Profile

John Doner founded the first church for gays and lesbians in Latin America, Iglesia de la Comunidad Metropolitana Reconciliación (MCC), in Mexico City in 1981. In 1992 he and the Rev. Dr. Tom Hanks, along with Episcopal attorney Gordon Herzog of St. Louis, founded …

… John and Pepe made a seven-month mission trip by public bus and river boat in 1994 from Mexico City to Santiago, Chile, to Buenos Aires, Argentina and return, visiting lgbt leaders in seventeen countries. The purpose was to identify potential leaders for future lgbt ministries in the cities visited and to establish some 40 documentation centers in universities, seminaries and lgbt groups which make available to the public gay-positive Christian literature supplied by Other Sheep.

… he made a commitment to Christ at a very early age and his parents were leaders in the Church of the Nazarene and later in the Free Methodist Church. When he was 16 his family moved to Sacramento, California, where John became a youth leader in the local Free Methodist Church. His first year of college was at Vennard College in Oskaloosa, …

… his plane waiting for take-off, John strongly sensed what appeared to be God speaking to him: “John, Mexico City needs a Christian ministry to gays and lesbians.” His mother and only brother had died years before, and due to his father’s age, John was unable to respond to this call until his father’s death in January 1980. In response …

… He soon met Horacio Flores (who two years later became the MCC pastor) and, in October 1981, the first MCC service in Latin America, and to his knowledge the first lgbt worship service, was held. In 1984-85 John made many weekend 8-hour bus trips to Guadalajara to assist Tom García in founding ICM Guadalajara. At MCC’s 1985 General …

… faith and their sexuality, and, with his partner Pepe, has made numerous mission trips to Central and South America in search of potential leaders to initiate Christian lgbt ministries where they currently do not exist. While John never sensed a call to the professional ministry, he considers his search for indigenous leadership to begin Christian lgbt ministries throughout Latin America to be his most important work.