Loan Fund Helps the Old and the New

Laurie Vonk watched as the 19th-century church at which she has been a longtime member was razed and a new place of worship went up in the small, rural community of Forest Grove, Mich.

“We didn’t want to see the old church go down, but the way it has all turned out has been a huge blessing,” said Vonk, who lives next door to Forest Grove Christian Reformed Church.

“The new building is so much more hospitable. Our old church was not really conducive to growth,” said Vonk.

Meanwhile, Pastor Rick Ebbers was delighted to see the new space for The Journey CRC take shape in a large office building along a main thoroughfare in the city of Longmont, Colo.

“This is not your average church,” said Ebbers. “We’re in a classic cinderblock building. But it is nice and solid and fits all of our needs.”

Both of the new churches, which opened their facilities this year, raised finances for construction. But they also received support from the Christian Reformed Church Loan Fund.

“It was an awesome experience to work with the Loan Fund,” said Ebbers, whose church took out a mortgage from the fund to help finance its project. It also held its own capital campaign.

“The Loan Fund helped to make it possible for us to move into a new church that is so much better for us than where we worshiped before,” he said.

Besides the churches in Michigan and Colorado, the Loan Fund worked with churches in Texas and Rhode Island in 2015. Also in 2015, it saw continued steady borrowing and closed new loans totaling $1.2 million, said David Veen, executive director of the fund.

“The Loan Fund remains in a record-high liquidity position and is actively seeking new loan relationships with U.S. churches,” said Veen.

“We are prepared to assist churches with the purchase, construction, remodel, or refinance of church properties.”

In some ways, the church in West Michigan and the one Colorado that have sprung to life with help from the Loan Fund are on different ends of the spectrum of church life in the CRC.

The Forest Grove church in Michigan has had a long and traditional history, founded by Dutch families with strong ties to the denomination, while The Journey congregation in Colorado is a church plant with a membership made up largely of people from other than a CRC background.

In Forest Grove, the structure itself was built in 1872 and dedicated as the First Reformed Church of Jamestown, according to a history of Forest Grove CRC.

The church became the Reformed Church of Forest Grove in 1932 and was sold to the newly established Forest Grove CRC in 1971.

Forest Grove CRC grew in its early years, but it began to struggle and the congregation held an important vote on Oct. 19, 2010, says the church history,

“We had had a number of challenges and difficulties and the church decided to ask members if we wanted to close,” said Vonk.

But nearly 80 percent of the people voted to keep the doors open and continue doing ministry in this community of rolling farmland about 15 miles west of Holland.

Hence, the future of Forest Grove took the shape of a new, more hospitable church building, said Rev. Jeffery Scripps, the pastor who was called to the congregation not long after the members decided to stay.

“This new church represents an air of optimism, of God doing a new thing,” he said. “This building will aid our ministries in so many ways.”

The new structure blends the old with the new, said Vonk. They refurbished the wooden pews, installed stained-glass windows from the old building, and built a bell tower to house the historic bell that rings on Sundays to call people to worship.

The new building even uses a door from the old one as part of a movable mailbox in the spacious lobby and has repurposed a large wooden cross to go above the entry to the new sanctuary, said Vonk.

“The church here has gone through some hard times, and it was a tough year meeting in a building across the street while this church was being built,” she said. “But this new church has brought us back together.”

Vonk added that a generous donor helped to pay for the new church through a matching grant and has put up another matching grant to help pay it off, which should happen soon.

Located about 35 miles northwest of Denver, Longmont sits in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. With a population of about 89,000 people, the city is home to high-tech companies, government agencies, and a fast-growing brewery industry.

In the midst of this, The Journey Church began as a Christian Reformed church plant about 15 years ago. The church was formally organized in 2007.

“We have about 110 to 120 adults for services on Sunday,” said Rick Ebbers. “Maybe 25 or so are from a CRC or a RCA background. The rest are ex-Catholics, Methodists, the Vineyard. We absolutely have a wide range of people.”

Before moving into the new building, The Journey rented space in another office building, part of which housed a car collection.

The former space was cramped and had low ceilings, winding hallways, and classrooms without windows. A small lobby served as their fellowship area.

“The sanctuary was long and narrow, and the acoustics were awful,” said Ebbers. “We spent 10 years trying to make it sound better.”

At the same time, he said, that space “helped us do ministry, especially through the recession, and the rent was fairly reasonable for us.”

But they couldn’t make the improvements they needed to accommodate their ministry and eventually decided to buy part of an office building next to the local community college.

While receiving help from the Loan Fund and holding the capital campaign to refurbish the space, church members and other volunteers did about 25 percent of the work. They ripped out walls, finished floors, painted walls and ceilings, and built a new stage for worship.

They have eliminated winding hallways, the classrooms all have windows, and the nursery and kitchen spaces meet their needs.

In addition, the facility has room available for one of their community ministries, which is to offer an emergency shelter for homeless people.

“This location has met all of our criteria,” said Ebbers. “We had a grand opening, and, after four weeks or so, this new space has felt more like home than the other one did in all of those years.”