The growing diversity at Hope Fellowship Church gives me great joy. It is an exciting and enticing preview of the great multitude of worshipers from every nation, tribe, people and language that John, the Revelator, saw in his vision.
Our diversity makes me hopeful that anyone can find a spiritual home in our church family.
It wasn’t always so.
My family immigrated to Canada in 1960 so that my dad could serve a Christian Reformed Church in Clinton. Every member of that church was a Dutch immigrant like us and evening services were still held in the Dutch language. No wonder that the community called us “the Dutch church.”
The five Christian Reformed churches that my dad served in Canada saw some diversification, mainly through marriages to “Canadians.” After his retirement, he led Bible studies and Sunday services in a Florida trailer park where they lived five months of the year. Dad would joke that his Florida flock was his most ecumenical church!
In the meantime, Marja and I became adoptive parents. We filled out forms that asked whether the child’s race mattered. “Of course, not,” we said. Today we celebrate God’s gifts of an African American older daughter and an Italian Jamaican younger daughter. My new son-in-law is from Puerto Rico and my youngest son-in-law is a blond, blue-eyed Dutch Canadian who is often mistaken for my son. Our three granddaughters sport a beautiful complexion that their pasty-white grandparents can only dream about! Given our multi-racial family, you can understand why we have always hoped for a church that is just as diverse. The CRC’s entrenched image as a Dutch church made that difficult. In our first church, for example, I was very discouraged when a new member from the community referred to her new church as the Dutch Reformed Church. “We’re not a Dutch Reformed Church,” I explained. “Sure you are,” she insisted. “It says so right on your church sign.” I had to physically drag her to the sign to convince her that it said First Christian Reformed Church of Orillia.
Our campus ministry years in London was an experience of diversity and ecumenicity as I worked with students and staff from every nation and denomination. When we returned to parish ministry in St. Catharines, I was happy to see more diversity. But it wasn’t until we came to Hope Fellowship and moved into our new building that we finally broke the colour barrier. Yes, we still have lots of Dutch names in our church directory and I’m thankful for every one that starts with a “Van” or ends with a “stra.” But the vision of a multi-racial, multi-national, multi-generational, multi-ability church has caught on, and today we are light years away from the immigrant church of my youth.
This Sunday we will celebrate our diversity with a colour guard of flags from many nations. We will also name all the nationalities represented in our congregation. I think we will be astonished by the variety. Next Saturday we will enjoy a Mosaic Potluck and enjoy favourite foods from our different cultures. These experiences fit well in the month that celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a world in which “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
The Christian Reformed denomination is still too white. But we’ve come a long way, baby. I hope that you are just as thrilled as this Dutch Canadian pastor is by the diversity and the unity in Christ that we are experiencing at Hope Fellowship Church.
- Pastor Peter
Our diversity makes me hopeful that anyone can find a spiritual home in our church family.
It wasn’t always so.
My family immigrated to Canada in 1960 so that my dad could serve a Christian Reformed Church in Clinton. Every member of that church was a Dutch immigrant like us and evening services were still held in the Dutch language. No wonder that the community called us “the Dutch church.”
The five Christian Reformed churches that my dad served in Canada saw some diversification, mainly through marriages to “Canadians.” After his retirement, he led Bible studies and Sunday services in a Florida trailer park where they lived five months of the year. Dad would joke that his Florida flock was his most ecumenical church!
In the meantime, Marja and I became adoptive parents. We filled out forms that asked whether the child’s race mattered. “Of course, not,” we said. Today we celebrate God’s gifts of an African American older daughter and an Italian Jamaican younger daughter. My new son-in-law is from Puerto Rico and my youngest son-in-law is a blond, blue-eyed Dutch Canadian who is often mistaken for my son. Our three granddaughters sport a beautiful complexion that their pasty-white grandparents can only dream about! Given our multi-racial family, you can understand why we have always hoped for a church that is just as diverse. The CRC’s entrenched image as a Dutch church made that difficult. In our first church, for example, I was very discouraged when a new member from the community referred to her new church as the Dutch Reformed Church. “We’re not a Dutch Reformed Church,” I explained. “Sure you are,” she insisted. “It says so right on your church sign.” I had to physically drag her to the sign to convince her that it said First Christian Reformed Church of Orillia.
Our campus ministry years in London was an experience of diversity and ecumenicity as I worked with students and staff from every nation and denomination. When we returned to parish ministry in St. Catharines, I was happy to see more diversity. But it wasn’t until we came to Hope Fellowship and moved into our new building that we finally broke the colour barrier. Yes, we still have lots of Dutch names in our church directory and I’m thankful for every one that starts with a “Van” or ends with a “stra.” But the vision of a multi-racial, multi-national, multi-generational, multi-ability church has caught on, and today we are light years away from the immigrant church of my youth.
This Sunday we will celebrate our diversity with a colour guard of flags from many nations. We will also name all the nationalities represented in our congregation. I think we will be astonished by the variety. Next Saturday we will enjoy a Mosaic Potluck and enjoy favourite foods from our different cultures. These experiences fit well in the month that celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a world in which “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
The Christian Reformed denomination is still too white. But we’ve come a long way, baby. I hope that you are just as thrilled as this Dutch Canadian pastor is by the diversity and the unity in Christ that we are experiencing at Hope Fellowship Church.
- Pastor Peter
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