An Open Door on West 40th Street
Metro Baptist Church sits at 410 West 40th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, in the heart of Hell's Kitchen. The neighborhood has changed dramatically around it, but the building has stayed the same: a turn-of-the-century Polish Catholic church with original ceiling murals and stained glass, now home to a Baptist congregation that has shaped its entire ministry around the block outside its doors. The opening lines of Metro's printed welcome read like a city invitation in compressed verse.
To all who are weary and need rest, to all who mourn and need comfort, to all who are lonely and need friendship, to all who are complacent and need disturbing, to all who sin and need a savior, to all who are glad and would serve - this church opens wide its doors.
A Building with Two Lives
Metro's home was originally St. Clemens Polish-Catholic Church, built for the immigrant families who filled Hell's Kitchen's tenements at the turn of the last century. The structure served both as a church and a parochial school. When construction of the Lincoln Tunnel scattered many of the parish families outward, the Diocese closed St. Clemens in 1971, and the building cycled through other uses before Metro arrived.
Metro Baptist Church was born in 1974, when a small group began to pray about starting a new church in Manhattan. They first met in an office building on the Upper West Side and formally constituted as a congregation in 1982. By 1984 they had outgrown that room. As Metro members walked up 40th Street one morning after a night of volunteering at Covenant House, they passed the apparently vacant St. Clemens building, with people gathered on its steps. The idea arrived like a lightbulb: "What a great place for a church!" The day the purchase closed, the church's then pastor, the Rev. Gene Bolin, stood across the street and prayed, "Lord, don't give us this building if we can't put it to use for people who need it 24/7."
That prayer has shaped Metro ever since. The building still keeps its Polish Catholic ceiling murals and stained glass, but it is in constant motion: a sanctuary on Sunday morning, a clothing closet on Monday, a food pantry twice a month, a theater on Saturday night, and a rooftop farm in between.
The Social Gospel at 40th Street
In 1995, to organize and expand its growing community programs, Metro created a separate nonprofit arm called Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries. The name honors Walter Rauschenbusch, the early 20th-century Baptist minister, theologian, and social reformer whose New York City church stood just three blocks from Metro's current location. Rauschenbusch is remembered as a father of the Social Gospel, the movement that insisted salvation is both a spiritual and a social reality and that faith must push Christians to reshape the world around them. A Metro pamphlet from the early years of the ministry set the tone: "Homeless people down the block. Prostitutes on the corner. Crack dealers across the street. What a great place for a church."
Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries now coordinates twelve ongoing community programs. On any given week, members and volunteers feed neighbors through the food pantry, hand out coats at the Winter Clothing Closet, tutor local students, run a summer day camp, support teens, and walk alongside veterans and women in crisis. Several of those programs run out of the church building itself; others reach into nearby NYCHA housing and the surrounding blocks.
Growing on the Roof
In 2011, Metro and RMM joined two partners, Clinton Housing Development Corporation and MCCNY Charities, to launch the Hell's Kitchen Farm Project. Their first move was a small one with a big backdrop: planting vegetables on the roof of the church building itself. Made possible by a United Way of New York City grant, the rooftop farm began as a way to stock area food pantries with fresh produce and to give neighbors a place to learn, work, and gather around food.
The farm is still growing. Workdays run on Thursdays and Saturdays during the growing season, and the project has expanded into a neighborhood CSA that delivers weekly shares from a New York State farmer through Grow NYC's New Farmer Development Project. The rooftop has been featured in the New York Daily News, the Huffington Post, Nonprofit Quarterly, and on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal, all because of its simple premise: that a church can grow food on its own roof and put it directly into the hands of the neighbors who need it most.
Worship as the Work of the People
Worship is the center of Metro's life together. The congregation gathers each Sunday at 11:00 a.m. Eastern in the sanctuary, with gathering and bagels at 10:30 and coffee hour after the service. Worship is hybrid: those who cannot be in the room join from anywhere in the world on the church's Zoom link, with both in-person and virtual participants leading the liturgy together. Members share joys and concerns each week, and the prayer list carries them out into the days that follow.
Music is a hallmark. The choir rehearses at 10:00 Sunday mornings, under the direction of Anita Massengill, a longtime Metro member, with pianist Brett Kristofferson, an award-winning New York City songwriter. Music is rooted in the classical tradition, but a single service can swing from hymns and chorale pieces to spirituals, folk, choruses, and the well-placed show tune. The congregation follows the Revised Common Lectionary, which walks through much of the Bible over a three-year cycle. Liturgy, in Metro's understanding, is the work of the people, not the performance of any leader.
Sanctuary Arts
The Sanctuary Arts Initiative turns Metro's historic sanctuary into a working theater. Through partnerships with local artists and companies, the building hosts concerts, dance, cabaret, and new plays throughout the year. Current partners include Mark Lamb Dance, a company that has staged quarterly Saturday Salons at Metro that the New York Times once called a quintessential New York experience; Upstart Creatures, an actor-led collective that weaves theater and food into what the company calls physical feasts; Stomping Ground Theatre Company, a socially conscious ensemble whose work centers voices often absent from the stage; the "Abby London-Crawford Presents" concert series, which features jazz, neo-classical, and world music; and the cabaret artist Ruby Rims, who also co-facilitates the food pantry and hosts an annual benefit cabaret for it.
