Founded in 1970 as the Community Church of Washington, D.C. (CCDC), the congregation led by Pastor Paul Breton joined the new MCC denomination in 1971 with help from local activist Frank Kameny.

The church experienced significant growth during its first 30 years, from around 65 people at its initial meeting to over 500 members in the early 2000s, despite the effects the AIDS epidemic had on the congregation.

MCCDC spent over 20 years meeting in its founder's home, other church buildings, and a converted rowhouse, before moving to a new and permanent facility in 1992.

It was the first step in starting a local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church, a Protestant Christian denomination catering to LGBT people that was founded in 1968 by Troy Perry.

The attendees prayed, sang hymns from a Unitarian Universalist book, partook in communion, and listened to speakers, two of whom were a Roman Catholic priest and a former Methodist minister.

In the opening prayer Martha A. Taylor of Arlington, Virginia, said, "Each of us has come here for his own reasons" and "You, oh God, know, we are no better and no worse than [others] because of our sexual orientation...It is the qualities exemplified through day-to-day living that determine the worth of each man.

[8] Breton continued serving as pastor until his resignation in 1973 to start additional MCC congregations in Baltimore, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

[1] A few months after resigning, Breton played a large role in assisting Perry and other MCC pastors with helping survivors of the UpStairs Lounge arson attack in New Orleans.

During this time, the church was led by two other pastors, Jack Isbell followed by Larry J. Uhrig, a former Methodist minister who would lead MCCDC for 16 years.

[1][12] In 1984 MCCDC purchased its first meeting space, a rowhouse located at 415 M Street NW in the Mount Vernon Square neighborhood.

"[1] On the tenth anniversary of health officials announcing their first report on AIDS and after 3,000 area residents had died from the disease, Uhrig, along with other faith leaders and government officials including Surgeon General Antonia Novello and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, gathered for a memorial service marking the somber event.

"[17] The two-story, 300-seat church, featuring a vaulted ceiling as well as glass and masonry walls, was designed in the modernist style by Maryland architect Suzane Reatig.

[20][21] A columbarium for urns was built into the small chapel on the second floor and its design reflected the continued high number of deaths at the time due to AIDS.

The march was criticized not only by conservatives, but by many LGBT activists and liberal groups, for the lack of diversity, corporate sponsorship, and ill-defined political platform.

[17][31] MCCDC continued to advocate for LGBT acceptance and rights during the 2000s, from speaking out on homophobia preached in local churches to celebrate the passage of Washington, D.C.'s same-sex marriage legislation in 2009.

[32][33] Dwayne Johnson, who was raised in the Church of the Nazarene denomination and became pastor at MCCDC in January 2010 after resigning from an MCC in Texas, officiated wedding ceremonies on the first-day marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples.

"[36] The church's 45th-anniversary event was held at the National Press Club and at the time Johnson noted that Sunday service attendance had decreased from its high of 500 in the early 2000s to just over 200 by 2016.

"[35] The 300-seat MCCDC building is located at 474 Ridge Street NW in the predominantly residential Mount Vernon Square neighborhood.

Similar to modernist architects including I. M. Pei and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Reatig's works have been described as "polarizing" due to her linear designs that incorporate large amounts of concrete and glass.

Even though she had never designed a place of worship, Reatig's "unconventional ideas, chemistry, and enthusiasm" impressed committee members, and she was hired.

Despite this, her design ran contrary to Uhrig's desire for a more conventional religious space with formal seating, stained glass windows, and dark interiors.

[38] The two-story building is 13,400 square feet (1,245 sq m) and includes a basement, the maximum size that was allowed due to zoning regulations.

It includes a two-story sanctuary with the rest of the space - chapel, library, offices, kitchen, and lounge area - in the remaining L-shaped portion of the building.

In an article reviewing the new building, Benjamin Forgey of The Washington Post said it "combines contextualism - the masonry blocks of two facades complement older houses nearby - with stunning pure form modern architecture" and describing the sanctuary as "bold and satisfying in the way that it opens up to trees and sky, it gains an ethereal extra dimension at dusk and nighttime."

In another review Herbert Muschamp of The New York Times said the building "ushers its congregation and guests into a realm of literal and metaphoric transparency: a place where space, structure, and function have been rendered into lucid, accessible form" and drew similarities to Maya Lin's minimalist design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial[22][23] Scholar Sigurd Bergmann described the design as "genius" and "while some urban churches choose to be fortresses within the city, this glassy church refuses to shut out its urban neighborhood, or to be shut from it.

"[40] Architecture and urban planning journalist Amanda Kolson Hurley said it was her favorite building designed by Reitag and that "Reatig has made modernism an integral part of a residential D.C. neighborhood for the first time since I.M.