Cornerstone Prison Church Celebrates 20 Years

Cornerstone Prison Church, a CRC congregation inside the walls of South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, S.D., is celebrating 20 years of ministry this year.

At their annual banquet on April 7, supporters, volunteers, past members, and pastors who have led the church over the years came together at Trinity CRC in Rock Valley, Iowa, to mark the anniversary and to celebrate God’s faithfulness to Cornerstone Prison Church.

Cornerstone began as a weekly Bible study led by volunteers, and it grew to become a church plant. In 2005 the congregation called their first pastor, Stephen Moerman. The church continued to grow, and it became a fully organized Christian Reformed congregation in 2013, with council members inside and outside the prison walls and a board to provide guidance. Moerman was followed as pastor by Rick Van Ravenswaay in 2014, Douglas De Groot in 2015, and Scott Van Voorst, who has served since 2021. All four pastors joined the 20th-anniversary celebration either live or virtually to share memories and reconnect with members and volunteers.

Van Voorst drew from Lamentations 3:22-23 as the theme for the banquet, reflecting on God’s love, compassion, and faithfulness. “Cornerstone has been through many changes and challenges but continues to see God’s faithfulness in the transformed lives of people who are blessed by the ministry,” he said. 

The church’s worship leader, Cory Grim, whose 10 years with the ministry have overlapped with three of the four pastors’ tenures in the church’s history, shared how he has seen God’s provision in the various gifts and personalities of the pastors and through different seasons of ministry within the prison. Another guest speaker was a former inmate, who testified about his experience of God’s faithfulness while he was incarcerated and since his release.

Another part of the 20th-anniversary celebration will take place during Cornerstone’s Faith Fellowship Weekend. This annual ministry event within the prison invites the men to come to the chapel for several days of worship, learning, and small-group time. This year, the theme will pick up on the faithfulness of God (Lam. 3:23), and the church has invited individuals who have been involved in prison ministry over the years to lead talks, offering testimonies of God’s great faithfulness.

Gord and Jean Dyk have served with Cornerstone for 10 years. Jean is the office manager and secretary for the church, and Gord helps Van Voorst with Bible studies, one-on-one visits, and background details for the worship services. 

Gord Dyk said that he and Van Voorst are usually at the prison facility four or five days each week. “We have Bible study on Monday afternoons. We typically get about 60 guys coming for Bible study,” he explained, adding that on Tuesday nights a Bible study in another building on the prison campus draws an additional 30 men, which maxes out the room’s capacity. “And for our Friday-night worship services,” he said, “we’ve been getting about 120 guys.” The prison holds about 800 prisoners, he noted. The chapel facility used for the Friday services has seating for 200.

In their decade of serving with Cornerstone, the Dyks said, they have seen a change in the culture of the prison. “There are men who are hungry for the Word,” said Jean Dyk. 

Marlin Van Ruler has been serving with the ministry almost since its beginning 20 years ago. “To start with,” he recalled, “my wife started going first, and she got me involved in it.” 

“We have converts every year,” Van Ruler said. They may not see men becoming believers every week or every month, he added, but it happens frequently. As new inmates arrive and others finish their time at the facility, the congregation changes. And for many who have found faith in Christ during their time there, “they take it to their families, and their families become Christians too,” said Van Ruler. “It’s a very worthwhile ministry.”

Cornerstone faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Gord Dyk, since the church was without a pastor at the time – and only one staff member, Dyk himself, was allowed into the facility to serve the church. After lockdowns eased, and the church could hold services again, the number of participants increased. 

“We used to have around 50-70 attending,” said Van Ruler, “and the last little while it’s been 100-125.” He suggested that the change may be partly because inmates are experiencing stricter rules and less recreation time – and a church service gives them a chance to leave their cell. “And I’m sure that inmates are passing the word along that it’s vibrant in the church and it’s a good place to be,” he said.

While the ministry is growing in terms of how many men attend the Bible studies and services, a concern for the church leaders and volunteers is that fewer new people on the outside are signing up lately to serve as volunteers. “We have quite a number of volunteers who help out, but they’re all getting older,” said Gord Dyk. 

He described one volunteer who faithfully attended Cornerstone’s Friday services for years, but when pandemic restrictions closed outside access, volunteers were no longer allowed into the facility. Now in his nineties, that volunteer recently filled out the necessary paperwork to access the prison for “one last visit” with members he has stayed in touch with and members he has prayed with over the years as part of the church’s prayer ministry. 

Dyk explained that this volunteer got started in prison ministry because during a church service one Sunday he had heard a call for volunteers to take an inmate to a church service. “He had hesitated, he said, and then his hand went up in the air. He had no idea that was going to happen,” said Dyk, “and that’s how he got started.” Recalling that story, Jean Dyk added, “We need the Spirit to move in more of our younger people to want to be part of this.”

Van Ruler is convinced that the Lord will provide new people to serve, just as God has been faithful to provide in other areas for the life of the ministry. Looking back over his years there, he mused that one thing that has made an impression on him is “probably the number of people that have said, ‘If I wasn’t here, I’d have been dead by now’ – and they’ve come to know the Lord.”