​Celebrating the Life of Rev. “Dr. Bob” Meneilly
Founding Pastor of Village Presbyterian Church

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​Our beloved Rev. Dr. Robert H. (Bob) Meneilly, who pastored one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the U.S. and warned about the rise of right-wing religious extremism, died July 20, 2021. He was 96.  

Dr. Meneilly founded Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, and led the church for 47 years, retiring in 1994. The church grew to more than 7,000 members and had the nation’s second largest Presbyterian congregation during his tenure.

“Those of us who have the privilege of serving this congregation today all stand on the shoulders of giants, and Dr. Bob was chief among them,” said Rev. Tom Are, senior pastor of Village Church. “He was tireless as a pastor and he was courageous in matters of social justice. He had an unending commitment to make Johnson County the most kindest, the most faithful and most just place to live.”

Dr. Bob preached compelling sermons about race relations, fair housing and equal rights, spoke out against the Vietnam War, and gained prominence as a civic and social justice leader in the Kansas City area throughout the latter half of the 20th century. 

In August 1993, he delivered a sermon entitled “The Dangers of Religion” that decried the rise of the radical religious right movement and urged moderation in politics and the separation of church and state. It was partially reprinted in the New York Times and other publications nationally. 

Longtime congregants and friends remembered Meneilly, known fondly as “Dr. Bob,” for his humility, his ingratiating sense of humor, and for his inspirational guidance in leading a life devoted to the teachings of Jesus. 

Jim Borthwick, who joined the church in 1966, noted that Dr. Bob attracted headlines for some of his politically-sensitive sermons, but said those weren’t typical.  “They got all the attention and made news, but Sunday after Sunday he was telling people how to live their personal lives In a Christian way, and he was effective,” Borthwick said. “The reason Village Church grew so much was his week after week sermons on how to live a Christian life.” 

In 1965 and 1966, Dr. Bob delivered several sermons urging his all-white congregation to welcome African American residents into their suburban neighborhoods and church. These messages prompted several complimentary letters but also a flood of hate mail. Some of those letters, and excerpts from his sermons, are on display at the Johnson County Museum, in an exhibit about suburban change and race relations in the 1960s.

He invited Don and Virginia Sewing and their children, an African American family that had moved to Fairway, Kansas to join Village Church.  Their son Henry, who remains an active Village Church member, fondly recalled growing up in the church and the lifelong friends he made in youth group. His parents had lay leadership roles and his mother, a nurse, went on mission trips to the Dominican Republic, which continue to this day. 

“Village was home,” Sewing said, attributing that to Dr. Bob’s welcoming leadership. “That’s the place I still go today. This is my house…It was his influence on his flock.”  

In the late 1960s, at Meneilly’s urging, Village Church created the Black Motivation Training Center, which helped the poor find employment and remained in existence for more than a decade.

What’s remarkable about Meneilly, according to longtime religion writer Bill Tammeus, was “the success he had in creating a vibrant faith community in Johnson County that was not there simply to comfort people. Rather, that was there to afflict the comfortable and to raise issues that needed to be raised in a predominantly white, rich place.”

Tammeus said Meneilly attracted smart people to the church and compelled them to think deeply and to live their Christian values through mission and outreach. “I think there are a lot of people in Johnson County who have progressive, more open views about life and race and economics and war and peace and the environment, because of Bob,” Tammeus said. “He planted a lot of good seeds.”

Rev. Sam Mann, longtime pastor of Saint Mark Union Church in Kansas City, said Meneilly was very supportive of his urban core church’s efforts and was surprisingly outspoken and persuasive on fair housing, civil rights and ending the Vietnam War—stances that weren’t easy or popular in Johnson County. “It was amazing how he stayed so long, with such liberal views in such a conservative suburban congregation,” Mann said, recalling that Meneilly was great at pastoral care and in ministering to his huge congregation. 

In a 2012 oral history, Dr. Bob reflected on the impact of his civil rights preaching. “It was very hard for some people. We lost one year probably 300 members,” he recalled. 

He also attended the Vietnam War Peace Talks in 1972: “I went over to the Peace Talks in Paris and spent time right across from people, the enemy. You came away knowing, these are human beings, same as we are,” he remembered. “So, I came out of that experience saying we needed to as gracefully and quickly as we could get out of that war…The military personnel in the church didn’t like that very well so we lost some of those people. But I think it was right. I wouldn’t do any differently now.” 

