History
One of Coffin’s first actions was to convince MAPC’s leadership to abandon the system of pew rentals, by which churches of the day financed their ministries, in favor of a new concept of church finance, the annual pledge. Coffin knew that so long as the pew rentals remained, the church would not be able to reach out to any but the affluent, and his vision was for a more inclusive and diverse congregation ministering together on the Upper East Side. With pew rentals abolished, an aggressive program of ministry was initiated to those living in the tenement cold water flats to the east of the church building. Dr. Coffin and members of his staff began ringing doorbells of the tenement dwellers who then occupied much of the East Side beyond the 3rd Avenue Elevated line, sending a church wagon through the streets on Sunday mornings to gather up children and those for whom the walk would be a deterrent. Dr. Coffin had one inflexible rule: families could send their children to Sunday school for only three weeks. Thereafter, they must accompany them, or their children were no longer welcome. He knew well who shaped the faith of children and was insistent on ministering to the parents as well as their children.
Within five years, the proliferation of activities for parents and the growing church school population meant that the three-storied Phillips Church House building, which had been incorporated into the new sanctuary structure, was no longer sufficient to meet the church’s needs for program space. In 1910, Mr. Coffin’s college roommate, Edward S. Harkness, purchased and gave to the church a three-storied carriage house adjacent to the
sanctuary on Madison Avenue. He also gave funds to convert the building into rooms for classes, meetings, offices, as well as a gym. Here the church held a variety of classes to meet the needs of the women, men, boys and girls in the community around them—language, parenting, cooking, sewing, household management and job training—as well as traditional religious education. In 1911, Coffin’s vision became a solid reality; the people of the Good Will Chapel were fully incorporated into the membership of MAPC and the chapel closed.
The new Church House was soon bursting at the seams. Once again, through the generosity of Mr. Harkness, resources were given to provide a much needed, larger, eleven story Church House building, which was erected on the site of the former carriage house and dedicated in 1917. Now there was even more space for classes, meetings, club activities, offices, as well as a two gyms—one for boys and the other for girls— two bowling alleys, residences for an outreach staff, a covered roof garden with projector, and a swimming pool. In an age when swimming pools and such were scarce in New York City, these were opened to people of the community whether or not they were members of this or any church. The tallest structure on the Upper East Side, it was known as “a beacon of light” and a center of life and ministry for both the congregation and the community at large. In giving the building, Mr. Harkness stipulated that when the building was not being used for church purposes, it should be used to serve needs of the larger community, and so it has, to this very day. The building currently houses not only offices for the church’s pastoral and administrative staff, but also its nursery school, three staff residences, one full gym and another smaller recreational space, both of which are being used by independent schools in the area for their physical education programs. In addition, a feeding program for men and women and two shelters for homeless men are operated by the church out of this building, attesting to the fact that the Coffin and Harkness vision and legacy of ministry in and to the people of the city continues in the twenty-first century.
Help to others was not limited to New Yorkers. Early on, MAPC sponsored American missionaries in China and other lands. In World War I the church gladly opened its facilities to troops passing through the city while also providing clothing and medical supplies for the war effort, including the gift of an ambulance to France. By the 1920s, stewardship at MAPC had nearly reached a fifty-fifty split between the operating and mission budgets of the church, though Dr. Coffin was still only accepting one dollar a year in salary.
