Salt Lake church marks 50th year
Activities at First Christian look back at past, celebrate
By Carrie A. Moore
Deseret Morning News, Saturday 29 October, 2005
Cliched references to "the good ol' days" are often pointed toward American life in the 1950s, the post-World War II baby boom exemplified in popular culture by June Cleaver, a socially connected, stay-at-home TV mom with two sons and whose suit-and-tie-clad husband went to work each morning and returned home each night to a dinner warmed by the children's daily exploits.
First Christian Reform ChurchThe cross on First Christian Reformed Church shows through the trees in a sea of white clouds and blue sky. But the founding members of First Christian Reformed Church in Salt Lake City don't necessarily remember life that way. As a small group of Dutch immigrants struggling to rebuild their lives after the war, they found themselves looking to God and each other for comfort and community. All came without the trappings of social or financial position, and some couldn't speak English.
Having scattered widely in the decades since then, they're gathering this weekend to celebrate the church's 50th anniversary, and to remember the myriad daily challenges and joys that bonded friends as family.
Betty Molenaar came from her most recent home in Canada to share, to celebrate and to participate in the church's old-fashioned hymn sing — an event she says exemplifies the best of what it means to be part of the Christian Reformed faith. "When we hold a hymn sing, we really sing! Everyone knows the words by heart."
Molenaar arrived in Salt Lake City with her husband and children in 1958, nearly three years after the church was founded on Oct. 30, 1955. "No one could enter the U.S. at the time without a sponsor," so they became members of the Christian Immigration Association in Holland, which arranged sponsorship through American churches who agreed to help get new immigrants settled.
She and her family were originally assigned to a church in Michigan, where a large community of Dutch immigrants had already welcomed numerous refugees. But two months before they were scheduled to immigrate, "we got the word we couldn't go because all the people there were being laid off from the auto industry."
. Alternate plans were made, and they found themselves in Salt Lake City as the first family to be sponsored by the new First Christian Reformed Church. "When we came here, all these people knew each other, and we didn't know a single soul." Even so, one family opened their home to Molenaar for four weeks, until Betty's husband was able to secure a job and they could move into an apartment.
As she was getting to know the other families, new immigrants continued to arrive, and "the women all had babies. You've never seen such a fast-growing church," she said, remembering how the new arrivals all clustered their new living quarters as close to the church as they could.
Margareth VanMinde and her family joined the group in 1960, after immigrating from her husband's homeland in Indonesia. Formerly a Dutch colony, the country had gained its independence, and rather than adopting Indonesian citizenship, the couple came to Salt Lake City, because Holland was closed to non-natives as it struggled to recover from the war.
VanMinde and Molenaar became fast friends, with their children quickly learning to call the other set of parents "Aunt" and "Uncle." "We had no relatives here, so our friends became our relatives," Molenaar explains. "We became family," and the ties continue, with VanMinde hosting Molenaar for a two-week stay during the church's celebration.
Though it began as something of a Dutch enclave, the church readily opened its arms to others who found themselves outside the mainstream in Utah. Cambodian refugees flocked to the church in the 1980s before forming their own Cambodian Christian Reformed Church.
American Indians joined early on, many of whom had come in contact with the faith via a missionary who worked on the reservation. They then attended a school for American Indians in Brigham City, and as they moved into the community, they sought out the church as a way of reconnecting with the familiar, according to Bill Heersink.
A faculty member at the Salt Lake Theological Seminary — which also grew out of a CRC ministry called the Utah Institute for Biblical Studies — Heersink has traced the denomination's roots in Utah to the early 20th century. Missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were finding great success in Holland during that time, he said, and many of the new converts came to Utah.
A majority of them settled in Weber County and the Ogden area, prompting a church official in Denver to send a pastor to Utah to minister to those who wanted to return to their former faith. They met in a Presbyterian church for a few years, but eventually, the group disbanded.
First Christian Reformed Church, 803 E. 900 South, provided the genesis for a rebirth of the faith in Utah when it was founded by Dutch immigrants in the mid-1950s.
Today, newer members are raising children among the older generation, sharing in the spirit of the original community and seeking to expand it in the context of 21st-century family life where both parents usually work, and time together is more limited.
Christie Oostema has family roots in the church but had never planned to stay until her husband came to the University of Utah for graduate school and they fell in love with the congregation. As with her mother before her, "this church had become our family," she said. It's a common sentiment among younger people, who come for school and end up finding a community they don't want to leave.
Many are so committed to the sense of belonging they have found that they have openly discussed moving closer to the church itself, and several have already done so, looking to re-create the sense of spiritual, emotional and geographic closeness that characterized the church at the outset. Small group dinners, a church softball team and choir, and the annual 150-mile bike ride for members all characterize the kinds of connection church members say makes friends become more akin to family.
Oostema serves on the church's governing board and said the congregation is also committed to its plan for expansion and renovation not only to provide space for a variety of members' ages and interests, but to provide space that can be used as something of a community center for the neighborhood in the 900 South 900 East area downtown.
So activities this weekend are not only looking to remember the past, but to celebrate the present and plan for the future through kicking off a $1.2 million fund-raising campaign to pay for the church's future expansion. They're welcoming all who want to join in, she said.
"We're talking about community in a broader context as well — the people we live near as well as those we work with, go to school with and interact with." Their vision of a community within an urban city has become a mirror of the "good ol' days," Oostema said, with a fully modern twist.
Church calendar
First Christian Reformed Church, 803 E. 900 South, will hold an open house today from 3 to 7 p.m., with a dinner buffet from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. and an old fashioned hymn sing at 8 p.m. A celebration service is scheduled Sunday at 10 a.m., with a luncheon at 11 a.m. and a hike at 12:30 p.m.
