Immanuel Baptist Church to celebrate 50 years

Sunday, the members of Immanuel Baptist Church will be celebrating a golden day.

It will have been 50 years since Immanuel Baptist Church was founded and has continued to grow with the Lord.

“We have a great reliance on the Lord spiritually,” said Clain Roberts, Immanuel Baptist’s Minister of Music for the past 26 years. “The people here have enjoyed getting along and ministering with each other.

The church, itself, started as a mission of First Baptist Church of Milton back in Oct. 1957 when Rev. Henry Tatum stepped behind the pulpit of Immanuel Baptist Chapel.

Then on Aug. 28, 1960 Rev. Walter Hayes and his congregation celebrated its independence and Immanuel Baptist Church was born.

Now the church is looking forward to the next 50 years with their new pastor Rev. Ronnie Coleman on board.

Rev. Coleman this past June replaced Rev. Kevin Goza served as the pastor of the church form Dec. 1999 to November of 2007 when he moved to Texas.

“We have been fortunate to have only 10 pastors throughout the years,” Roberts said. “In the early days there was more of a turnover as there sometimes is in smaller churches.”

Roberts himself can attest to the growth and consistency at Immanuel Baptist since he has worked under four pastors while serving the church in the capacity of Minister of Music.

“Rev. Coleman is very new to our church and our community, but he is much loved,” Roberts said.

During the years Immanuel has grown a great deal from the small building on the grounds where it was a fledgling mission to the current sanctuary, which holds 1,815.

Sunday will be a very special service that is scheduled to get underway at 10 a.m. followed by what Roberts termed as ‘Dinner on the Dirt’ or as some would commonly refer to as dinner on the grounds.

“We are expecting a good number of our former staff and others coming back for this service,” Roberts said. “Former pastors Joe Gwyn and Kevin Goza will speak as well as our current pastor.”

Also planned is some special music for the occasion.

“We will be taking a journey through some of the songs sung at the church,” Roberts said. “We are having some of our former choir members come back to sing with us as we have been working on this for a year now and have enlisted a lot of people in helping put all of this together.”

One of the members some would recognize is Pace’s Shaver Sasser.

Sasser recalls first attending and joining Immanuel when Rev. Chester Free was leading the church.

“A lot of determination has gone on into making Immanuel Baptist what it is today,” Sasser said. “Some of the founding members kept us on an even keel and did a lot of good and as time has gone on we have hit it lucky to grow as big as we have with some of the property we have acquired.

“There were some small problems, but it was nothing major as the determination of the members succeeded to build the church into what we have today.”

Former members as well as those who are looking for a church home are invited to join the special services on Sunday according to Roberts.

Pastors

Oct. 1957 to Aug. 1959 Rev. Henry Tatum

Sept. 1959 to Dec. 1960 Rev. Walter Hayes

Jan. 1961 to Jan. 1962 Rev. James Powell

Feb. 1962 to Nov. 1967 Rev. Chester Free

Dec. 1968 to Sept. 1974 Rev. J.B. Ansley

Sept. 1975 to Dec. 1979 Rev. W.J. Runnels

May 1980 to May 1992 Rev. J.P. Gwyn

Feb. 1993 to Feb. 1996 Rev. David L. Taylor

Dec. 1999 to Nov. 2007 Rev. Kevin Goza

June 2010 to present Rev. Ronnie Coleman