by Lisa Reisman
When, in the 1980s, most were afraid of touching people living with AIDS or HIV, Elsie Cofield hugged them. At Immanuel Missionary Baptist Church, she helped create a soup kitchen, a 60-bed homeless shelter, as well as other programs to decrease the strain of poverty, drugs, and crime in New Haven.
Cofield, who died in 2016, was the wife of the late Rev. Dr. Curtis McKinley Cofield, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Missionary Church, the venerable Chapel Street religious institution that commemorated 200 years of faithful service with a gala affair at Anthony’s Ocean View on Saturday.
The oldest African American Baptist church in Connecticut represents “the light in this darkening world,” mistress of ceremonies Elicia Pegues Spearman told the 200 in attendance — one, she said, that’s known for its “service, spiritual leadership, and transformative impact in the city of New Haven and beyond.”
After Tiffany Smith’s stunning rendition of “Destiny,” Rev. Samuel Ross-Lee, who succeeded Cofield as pastor of Immanuel Baptist in June 2001, discussed the legacy of Cofield and his wife.
“My predecessor more than anybody instilled a spirit of community outreach in this church that continues to this day, and his wife had the AIDS Interfaith Network,” he said, amid the animated chatter of guests. That’s heady praise, considering Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., who would go on to become a leading civil rights figure and community activist, leading relief campaigns for the poor during the Depression, served as pastor from 1893 to 1908.
Ross-Lee referred to the Clothes Closet open on Tuesdays for donations of new and gently used clothes, coats, and accessories, with pick-ups each Thursday. There’s also the elderly services ministry focusing on the needs of senior members with transportation services, companionship, and home care. And scholarships to support young people in the church going to college.
There are the Sisters of Hagar, with their diaper drives, school supply drives, and their work in a women’s shelter. “They’re a very important ministry for us,” said Ross-Lee. “They tell me what they’re going to do and I announce it to the church.”
There are the hot meals served each Sunday at the soup kitchen. And the food pantry offering fresh meat and vegetables. Ross-Lee said the church recently qualified for a grant from the Connecticut Food Bank. With SNAP benefits ending on Nov. 1, “we’ll be able to continue to do what we’re doing with the food pantry and the soup kitchen,” he said.
“I grew up in this church,” said Spearman, the emcee. “I was baptized in the church, married in the church, and I was queen of the debutante ball.” She described Immanuel as “welcoming and embracing to all,” then offered another reason for the way it has continued its long tradition of service and its role as a model for social action.
“We have a very intelligent pastor who does not shy away from taking on the issues in the world,” she said of Ross-Lee, a graduate of Morehouse College and the Harvard Divinity School, as well as a voice of conscience in New Haven.
Not only that, said Vera Esdaile, a deacon at the church. “We have a pastor who challenges us every day on our role as Christians and what we’re supposed to be doing to uplift our community,” she said.