The heartbeat of Grace and Truth Baptist Church runs along the rails of our discipleship ministry.

We have an objective of making every member of our local church a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ.  For that reason, the ministries of our church are centered in allowing our membership to actively be involved in ministry opportunities to impact our community and the world.

The primary ministries that we support are homelessness, incarceration, substance abuse, and curbing the pregnancy rate especially amongst teens.  The majority of our resources are used to minister to the needs of these peoples, especially our teenage population.  We have found that there is a connection between each of these issues, as they plague our city, and we believe that it is the responsibility of the local church, as the body of Christ, to impact these conditions.  Our mandate is founded in:

Isaiah 61:1

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

Currently our Pastor, Ray Stewart, is the chaplain at Jackson County Detention Center (JCDC) which is located in Kansas City, MO.  The Center’s inmate population, which average 872 inmates, is made up primarily of individuals throughout Jackson County.  The average length of incarceration at JCDC is 120-180 days.

Grace and Truth Baptist Church is heavily invested in the ministry we’ve developed at JCDC. Our ministry volunteers provide discipleship classes, daily bible studies, conducting Sunday church services, passing out spiritual literature to the inmate population, prayer services, as well as personal, individual counseling, and a referral to a local church once the inmate is released back into the community.

 Our attempt is to impact the crime rate in the Kansas City Metropolitan area, “from the inside out.”

It is our belief that the most effective way to make a positive impact in lowering the crime rate in Jackson County, is by investing in the lives of those who are incarcerated, transforming them by the renewing of their minds, and then equipping them to reach persons in the communities that they live in, outside of the jail, who are still committing crimes allowing their transformation to reach them “from the inside out.”    

Most recently, with the help of funding from the Missouri Missions Offering (MMO), as well as local churches, we were able to produce more than 2000 bibles that have the discipleship material that our church uses to transform the members of our local church, printed within these bibles.

This has created the ability to present both the Word of God and our Discipleship Lessons in the same efficiently sized book. We then seek inmates who first prove themselves faithful, and then train them to continue to teach this material in the PODS, and in the cells, to other inmates.  Our mandate is founded in:

2 Timothy 2:2

And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

It is our belief that many of the efforts that our city employs to shorten the curve of violent crime in our city are not necessarily working. For that reason, our approach is to work to transform those who are incarcerated, that may have relationships with those who are still actively committing crimes in their families, their communities, their circle of influences and to demonstrate how their lives are being transformed for Christ and set free from the indigenous habitual lifestyle of crime.   We actively work with family members of the incarcerated, so that when they potentially are released from jail, they go back to environments that are conducive to spiritual growth.  We seek your prayers in these efforts.

Grace and Truth Baptist Church is located at 15904 E. 23rd. St. S. Independence, Mo 64055 (816) 229-1611