KANSAS CITY — On Easter Sunday, March 31, Legacy Church, located at 8641 North Oak Trafficway here, officially launched as a second generation church plant sponsored by Fellowship of Grace Church.
Fellowship itself was sponsored by another Kansas City church, Northland Baptist. Kevin Barnes is the pastor of Legacy (www.legacykc.org) and said it has been quite a process for him and his family becoming church planters.
“I was a youth pastor at Heaston Community Church, El Reno, Okla., and really felt God leading me to a next step,” Barnes said. “I had always felt called to ministry my whole life but not necessarily to be a youth pastor my whole life. So I called Michael Porter (lead pastor at Fellowship) and talked with him and he said next time I was in Kansas City to meet and talk. So I did and talked to him about my feelings and he said I should consider church planting
“I was at a stable and a great ministry and the church was taking really good care of me and my family. But then he explained to me the need for churches in the Northland Kansas City area. Some 75-80 percent of the Northland is unchurched. The population of the Northland has more than doubled since 1980 and the number of churches has remained basically the same. So my heart broke because I grew up in the Northland for the most part and just to think of all those people from a place I call home were heading to an eternity without Jesus was not acceptable.”
Barnes said by the end of the meeting he knew the next step would be church planting, although he wasn’t sure yet where it would be. Barnes and his wife, Andrea, have four children: Asher, 9; Nathaniel, 7; Kaelyn, 3; and Ella, 2.
“For the next year God just really wouldn’t let the idea of church planting go,” Barnes said. “I’d be sitting in my office trying to plan a youth event and thinking about how to reach people in the Northland. And I had to fight to do my ministry in Oklahoma. It came to a breaking point with me and my wife as well. Planting a church in the Northland was what we needed to do and relatively quickly, too. But we had no clue about church planting so we wanted to sit under Porter because he did it successfully and he invited me to intern with him.”
Barnes said Fellowship of Grace had been nothing short of amazing and it has been overwhelming the amount of support they have been shown. From Barnes’s former church in Oklahoma, to Fellowship, Northland, and Gashland Baptist Church, Kansas City, Barnes said all have been very supportive and encouraging. Barnes also said the Missouri Baptist Convention and Dianna Pfaff, owner of Miss Dianna’s School of Dance (where Legacy meets), have both been very supportive of the church.
“We are grateful for all the prayers and support we have received,” Barnes said. “All those churches have been really supportive of our efforts. There are so many churches that get so territorial but these have been the opposite. We all are focused on making disciples here in the Northland and we need more pastors and elder boards and deacon boards and church members which understand we are all on the same team and are going to be able to reach a variety of people which may not have been reached otherwise. I am really so grateful that there are quite a few pastors and leaders in the area who get this, and it is just a joy and pleasure to serve with them.”