MCC Boston

So, MCC folks, our first spiritual gathering is on Sunday September 15th at 5PM. We are gathering for dinner and spiritual fellowship, to rekindle our relationship with the Devine, and with one another.

The place is called S &S the address is:
1334 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA 02139

Shortly after MCC bostons closing, we came together to discuss and create MCC Boston spiritual community. We are in the works of creating a spiritual meetup within the month of September. Please stay tuned for this announcement. Welcome to MCC Spiritual Community….a picture from our bon voyage to our amazing and wonderful friend Allan McClendon.

Next Chapter Announcement

After a 60-day resting period, the congregation known as MCC Boston will be regrouping into a Spiritual Community of UFMCC.

A Spiritual Community is made up of individuals who embrace the mission and core values of UFMCC. Usually, these are folks who wish to eventually form a UFMCC Church, but the denomination also offers this connection to folks like us who wish to remain in community after our MCC church has closed.

So, rest up and watch for a follow-up announcement early summer 2024.

Thanks!

Last MCC Boston Worship Service from Easter Sunday March 31, 2024.

Play-back Note: You’ll need to raise the play-back volume starting at the scripture readings when an audio cable disengaged, and the tablet microphone took over.

The message was delivered by the wonderful Rev. Jamez Terry a previous pastoral care minister for MCC Boston who flew back to lead us in our last worship service.

Thank you Rev. Jamez for your dedication and witness to the MCC Boston community.

A Home in Your Heart - Easter Sunday - March 31, 2024 - Rev. Jamez Terry MCC Boston's Last Worship Service

Sermon from Palm Sunday, March 24th, 2024 delivered by the wonderful Rev. Dr. Ciarán Osborn.

Rev. Ciarán is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and has served as Pastor of several UCC churches in the Boston area.

Thank you Rev. Ciarán for your witness to MCC Boston.

Into Jerusalem - March 24, 2024 - Rev. Dr. Ciarán Osborn

Thank you to all the fantastic people who helped make MCC Boston's final worship service a wonderful success. It was great seeing folks from our past as well as folks from more recent times. Special thanks to Josiah and Ryan for food preparation, pictures, and social media posting and a heartfelt thanks to Rev. Jamez Terry for coming in from Alaska and preaching a powerful and moving sermon. Last but not least thanks to Jasmine for the beautiful music and her more than 20 years of service as pianist for MCC Boston.

Join us this Easter Sunday, March 31st at 6PM, as we celebrate a beautiful ending for MCC Boston.

We’re so pleased that Rev. Jamez Terry is traveling all the way from Alaska to lead us in this final worship service. Rev. Jamez came to us as a Harvard Divinity student and then later stayed on to be our pastoral leader.

Prior to his time at Harvard, Rev. Jamez envisioned and formed the “Tr**ny Roadshow” a community of trans-performers who traveled the country as a chosen family bringing hope and humor to the q***r community, while also creating a larger extended family of the people who invited them into their homes, their schools, and their communities.

After moving to Alaska Rev. James formed “Choosing Our Roots” a non-profit operating in the Anchorage area serving youth and young adults experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. Their mission is to ensure all Q***r Alaskan youth and young adults have access to safe homes, supportive communities, and opportunities to thrive.

Rev. James while still assisting this non-profit, works today as a chaplain at Providence Alaska Hospital.

Rev. Jamez's sermon for this Easter Sunday is titled "A Home in Your Heart." Come and join us for this our last MCC Boston service filled with song and graced-filled worship. You’ll be glad you did!

Article from The Rainbow Times on MCC Boston's Transgender Day of Celebration.

Transgender Day of Celebration Comes to Boston For the 1st Time, Honors Life By: Emily Scagel/TRT Assistant Editor– The Metropolitan Community Church of Boston is hosting Boston’s first Transgender Day of Celebration, a day complementary to Transgender Day of Remembra…

One of the highlights of our MCC Boston history was our first observance of "Transgender day of Celebration." Trans folk came far and wide to both participate in the service and to share their talents and gifts. This community of individuals grew out of the "Tr**ny Roadshow" initially envisioned by Rev. James Terry.

