry’s living room. Rev. Howard
Wells, who had heard of Troy Perry’s church in Los Angeles, gathered
with his friends and decided to start an MCC. Their first meeting, in
the spring of 1970, was held in Jackson’s Bar & Grill on Fillmore
Street in North Beach, in an age when the gay community had not yet come
to settle in and around The Castro.
MCCSF grew steadily even without a permanent home. “Be One of
a Thousand”, a revival-like celebration held at the California
Hall (now, The Culinary Institute) was a wild success, and it, along
with MCCSF's radio program called "The Gay Cross," gave the
church momentum for continued growth throughout the 1970’s. The
church met in a dozen or so locations – the running joke was that
members had to come to church each week to find out where they would
meet the following week Howard Wells left MCCSF in 1972, and over the
next thirteen years, the congregation had eight pastors.
For a time, the congregation met in a building on Guerrero Street and
eventually considered purchasing it. That building mysteriously burned
down for reasons that were never fully discovered, although rumors had
it that a “gay church” would have been unwelcome in the neighborhood.
Then pastor, Rev. Jim Sandmire, led a procession to a new place of worship,
Mission Presbyterian Church at 23rd and Capp, where MCCSF's first building
fund was started. In 2003, the site of the burned down church is a nursery,
owned by a gay couple, who provide palms for the church's Holy Week celebrations.
In 1977, members of MCCSF fought the Briggs Initiative, which would
have prohibited lesbians and gays from teaching in state schools.
Although MCC had been founded as a short-term solution to homophobia
in mainline churches, with the hope that queer people would be able to
work from the outside to transform Christendom churches, by the late
1970’s it became clear that this dream would not be realized. So
the congregation at MCCSF felt the time had come to look for and purchase
its own building. In 1980, a site was found at 150 Eureka Street, in
The Castro.
This triggered a split in the congregation. At the time, Polk Street
was the center of the gay community, and many members wished to remain
there. One group formed Golden Gate MCC and remained on Polk Street,
while the main body of the MCCSF congregation moved to the Castro. By
the mid-1980s, Golden Gate MCC was the larger and more stable congregation,
under the leadership of Rev. Jim Sandmire. Golden Gate MCC later moved
south into Noe Valley and in 2000 was amalgamated back into MCCSF.
The building at 150 Eureka Street was built in 1900 and was for many
decades a Swedish Baptist Church. At the time of its purchase, it was
an independent Pentecostal church called “Voice of Pentecost” which,
because of shifting demographics, was losing its constituency in The
Castro and wanted to sell. MCCSF had only 100 members at the time, and
purchased the building for $250,000.
When the congregation moved in to its new home it found a Sanctuary
with electric-blue walls, orange shag carpeting, and chocolate trim.
A neon “Jesus Saves” sign hung on the outside wall. The restrooms
were little more than outhouses.
In 1980, members of MCCSF worked to help with Cuban refugee resettlement.
In 1983, Jackie (last name unknown) was the first member known to have
died of AIDS.
In early 1985, MCCSF shared its worship space with Congregation Ahavat
Shalom, a gay and lesbian Jewish congregation. A firebomb was thrown
through the glass window of the sanctuary one night in 1990 and authorities
at the time felt sure it was fueled by anti-Semitism.
In 1986, Rev. Jim Mitulski moved from the MCC he pastored in New York
City. At the invitation of members of MCCSF, he came to San Francisco
for the first time and met with members of the congregation. Without
seeing the actual church, he returned home to New York, and then came
back to San Francisco in early 1986 with his partner Bob Crocker, a church
musician.
Under Jim’s leadership, MCCSF entered a period of sustained growth
and shifted from being a place to meet on Sundays into an integrated
part of the queer community.
As an epicenter in the HIV/AIDS pandemic, San Francisco experienced
early and profoundly the effect of the illness. It is impossible to overstate
the impact of HIV/AIDS on the life of MCC San Francisco during those
years when there were really no effective treatments for HIV or for many
of the common opportunistic infections experienced by those with suppressed
immune systems. During the peak of the crisis, it was not uncommon for
there to be 3 or 4 funerals on each day of the weekend, and growth in
new members of the church could barely keep pace with the rate of deaths.
And yet, even in the midst of this tragic situation, the church persevered.
MCCSF was an early proponent of legalized medical marijuana, an effective
treatment for people with HIV/AIDS who struggle to eat because of loss
of appetite. This catapulted the church to national fame.
Under the specter of AIDS, the church continued to grow and be transformed.
Rev. Penny Nixon moved to San Francisco in 1991 and quickly became a
favored guest preacher at MCCSF. In 1996, she was hired as the Associate
Pastor and in 1998 was elevated to Pastor alongside Jim Mitulski. During
her tenure, women’s programming and the overall involvement of
women in the congregation both grew.
Also in the mid-1990s, Rev. Karen Foster moved to the Bay Area and came
on board the staff of MCCSF, first as a student and then as Assistant
Pastor. Among Karen’s many contributions to the congregation was
the formation of the mid-week Prayer at the Heart service in the Taizé style.
In 2000, MCCSF helped give birth to the New
Spirit Community Church in
the East Bay, a congregation affiliated with MCC, UCC and DOC, and Karen
was selected to lead the new church.
As AIDS was transformed by the advent of medications that could manage
the reproduction of the virus in the body and help restore some balance
to the immune system of those affected, the church began to look at the
social issues facing the broader community. In 1997, The Metropolitan
Community Foundation was formed as an umbrella organization for the church’s
social justice and outreach ministries.
In 1999, the church began a relationship with a local public elementary
school, The Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. Several programs such as
a reading program, the purchase of school supplies and the provision
of a part-time music teacher continue to be an important extension of
the church’s ministry.
In response to the crisis in the homeless population in San Francisco,
the church began a program called “Simply Supper” to feed
people. The program now reached several hundred people each week, serving
bag lunches at a needle exchange on Tuesdays, and a hot meal at the church
on Thursday and Friday afternoon.
In December 2001, after serving the congregation for 15 years, Rev.
Jim Mitulski stepped down as pastor, and Rev. Penny Nixon became the
Senior Minister of the church. Later, Rev. Terri Echelbarger, now Pastor
of Administration, and Rev. Joe McMurrray, now Pastor of Congregational
Life, joined the staff of the church.
By the spring of 2001, the congregation began a process of vision-casting
to discover where and to what God was calling it. The outcome of this
process was a Visioning Task Force report which lay out, in broad terms,
the path that the congregation would take during the next several years.
In 2002, the congregation embraced a vision of itself as “A house
of prayer for all people. A home for queer spirituality.” It adopted
a plan to seek and buy or build a new home, a Spiritual Center—a
place that could serve as a sacred space for queer people no matter what
path to God they follow, and a place where the congregation would be
able to expand it programming space and its capacity to undertake social
justice programs.
In 2003, MCCSF hired Ji-Sing Norman Eng as a Minister of Buddhist Spirituality,
and became the first MCC to have regular non-Christian programming as
a core, weekly event. Q-Sangha was launched on the Lunar New Year in
2003 with over 250 people in attendance (a capacity crowd in the small
MCCSF sanctuary) and now attracts almost 100 people each week.
MCCSF continues to seek new ways to embody queer spirituality, to be
a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer spiritual community grounded
in the Christian tradition, affirming and exploring many paths to God.
MCCSF now embraces the following vision:
While we recognize our connection to the historical Christian Church,
we believe we are a new witness of God's all-inclusive love and acceptance.
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