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Peninsula MCC (originally known as That New Church) began worshipping together on Easter Sunday of 2005. With an average attendance of 45 and growing, we are a friendly and diverse congregation made up primarily of LGBT and queer people. (We are about 10% straight.)

Easter 2005—Our First Service

Our Sunday services feature a lot of singing with a blend of traditional and Worship and Praise music, a time of community prayer, a message, and communion. You don't need to be a member or meet any other criteria to receive a piece of bread, dipped in grape juice, and a short individual prayer of blessing. It's God's table, not ours.

Some of the things we have discovered so far? We find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty. We encourage questioning and learning from one another and from our lives.

We envision a world where God's love continues to expand, and not limit, the participation of a widening circle of spiritually grounded people. We believe that one of God's names—perhaps the most important one—is Love.

At a workshop in 2007 the community of PMCC (Peninsula Metropolitan Community Church) was asked to describe their church, as if it were a person.

Meet Alex:

Alex really doesn’t like the whole idea of gender or sex labels and it is hard to identify Alex as male or a female, even if you take a close look. There is a certain femininity. Maybe Alex is a Chapstick lesbian, maybe a man with feminine overtones, but no one knows for sure, androgynous, you know what I mean.

Other than that, Alex is described as average looking for the most part. Natural, short hair, pleasantly plump, always smiling. Alex also has a certain radiance that's hard to miss. Physically healthy, Alex, in what appears to be a miracle of God’s grace, was born between the ages of 30 and 40. Alex had strong faithful parents, moved out at young age, and is currently thriving because of the new environment of loving, caring, encouraging siblings, family and friends. Alex has had many incarnations and life experiences, some experiments with mainstream religion, is 'out' to family for better or worse, and is currently feeling secure and stable when it comes to living day to day. Alex is growing and grounded. Alex enjoys diversity of all kinds. Artistically, Alex will listen to almost any kind of music and enjoys movies, everything from the classics to Rocky Horror Picture show. Alex is calm and centered for the most part, open-minded, adventurous, loving and warm, good at hospitality.

When telling others about Alex the most important things are that Alex knows how to play nice and take turns, is full of Spirit, happy, integrated—and—be sure to say... "it's only a date, you don’t need to marry him or, ummm, her?"

Rev. Terri Echelbarger is the founding pastor of Peninsula MCC. Previously she served the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco—the parent church of Peninsula MCC—as a pastor on staff.

Rev. Terri has a real love for building community, and she likes to think of herself as one voice in an ongoing conversation that happens when we gather to worship, pray, or play together.

Prior to becoming a pastor, Rev. Terri served the YMCA in a variety of roles over twenty years. She still takes one or two weeks each year to volunteer as the leader at overnight Horse Camp with the Sacramento YMCA. She also serves the denomination as a liaison for MCC future clergy at the Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley) and teaches the MCC History and Polity Course there.

Rev. Terri holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. She also holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a BA from Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Washington.

Rev. Terri (left) and her partner Eileen (right)

Peninsula Metropolitan Community Church
P.O. Box 712 Pacifica, California 94044
info@peninsulamcc.org Telephone: (650) 515-0900
We worship each Sunday at 12:30pm
www.peninsulamcc.org