I've attached the link below to a short documentary telling its story.

Tr**ny Roadshow 2010 Part 1 of 2 Part 1 of a 2 part documentary-ish of the 2010 Tr**ny Roadshow. Be sure to watch both parts! (You Tube won't allow clips over 10 minutes, and this movie is a...

In anticipation of Rev. Jamez Terry leading us in worship this Easter Sunday at MCC Boston, I thought I would repost a message he made at the Pride Interfaith Service in Alaska in 2014. For those who may not know Rev. Jamez this will provide his background.

Family Grows.
June 16, 2014
At the age of 14, I did not yet have the words to identify myself as transgender. I had come to recognize myself as q***r, but I had barely begun to share that truth with the world. I certainly wasn’t broadcasting it to strangers at my urban public high school. I did not yet know that community existed, let alone that it might be available to me. And yet, I was sending off some kind of signal without any preparation for the attention it would bring.
One day, I was scurrying down the hall, running late for class, when a senior student I’d never met called me over to where she was standing. I was already baffled as she beckoned me to come closer so she could speak directly into my ear. “Are you friend or family?” she asked. “What?” “Are you friend or family?” I had no idea what she was talking about. It was as if she was speaking another language, or speaking in code. My anxiety was rapidly rising as I tried to navigate this incomprehensible encounter. Finally, impatiently, she clarified: “Are you gay?” “No,” I said, as I did the only thing I wanted to do in that moment and ran away.
Once I had collected myself, I felt guilty for lying to someone who seemed to be trying to connect. Before the day was over, I had slipped her a long and heartfelt note – and that’s how I made my first gay friend. She helped me learn what it meant to be a gay teenager in the 90s – you had to like Ani Difranco, for one thing – and who I could trust at school. She took care of me, offering me guidance and companionship at a time when I needed exactly that. And, though it would be a long time before I came to understand it, she introduced me to the idea of q***r ‘family.’
‘Family’ has been a sort of euphemism for being LGBTQ since at least the early 80s. While it’s not a term you hear much anymore – as in "oh, it’s okay, he’s family” – the lingering popularity of Sister Sledge’s anthem ‘We Are Family’ speaks to its cultural resonance. And yes, it’s campy. Yes, it’s a sort of code. Yes, as slang, it may be a bit outdated. And all of that makes it easy to forget that it’s also a meaningful reality. It’s not just a euphemism; it is also our truth.
How does family grow? Q***r people have a long history of engaging deeply with this question. Because we have seen our families shrink. We have seen parents and siblings turn away from us, unable to be the loving families we need and deserve, and we have had to find other ways to nurture and be nurtured. Or because we have seen our families try in good faith to guide and protect us but come up short because they have never walked the roads we walk. So we have found other ways to mentor and be mentored. Because we have been labeled spinsters and confirmed bachelors when we failed to make families that our neighbors could recognize. So we have found other ways to affirm our families and relationships, recognizing love and potential in one another. Together, as community, we have loved the stranger, taken in the runaway and the rejected, sat vigil with AIDS patient after AIDS patient. We have formed traditions, observed rites of passage, celebrated our relationships, and mourned our losses. We have been to one another, not only lovers, but parents, children, siblings. You could call this beloved community, and it is – but there is no better word for it than family.
Now that doesn’t mean that we always get along, play nicely together and agree on how we set our priorities. I am not living in a rainbow faerie land. But that’s not what family means, is it? Family means that even when we disagree, we recognize that we are inextricably bound together, that these ties mean something, that when push comes to shove we will stand up for one another. To be family confers obligations and promises. It says that, even when we do not like each other, we are bound by the seeds of love that have been planted in us. That we may choose to run away, to grow in another direction for a while, or even for a lifetime, but we are still part of something.
These days, the meaning of q***r family is changing, expanding. As more and more governments and religious groups come to recognize our sacred unions, we rightfully celebrate this progress. But let us also celebrate the fact that we’ve been forming sacred loving unions since long before anyone gave us permission. As more and more LGBTQ folks are raising children, growing families through birth and adoption, we absolutely celebrate this progress. But let us also celebrate how many of us have always stepped up to raise and nurture one another.
Exactly one year ago, my own q***r family grew. During the Pride service at the Metropolitan Community Church of Boston, my son Sebastian was dedicated and blessed with a godparent. One of my closest friends, a trans minister, performed this ceremony in which another trans person was recognized and blessed as a member of my trans and q***r family. As I stood with my partner, our son, and his new godparent, in front of their two moms, our friends of all ages, my colleagues in q***r ministry, and the congregation that had come to be my home, I knew that this was my family – not just the five of us standing at the altar, but all of us who filled the sanctuary, and the great cloud of witnesses that surrounded and embraced us all.
So how does family grow? In so many ways – through marriages and partnerships, through births and adoptions, through ritual and through chance encounters in hostile hallways, through all of the ways that we claim and consecrate one another as deeply our own. Family grows when we act like family – loving, nurturing, bickering but sticking together, celebrating our connections, doing what q***rs have always been good at. How does family grow? Like this, my friends, my siblings – like this.
Amen, and may it be so.

