Pastor retires after 54-year career in ministry

By Kathy Feist

After a 54-year career in the American Baptist ministry, Rev. Dr. Stephen Jones has retired. Jones has served the past 12 years as pastor and co-pastor of the First Baptist Church of Kansas City, located off Wornall and Red Bridge roads.

“I’m 76. It’s time to let the younger generation [take over],” says Jones. On March 30, the torch was passed to co-pastor Rev. Dezo Schreiner who has served aside Jones since 2017.
Jones joined the American Baptist Church after being raised in a more rigid Baptist church in the Ozarks.

While attending William Jewell College in the late 60s, Jones was deeply concerned about civil rights issues, such as racism and the Vietnam war. He approached his pastor about the church’s silence on the topics. “He said ‘Well, now, Steve, that hasn’t got anything to do at all with our faith. That just has to do with how you vote as a citizen,’” he recalls. “I thought if [these issues] don’t have anything to do with Christianity, then I don’t want anything to do with them.”

Disappointed, he left.

Still, Jones felt a tug to go into ministry. A friend recommended the American Baptist Church, a denomination he had never heard of. He met with the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Kansas City, located then on Linwood Boulevard.

“It was a hand-in-glove fit for me,” he says. “They believe the church has to be relevant to the world and speak to the issues. There’s a personal side to faith, but there’s also a public side of faith.”

He joined the church, met his wife Jan there, and the two were soon running the neighborhood ministry in Linwood. They married in 1970 at the church in Red Bridge. “I have a long history here,” he says. “I am kind of a son of this congregation.”

Jones graduated from the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Robester, NY and later the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH, where he received his doctorate.

Jones has served as pastor in different parts of the country, including Boulder, Seattle, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Detroit, often returning to his home church to preach.

While serving in Detroit, he founded a monthly Jazz Vespers concert, which he continued in Kansas City.

In Seattle he was recognized for his friendship with the Duwamish tribe with a Native sculpture given to him by the great-great-grand niece of Chief Seattle.

Jones has published nine books, most providing a fresh perspective on Christianity and history. (He is also well versed on the history of the First Baptist Church of Kansas City, founded in 1855 by Isaac McCoy, the “Father of Kansas City.”)

He has remained an outspoken Civil Rights advocate, serving on Church and interfaith boards and speaking out as a guest on radio shows, podcasts and newspaper columns.

Jones is proud of his congregation’s commitment to diversity and its role for women. “For this church, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are Jesus’ words,” he says. “Those are words that are core to our faith.”

Despite his retirement, Jones plans to stay active in the community.

“I know God’s still speaking to me,” he says. “He’s not finished with me yet.”