Dr. Bob was born on March 5, 1925, in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania and felt called to the ministry when he was about 13. He received his Master of Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He married Shirley Ann Dunlap in 1947 and the couple eventually had three children. They had planned to go to China after marriage, but the Communist Revolution broke out in 1946. So, they considered offers to pastor churches in Pennsylvania, in North Hollywood, California, or in Prairie Village, Kansas. After touring Johnson County, they immediately decided to move to Prairie Village and arrived in October 1947.

World War II had ended, and Johnson County was booming with new families looking for community. “New homes were being built everywhere. The war was just over, so men were home and families were getting re-established,” Dr. Bob recalled in a 2017 interview. “We were in the heart of all of that.” He went door-to-door talking to people and looking for houses where diapers hung on clothes lines, inviting the young families to join before the church building was even finished. 

Most churches started in storefronts or parlors, but Village was a built-from-scratch church at 67th and Mission Road. It held its first Sunday worship service on Feb. 13, 1949, with 282 charter members. It grew massively from that point, propelled by Dr. Bob’s preaching and strong mission, Christian education, music and youth programs.

“His sermons were unmatched. They were incredible. They were dynamic. They made sense to the common human being,” Henry Sewing recalled, saying frequent themes were “forgiveness and togetherness and positivity if everyone works together. And being able to listen to somebody else’s viewpoint.”

Longtime member Carol Cowden was director of children’s ministry for nearly 20 years, until 1992. She said Dr. Bob was a servant leader who encouraged his staff to be creative, and the church attracted hundreds of children. It was a place, she said, where people of diverse faiths and backgrounds were welcome and where Dr. Bob took a personal interest in all his congregation.  

Over his 47-year tenure, more than 32,000 people called Village Church their spiritual home. “He was probably the most tolerant and non-judgmental person I know,” Cowden said. “He was the one who would write handwritten notes. He would visit you in the hospital. I think of lot of people felt like he was their pastor, in the sense of the shepherd of the church.”

Toward the end of his ministry, Dr. Bob became increasingly concerned about hard-core Christian conservatives and their influence in politics and government. On Aug. 15, 1993, he preached a sermon in which he said, “Religion can be the greatest thing on earth or the worst.”

He warned that right-wing religious extremists were pushing a stealth agenda in U.S. political campaigns, trying to enforce state-mandated prayer in schools, censorship of certain books, the teaching of creationism, gutting of sex education and support for parochial schools at the expense of public schools.

“These misguided religionists and patriots are trying to say that only persons with the correct religious views are real Americans and should hold public offices,” he warned. 

The New York Times printed a condensed version of the sermon in its opinion section, prompting stern rebuttals from some conservative preachers and pundits. The sermon forecast an intense debate about conservative versus moderate views that continues to the present time. Read the sermon transcript by clicking here.

After the sermon, Dr. Bob joined five other Johnson County civic leaders to found the Mainstream Coalition. Its principles included guarding against the encroachment of religious doctrine into politics, tolerance for diverse views, support for public schools, reproductive freedom and respect for moderation and compromise around common values to form a just society.

“He was savvy and prophetic. The man saw what was going on with the Christian Right and said we need to do something about this. He was a Godsend,” said Mark Levin, a Mainstream Coalition founding member and longtime rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah.  Carol Sedar, another Mainstream Coalition founding member who served in the Kansas Legislature, said Dr. Bob helped lead the coalition for many years after he retired from the ministry.

She said Dr. Bob  enlisted clergy of many faiths and civic leaders to the cause. “He was an inspiration to all of us,” she said, adding that the Mainstream Coalition is even more needed now, as the nation has become more partisan and divided. “The organization has grown tremendously.”

After he retired as Village’s senior pastor in December 1994, Dr. Bob stayed active with the church’s outreach missions. He volunteered with the church’s Front Porch Alliance, which forged connections and friendships between Village members and residents of the Ivanhoe neighborhood in Kansas City’s urban core. He also volunteered at Village’s food pantry.