This lovely post came from Julia Christine who along with Rev. Jamez Terry help lead MCC Boston in 2013 prior to their move to Alaska.

"I dearly wish I could go spend Easter Sunday at MCC Boston listening to Rev. Jamez Terry preach the final service for this beloved community. The healing power of q***r church by q***rs for q***rs stays present in my heart after all these years. MCC Boston has been a spiritual community since 1972, joyfully gathering with laughter, hope, promise, faith, and pride in our q***rly made selves. I celebrate the sanctuary this congregation has been to countless QTs over these 50+ years. If you have special connection to this congregation, the service is at 6 pm and won't be streamed."

Sermon “Unconditional” from Sunday March 10th, 2024, delivered by the wonderful Brent Stanfield.
Thank you, Brent, for your witness to MCC Boston!

No Longer Dead Inside - March 10th, 2024 - Brent Stanfield

Join us for worship this Palm Sunday, March 24th, 2024, at 6PM, as we welcome the wonderful Rev. Dr. Ciarán Osborn to the MCC Boston pulpit.

Rev. Ciarán describes himself as a progressive Christian pastor who loves tattoos, board games, waffles, craft cider, and working dogs. Rev. Ciarán is an Ordained Minister with the United Church of Christ.

Rev. Ciarán's sermon is titled "Into Jerusalem." Come and join us in prayer, song, and grace-filled worship. You will be glad you did!

Sunday worship service from Sunday, March 17th , 2024, delivered by the wonderful Johnny Gall.

Thank you Johnny for your witness to MCC Boston!

Enough - March 17, 2024 - Johnny Gall

A Body - March 3, 2024 - Rev. Nancy Wichmann

People Pleasing - Feb 25th, 2024 - Brent Stanfield

Join MCC this Sunday, M

Rev. Nancy is a graduate of Boston University School of Theology, having started her path in ministry as the first transgender graduate of the ELCA’s New England Synod School of Lay Ministry. Along the way Rev. Nancy attended the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Andover Newton Theological School (both now closed). Rev. Nancy is the first openly trans woman pastor in the UMC’s New England Conference and the recently retired Pastor of East Parish United Methodist Church in Salisbury, MA.

Rev. Nancy’s sermon this week is titled “Healing.” Come and join us in prayer, song, and grace-filled worship. You’ll be glad you did!

Sunday worship service from Sunday, February18th, 2024, delivered by the fabulous Johnny Gall.

Thank you Johnny for your witness to MCC Boston!

