New Haven Independent

The actual sale took place in August 2006. The sign, not quite temporary but not permanent either, is only about a year old. So “new” might not be the precise word. However in the long view of church history in New Haven (and elsewhere), the closing of a more than a century-old Catholic Church and the debut of the first permanent home of an evangelical Baptist church committed to serving the city, particularly the downtown community and Yale, is a new installment on an ongoing story.

How does a church change hands?

According to Father John Gatzak of the Archdiocese of Hartford (New Haven’s Catholic churches are in Hartford’s bailiwick), by 2006 St. Boniface simply didn’t have enough local participation to keep it going, and sale was contemplated.

Among those initially interested in the property were the Board of Education, which had eyed it as a potential site for the new Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School. However, according to Sue Weisselberg, the school construction coordinator, some of the property belonging to the parking lot would have been needed, but was unavailable.

That parking lot, Gatzak said, had long before been sold to the phone company, AT&T, and was not on the table.

“So we didn’t pursue the possibility to the point of a bid,” Weisselberg said in an email message. The Board of Ed’s new site for its performing arts high school is close to completion at the corner of Crown and College and should be ready to open this winter.

A small congregation, Trinity Baptist Church had been renting space for all its life since its founding in the early1970s by Yale Divinity School students. It was renting space form the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Humphrey Street, and the lease was running out.

According to the church’s history, told at its website, trinity-baptist.org, Trinity had just heard the lease would not be renewed. A search began for a new site. When they found out that St. Boniface was for sale, at the corner of State and Grove, a location near the downtown, important to the evangelical outreach mission of the church, members made a bid for $1.2 million.

“After what seemed like forever,” goes on the story, “we heard back that we were being out bid. We upped our bid to $1.25 million. And then we waited to hear back from them. Meanwhile, our time was running out at the SDA church. We were blessed in that we asked them for an extension of our time, pending a response from the Archdiocese… finally the call came that our bid was accepted.”

The sale, which included the charming rectory building, was concluded, for $1.3 million.

According to Father Gatzak, the remaining Catholic parishioners were invited to other congregations in the city — he clicked off some 12 Catholic churches in New Haven, alphabetically from St. Aedan’s to St.Rose to St. Stanislaus. (Historically, each church is associated with a different ethnic/national group of Catholics, Irish, German, etc.) A final mass was conducted by the archbishop.

Trinity Baptist’s dedication service was held in October 2006. This was a remarkable turn of events for Trinity which, as recently as 1999 had dwindled to 20 members, and had run out of, if not inspiration, at least the person-power fuel to keep an all-volunteer church going. However, a new pastor, Josh Moody, took the reins, and membership grew sufficiently for Trinity to be able to move into its first home.

Since then, according to Nick Lauer, the incoming pastor, assisting Moody with a focus on the church’s college ministry, “it’s all quite miraculous how it’s worked out.”

Lauer, along with the church’s administrative assistant Michelle Hixon, were busy in the office in the rectory and preferred not to be photographed or have a focus of the story of their church be on them.

Currently the church, said Lauer, has a regular attendance of some 200 to 300 people at their two services Sunday morning at 10 and evening at 6:30. The church’s numbers are increasing.

“We really wanted to stay focused on New Haven,” he said. “There is a lot happening religiously in the city, and this is a great place to be.” He grew up in the Pittsburgh area, has recently graduated Yale Divinity School, and first heard about Trinity on the Yale Divinity School’s website.

The church operates a small food pantry and has a growing relationship of service to the Columbus House homeless shelter.

While New Haven has, according to that very non-scriptural source, the Greater New Haven Yellow Pages, some 45 churches in the Greater New Haven area that characterize themselves as Baptist (plain Baptist, Independent Baptist, American Baptist, and Reformed Baptist). That includes 19 within the city of New Haven itself. Only Trinity Baptist is Southern Baptist.

“We self-define,” said Lauer, “as evangelical, which means we have a high view of Scripture and a personal relationship with Christ.”

He said the church is more than pleased with the location. While the church is not at all averse, he says, to “commending our faith to others and sharing the good news,” it’s much more about being inviting others to come in.

To which end, added Michelle Hixson, they were going to make a note to finish the raw pressure treated wood, still unpainted, that holds up their sign.