U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt looked across the room in the community center at 27th and Prospect in Kansas City, watching Covid-19 vaccinations in progress, seeing confidence and hope where there might not have been so much before.

“People are changing their minds,” the senator said to the media and community members who gathered at the Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church’s Youth and Family Life Center April 8.

And making a difference are the “dramatic ways” that the church is using its building and teaming up with LINC to bring state and local resources together to deliver vaccines to long-neglected and communities that need them the most.

“What LINC has done in the community, what they are doing here,” Blunt said, is bringing forces together “to bring the community to a safer place.”

Morning Star, led by the Rev. John Modest Miles, was able to get the nod from Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s office to dispatch a unit of the Missouri National Guard to deliver vaccines at the center. And then the Kansas City Fire Department joined the team, sending specially trained paramedics to deliver more vaccinations.

Blunt was joined at the April 8 gathering by Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, Jackson County Executive Frank White, Rep. Ashley Bland Manlove and Jackson County Legislators Theresa Galvin and Ronald Finley.

By the end of the day, the number of vaccinations administered at the center since early February would exceed 14,000.

There is still a lot of work ahead in getting a city vaccinated, Mayor Lucas said, and the community operation at Morning Star is lighting the way out of pandemic darkness.

Read more:

• 'I came to lead the way;' See the faces of people getting vaccines at Morning Star

• Cleaver: Witnessing community-building 'as great or greater than I have ever seen'

• Kansas City education leaders urge COVID vaccinations

• kclinc.org/lincmorningstar

• To schedule a vaccination appointment, call 816-256-5003

“Everybody here has shown a path, not just for this organization but for so many others throughout Kansas City and throughout Missouri," he said.

How do you convince people who might fear or doubt the vaccine to get their shot?

“You keep showing them,” Lucas said. “You make it easier. You reduce barriers. You come to their neighborhood. You work with them. You talk to their community.”

And then, he added, “when you have enough folks who say, ‘Well, I got it and it worked for me and it was real easy and they made it painless . . . and I got food’ — that’s how we keep doing it. We replicate this. We make it a place where you know that every day Morning Star is going to be here. The Family Life Center will be here. LINC will be here.”

The prevailing feeling in the room, White said, was “unity.” It’s a collective spirit that the Jackson County Executive said is growing across the city and the county with so many community forces joining to inspire and deliver vaccinations.

“The only way to beat Covid is to get our shots,” White said, and the example set by Pastor Miles and LINC Executive Vice President Janet Miles-Bartee is “amazing.”

“It takes a lot of people to bring this together,” he said. “I’m glad to show the unity that we all see and feel to get this job done.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer

Video by Bryan Shepard