“Stand on the platform of an incoming subway train, and you can feel the train get closer. Stop alongside a car with a blaring stereo, and your car shakes with the sound. Listen to the summer cicada; the air pulsates with their deafening noise. Feel the pulsing of a roller coaster under your feet as it whips around the track. Vibrations indicate movement. Vibrations that beat and pulsate imply a pulse, and a pulse means life.” 

Denise Simeone, National Catholic Reporter, 10 signs of a vibrant parish

St. James Catholic Church is alive with that pulse.  It is felt and seen from within by its members and on the outside by those who know it by its works, ministries and reputation.  St. James has been serving people in midtown Kansas City for more than 100 years.  The parish is a close-knit community that is committed to Pope Francis’s model of a Synodal Church. He calls the way of synodality “what God expects of the church in the third millennium”, stressing that “the synodal process should be not an occasional experience, but one of structural change, ‘where all can feel at home and participate.’”

St. James welcomes and serves unique families along with first-generation immigrants to Kansas City, which can be seen and celebrated by our display of flags of home countries that hang from the choir loft. Our vision is to continue to grow as a diverse and inclusive community where worship and sacramental life can be accessible to all people in the Kansas City metro area. 

We celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday at 10:00 AM.  Look over our website.  You will get a glimpse of our life and ministry here at St. James.  But the best way to learn who we are and what we are about is to come and spend some time with us.  Join us for our 10:00 AM Mass at 3909 Harrison St., Kansas City, MO 64110.

If you would like more information, feel free to call our parish office at 816-561-8512 or email us at parish@stjkc.org.  It is our prayer that you will decide to journey with us toward becoming a beacon of light and hope to each other and to those we serve and a vision of what the future synodal church will look like.

“A parish is not a priest, not a building, not a territory.   A parish is people…you and your neighbors…all the faithful who make up the Body of Christ.  Your parish is not just a Sunday meeting place, but a place where seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day you carry Christ to the world.”   ~This is St. James Parish, 1965