Forty Years of Faith, Hope and Love!

About the Book

Forty Years of Faith, Hope and Love! celebrates the story of Metropolitan Community Church’s first 40 years of dynamic ministry and leadership in social justice. The book presents a narrative account of MCC’s growth—from an initial meeting in Rev. Troy Perry’s California home to a worldwide denomination, comprising more than 200 churches and affiliates in 24 countries spread around the globe—and considers the global context in which the denomination has evolved. Timeline entries detail significant events both internal and external to MCC. Excerpts from In Our Own Words MCC (MCC’s oral history project) inject individual points of view, and a progression of images evokes the MCC experience. Though the denomination’s primary outreach has been to lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual individuals historically excluded by mainstream Christianity, MCC has never wavered in proclaiming the message of Christian salvation, Christian community and Christian social action open to and affirming of all the people of God. Read this book and be reminded how the denomination that was once unthinkable has changed the world.

About the Author

Rev. Dr. Cindi Love is the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Community Churches (www.mccchurch.org) worldwide. A relative newcomer to MCC, Rev. Dr. Love hails from a fundamentalist evangelical background and has been successful as an entrepreneur, an advocate for chronically disabled adults, a Fortune 500 corporate executive, and a college Dean. She was ordained in 2003, pastored MCC of Greater Dallas (Dallas, TX USA) from July 2003 to October 2004 and accepted her current position in 2005. Author of Would Jesus Discriminate? The 21st Century Question, (Trafford, 2008) Rev. Love has appeared on C-SPANÌÄå¢*Ì¢‰**å¢s Book TV (www.c-spanarchives.org) and serves as a leading religious voice on the Human Rights CampaignÌÄå¢*Ì¢‰**å¢s Faith and Religion Council in Washington, DC. In compiling Forty Years of Faith, Hope and Love! she has drawn from previously published materials as well as from MCC archives and numerous primary sources to present the movement and ministry of MCC within a global context. Rev. Dr. Love has created a narrative touching not only on MCCÌÄå¢*Ì¢‰**å¢s dynamic growth, from the initial assembly of 12 worshippers in Rev. Troy PerryÌÄå¢*Ì¢‰**å¢s home through the most recent General Conference attended by some 14,061 people representing 11 countries; but also on the people and times that shaped the denomination as well as the worldÌÄå¢*Ì¢‰**å¢s evolving perception of MCCÌÄå¢*Ì¢‰**å¢s presence, from the Gay Church to the Church with AIDS to the Human Rights Church.