The church also runs a Sanctuary Arts Grant program for individual artists connected to Metro or RMM who have lost income, and opens the building to other community groups who need a stage.
Urban Immersion: A Week in Hell's Kitchen
For visiting groups that want more than a tour, Metro runs the Urban Immersion program. Participants stay in dorm-style housing on the church's fourth floor, share a daily continental breakfast, and spend their days volunteering alongside RMM staff. The program includes an unlimited MetroCard, background checks for all volunteers, a debriefing with an urban theologian, and evening activity suggestions. A standard week costs $4000 for groups of up to fifteen, with sliding pricing for larger teams.
For groups that cannot travel, Metro has built a six-session virtual curriculum on the same themes: homelessness, food justice, youth and education, gentrification, interfaith work, and arts and theater. Each session includes a video from one of Metro's practitioners, group activities, a Bible study, and a final challenge for engaging the work in the participant's own city.
Family Ministry
Children are welcome in every part of Metro's life. A staffed nursery for children from birth through age three is offered in the middle of the service. Children ages four to twelve are invited to Children's Learning Time, an interactive, age-focused program that begins after the Passing of the Peace and usually runs alongside the sermon.
Family Ministry is coordinated by a volunteer committee that plans quarterly Family Friday events and seasonal churchwide activities, with the explicit aim of helping children see faith lived out through stories of love, grace, and justice. The whole congregation is treated as an intergenerational family, with children named as valued contributors, not as visitors to adult space.
A Baptist Identity Built on Freedom
Metro's founders named themselves Baptist on purpose. The congregation's own articulation of that heritage lists four freedoms that frame everything it does: soul freedom, the right of every believer to read and interpret Scripture; church freedom, the autonomy of the local congregation to shape its own life and call its own leaders; Bible freedom, the responsibility to interpret Scripture responsibly; and religious liberty, the separation of church and state.
Metro's primary denominational ties are with the Alliance of Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Over the years the congregation has also partnered in mission with the Baptist Joint Committee, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, the Baptist World Alliance, the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, the National Council of Churches USA, and Church World Service. The congregation is intentionally open and affirming: membership is open to anyone who professes faith in Jesus Christ, regardless of gender, sexual identity, ethnicity, social standing, education, or economic status.
Metro's written statement of belief, adopted in 2002, names Scripture as the sole authority for the faith and practice of the congregation, affirms the freedom of every believer led by the Spirit to read and interpret the Bible, affirms the freedom of the local church to shape its own life and mission, and commits the church to the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ and the calling of God to all peoples to repentance and faith, reconciliation and hope, social and economic justice.
Anti-Racism as a Way of Life
Since June 2020, Metro has made an explicit, ongoing commitment to anti-racism work. The congregation gathers monthly on Zoom evenings for discussion and accountability, and the residential staff at Metro and RMM has completed a nine-week intensive training course led by the Rev. Dr. Ben Boswell of Myers Park Baptist Church, based on his "What Does It Mean to Be White?" curriculum. The weekly email carries resources, art, podcasts, and personal reflections to keep the work alive between gatherings. Members describe it as a long-term practice rather than a one-time conversation.
Resident Partners
Metro's building is also home to several partner organizations whose missions extend the church's own. The Igreja Brasileira, a Brazilian Baptist congregation, has worshiped at Metro since 1987. Damayan Migrant Workers Association, a Filipino grassroots organization that supports domestic workers, has its Manhattan office on the third floor. The third floor also hosts an early childhood education program for neighborhood families, currently operated by Hudson Guild. New Alternatives, which supports LGBTQ+ homeless youth transitioning out of the shelter system, rents office space in the building. And Dr. John Halbrook, Metro's very first pastor from 1974, now offers private counseling out of the same building he once helped found.
Visiting Metro
Worship is at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings, with bagels and coffee at 10:30 and a coffee hour after the service. The church is at 410 West 40th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, steps from the Port Authority and Times Square/42nd Street subway stations. Drivers from New Jersey arrive at the end of the Lincoln Tunnel. Parking is often available on 9th Avenue on Sundays.
The congregation is intentionally casual. Members and visitors arrive as they are. Childcare for children through age three is offered mid-service, and Children's Learning Time is offered for children ages four and up. Metro's building has not yet been made wheelchair accessible; the sanctuary requires climbing approximately ten stairs, and the congregation names accessibility as a primary goal for the next phase of renovation. In the past, volunteers have helped wheelchair users enter the building.
Office hours are Monday through Thursday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The general email is mbc@mbcnyc.org. For a building tour, wedding, performance, or other use of the sanctuary or basement hall, a Space Usage Request Form is available, and giving to support both the congregation and Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries is available online.