Better Than Good - February 18, 2024 - Johnny Gall

Join us for worship this Sunday, February 25th at 6PM, as we we’re led by the wonderful Brent Stanfield. Brent (they/them) is a graduate of Phillips Theological Seminary, where they earned their Master of Divinity in 2020.

Brent comes to us as a member of MCC of Our Redeemer in Augusta, GA and is “In-Care” with MCC, so is a recent transplant to New England and a high school math teacher.

Brent’s sermon is titled “People Pleasing.” Come and join us in prayer, song, and grace-filled worship. You will be glad you did!

Sermon “Beloved Child” from Sunday February 11th, 2024, presented by the fabulous Rev. Nancy Wichmann.

Thank you, Rev. Nancy, for your witness to MCC Boston!

Beloved Child - February 11, 2024 - Rev. Nancy Wichmann

Join us for worship this Sunday, February 18th at 6PM, as we welcome the wonderful Johnny Gall to the MCC Boston pulpit. Johnny is a graduate of Boston University School of Theology and a beloved member of our MCC Boston community.

Johnny’s sermon is titled “Better Than Good.” Come and join us in prayer, song, and grace-filled worship. You’ll be glad you did!

Sermon “Healing” from Sunday February 4th, 2024, presented by the wonderful Rev. Nancy Wichmann.

Thank you, Rev. Nancy, for your witness to MCC Boston!

Healing - February 4th, 2024 - Rev. Nancy Wichmann

Join MCC this Transfiguration Sunday, February 11th 2024 at 6PM, at Old West Church Boston as we we’re once again led by the wonderful Rev. Nancy Wichmann.

Rev. Nancy is a graduate of Boston University School of Theology, having started her path in ministry as the first transgender graduate of the ELCA’s New England Synod School of Lay Ministry. Along the way Rev. Nancy attended the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Andover Newton Theological School (both now closed). Rev. Nancy is the first openly trans woman pastor in the UMC’s New England Conference and the recently retired Pastor of East Parish United Methodist Church in Salisbury, MA.

Rev. Nancy’s sermon this week is titled “Beloved Child.” Come and join us in prayer, song, and grace-filled worship. You’ll be glad you did!

Sunday worship service from Sunday, January 28th, 2024, delivered by the wonderful Johnny Gall.

Thank you Johnny for your witness to MCC Boston!

January 28, 2024 - Johnny Gall

Join MCC this Sunday, February 4th 2024 at 6PM, at Old West Church Boston as we we’re led by the fabulous Rev. Nancy Wichmann.

Rev. Nancy is a graduate of Boston University School of Theology, having started her path in ministry as the first transgender graduate of the ELCA’s New England Synod School of Lay Ministry. Along the way Rev. Nancy attended the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Andover Newton Theological School (both now closed). Rev. Nancy is the first openly trans woman pastor in the UMC’s New England Conference and the recently retired Pastor of East Parish United Methodist Church in Salisbury, MA.

Rev. Nancy’s sermon this week is titled “Healing.” Come and join us in prayer, song, and grace-filled worship. You’ll be glad you did!

Join us for worship this Sunday, January 28th, 2024, at 6PM, as we welcome the wonderful Rev. Dr. Ciarán Osborn to the MCC Boston pulpit.

Rev. Ciarán describes himself as a progressive Christian pastor who loves tattoos, board games, waffles, craft cider, and working dogs. Rev. Ciarán is an Ordained Minister with the United Church of Christ.

Come and join us in prayer, song, and grace-filled worship. You will be glad you did!

Sermon “Unconditional” from Sunday January 21st, 2024, delivered by the fabulous Brent Stanfield.

Thank you, Brent, for your witness to MCC Boston!

Alone - January 21, 2024 - Brent Stanfield

Sermon “More Than You Can Handle” from Sunday January 14th, 2024, presented by the wonderful Rev. Nancy Wichmann.

Thank you, Rev. Nancy, for your witness to MCC Boston!

Words - January 14, 2024 - Rev. Nancy Wichmann