Kansas City’s First Baptist Church marks 160th anniversary with Native American celebration
Native American singers, storytellers and educators took center stage Saturday as Kansas City’s First Baptist Church celebrated its 160th anniversary.
The guests represented the role of native people in the early history of Kansas City, which in many ways began at the original First Baptist Church location in Westport.
On Saturday, about 100 people came to the church’s current site, 100 W. Red Bridge Road, to celebrate the anniversary with Native American-style festivities and church services. A native teepee stood on the church lawn and an educator from Haskell Indian Nations University gave a history presentation.
The church is one of the area’s oldest, started in 1855 in part by the family of Isaac and Christiana McCoy. The McCoys were missionaries who worked with Native Americans, and later McCoy family members helped found Kansas City.
Native people, settlers, trading posts and the frontier all are reflected in the city’s character today, said First Baptist Church pastor Stephen Jones.
“It’s a Western city,” Jones said. “I think the city certainly has the perspective of looking west. And McCoy had a part in that.”
Isaac McCoy first came to the area as part of an effort to move Native American tribes out of Eastern states to make way for white settlers. Shawnee Mission Parkway took its name from a strip of land offered to Shawnee people who had been pushed west from Ohio. The Potawatomi tribe’s history records its 1838 migration from Indiana to Kansas as the Trail of Death. Here, McCoy was considered a progressive thinker for his times and tried to help Native Americans.
McCoy’s son, John Calvin McCoy, founded Westport. The road he established from his general store to the Missouri River became Broadway. His brother-in-law, Johnston Lykins, helped plot the first major expansion of Kansas City’s streets and became the first duly elected mayor.
On Saturday, a Native American college choir came from Oklahoma to sing at the church, and a group of tribal dancers performed for visitors.
Church member Paul Sienkiewicz, who moved to the area from Buffalo, N.Y., said he appreciated the history of the church. Sienkiewicz and his wife joined in 2013.
“We kind of liked that the church has these roots, these really deep roots, in the city,” he said. “There’s a great legacy and a great tradition.”
This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 7:11 PM with the headline "Kansas City’s First Baptist Church marks 160th anniversary with Native American celebration."