W hen North Holland Reformed Church was founded in 1852, the idea was to give settlers in the northernmost Dutch settlement in Holland, Michigan, a worshiping body that was closer to their homesteads. For the first few years, hunters and farming families made their way on dirt paths through woods and brambles to worship in each others’ log cabins. Nearly 175 years later, North Holland is a vibrant worshiping community at the intersection of New Holland Street and 120th Avenue.
I live right next door, in a parsonage built in the late 1950s. As I look out my kitchen window past the softball diamond to the hayfield and surrounding woods, I’m struck by the ways the history of this place has seeped into my bones, even in the relatively short time I’ve been here. Ten years is, after all, a drop in the bucket compared to a dodransbicentennial. Or demisemiseptcentennial. Or whatever you want to call 175 years.
When I was a seminary student, shortly after my husband had been called as the 21st installed minister of North Holland Reformed Church, I wrote a paper about this congregation for my church history class. I sifted through old bulletins and consistory minutes, pictures and centennial and sesquicentennial booklets, and I interviewed Lorraine, one of the “senior saints” I had already grown very fond of. Lorraine “married into” the Brouwer clan, and therefore into the life of North Holland in the early ’50s. She remembers the 100th anniversary celebration in 1952. “What a time of excitement and hope! It was like a big family celebration,” she said.
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Sitting with Lorraine, hearing stories of potlucks, mission trips, and ministers’ foibles (everyone still fondly remembers when a seminary intern tripped down the stairs from the choir loft), I sensed a deep resonance in my spirit with this body of believers and their call to, as our vision statement puts it, “intentionally share the love of Jesus through compassion-filled hospitality.”
Hospitality animates our congregation; it always has, I think. That’s why, when it came time to propose a building project a few years ago, the congregation rallied together to raise money for an addition that would make our space more hospitable. Among other things, the 2018 addition cleared up the maze of entrances, offering one main door so visitors could easily find the sanctuary. It provided a new fellowship area and commercially certifiable kitchen that we use to bake pies for our annual booth at the county fair and for our annual Harvest Feast that provides a free Thanksgiving dinner to food insecure folks in our community. Sharing stories from the history of our congregation—pointing to clear moments where we as a people had made sacrifices in the name of hospitality—helped us make decisions that were in line with our long-held values.
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Our history as a group of pioneering homesteaders plays out over and again in the way we approach our life together. We’re a hard-working bunch, we North-Hollanders. When the church burned to the ground in the mid-1940s, just as World War II was coming to a close and building supplies were hard to come by, we worked together to raise the money and completed much of the building work ourselves. On November 28, 1946, the cornerstone of our current building was laid by Mr. Floyd Kraai, church member and local mason.
Just last summer, North Holland’s history of hospitality and stick-to-itiveness continued as we renovated our sanctuary-level bathrooms to be ADA compliant and moved walls to make the nursery entrance more visible to guests—almost all the work done in-house by congregants who volunteered their time and expertise. Plumbers plumbed; painters painted; kids gleefully (and under close supervision!) smashed down the old walls with sledgehammers.
I’m using a lot of “we” language as I narrate this history. That may seem strange, given that I’m no plumber or mason; I certainly wasn’t around in 1946, let alone the mid-1800s. Some current members can trace their family lineage back generations… but most cannot. How is it that I come to claim North Holland’s history as my own?
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. –Hebrews 11:8-10
Scripture has a lot to say about stories—and about belonging to our stories and remembering them. The well-known Hebrews 11 “hall of faith” passage is just one place in Scripture where God’s people are asked to remember their history as people living in faithful response to God. “By faith Abel… by faith Enoch… by faith Noah… by faith Abraham…” This list chronicles the story of how God has lived in relationship with his chosen people in the past, and that history spurs God’s people on toward an unknown future. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders” (Hebrews 12:1).
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And, while retelling this history mattered to those who saw themselves as familial descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the word was not just for those who could trace their bloodline back five or even fifty generations. The good news of the gospel is that, in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female… If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28-29, emphasis added).
We are a part of this great story for no other reason than because God, in his mercy, adopted us into it. This is God’s story; in Christ, it’s our story, too.
In my corner of God’s story that takes place at the intersection of New Holland and 120th, I look to the ways God has been faithful to these people through the generations, and I see myself as part of this congregation’s story. This isn’t because I’m the pastor’s spouse or that I’m ethnically Dutch; it’s not even because I’m fond of the people or we share common values. We are one because God, in his mercy, has called me and my family here to live out the Good News among these people at this time.
As my kids run around in our backyard / the church softball diamond, which sits on land donated by the Ebels family in the 1980s, as I remember my daughter taking her first steps in Jan and Dee Neinhuis’s living room, as I consider the tales of folks from 175 years ago whom I will not meet until I join them in glory—I am emboldened by remembering the stories of God’s faithfulness in the past. I see the through line to the story as I live in it today, and I, together with my fellow co-heirs of the promise at North Holland Reformed Church, look to the future in hope. Even as we remember, “we look forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10).
My daughter, Ada, monitors the building progress from the parsonage yard (summer 2017).
Katlyn DeVries
Rev. Dr. Katlyn DeVries lives in Holland, Michigan, where she worships at North Holland Reformed Church and works at Western Theological Seminary. She currently serves as the moderator for the Reformed Church in America’s Commission on History.