When asked how he hoped to be remembered, he replied in a 2012 oral history, “I would hope to be remembered as always striving to be honest and cheerful and mission minded.” 

Dr. Bob  said he loved being a minister and took particular joy in performing some 3,000 weddings. He hoped Village would always be a church where people would carry out “mission beyond themselves,” and where the congregation would accommodate all different types of people. 

“I would hope there could be a place,” he said, “where conservatives and more liberals could find ground by which they could church together anyway.”

When asked how people could carry forth his message of love for others, he said with a laugh, “Work like thunder at it.”

But on a more serious note, he added that God is love and people must love not only their neighbors but their enemies. “What do you do with what you believe? How do you behave?” he asked. “Behave what you believe. When you get down to it, it’s love one another.”

VILLAGE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Village Presbyterian Church is a thoughtful, inclusive family of faith, where incarnation is experienced, relationships are shaped and cherished, mission is a way of life and justice is practiced. Village Church is a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the largest Presbyterian denomination in the country and a part of the Reformed tradition. All are welcome. All are accepted. All are loved.

At Village, we are with you, wherever you are.

OUR VISION

Village Presbyterian Church is a family of faith actively shaped by the life of Christ to love one another, provide leadership for the transformation of our communities, and serve the world.

OUR MISSION

The mission of Village Presbyterian Church is to see and relate to every person in our communities and the world as loved by God.

We will accomplish our mission by:
  • Ensuring the congregation is vibrant and grounded in Christian faith which inspires our desire to grow in faith, shapes our love for one another, and focuses our mission.
  • Proactively providing resources to meet the spiritual needs of a changing community in a changing world.
  • Shaping our mission and ministry by "defining moments" that embody our vision and demonstrate our faith.​
  • Securing sustaining resources for mission and ministry.

OUR STORY

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In the late 1940s, the prairie and farmland just west of Kansas City were rapidly turning into suburban neighborhoods. One such township, known as Prairie Village, had lots of young families settling down, but no Presbyterian church nearby. So the "home office" (Board of American Missions of United Presbyterian Church of North America) decided to do something about it, in a unique way.

Most new congregations begin in schools, theaters or neighborhood garages, but this time the Board provided $100,000 for a church building and parsonage. This unprecedented gift (which was funded in part by offerings from many small churches) was an experiment to see if ready-built facilities would have a positive effect on an emerging young church.

They also sent an emerging young minister, Robert H. Meneilly, to spread the good news about this village church. When the last bricks were set in place, Bob and his wife, Shirley, had already built a congregation with their year-long, house-to-house visitation. On Feb. 13, 1949, at the Village Church’s very first Sunday worship service, 282 charter members filled the Chapel. Dr. Meneilly retired in 1994.

​After an interim period, Dr. Robert W. Bohl became the church’s second senior pastor in 1996. In February of 2004, Reverend Tom Are, Jr. became the church’s third senior pastor.
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Was the Board of Missions’ experiment a success? Today, Village Church has over 4,800 members operating out of an 95,000 square foot facility which, though expanded several times over, still seems to burst with activity. The church also manages the Meneilly Center for Mission at 99th and Mission Road, which includes a Child and Family Development Center and a Food Pantry that serve the surrounding community.

​On Feb. 5, 2017, Village Church became one church at two campuses, holding the first worship service at our first satellite campus, Village on Antioch, located at 14895 Antioch Road in Overland Park.

Our Village Church family, remembering with gratitude to those small churches which helped us in the beginning, believes that an active mission program is a cornerstone of our life together. We look forward to expanding our mission in even more exciting ways in the decades ahead.

​Village Church has always been more than bricks and mortar. Our founding pastor tacked a message to the pulpit, reminding whoever preached here to look beyond himself: "Sir, we would see Jesus." It is the Village Church’s purpose to reflect that image of Christ’s love, now and in the future.
CONTACT:
Main Church Campus
913-262-4200
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Satellite Campus
​Village on Antioch
14895 Antioch Rd.
Overland Park, KS 66221
913-681-8180
Get Directions
​
Meneilly Center for Mission
9900 Mission Road
Overland Park, KS 66207
Get Directions

​Food Pantry
913-671-2315
Get Directions

Child & Family Development Center
913-671-2310
Get Directions