Archivist Shares Treasures from CRC’s History

Not long ago, Richard Harms received a request from someone who wanted to know about the first airplane purchased by Christian Reformed World Missions in Nigeria.

Harms, who will retire next April as archivist of the Christian Reformed Church, went right to work, digging through various files, including minutes of meetings and a range of letters.

“I was able to put the story together and learned several things,” said Harms while leading a tour of the CRC archives, located in a temperature-controlled section of Heritage Hall in the Hekman Library at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.

“I learned that World Missions bought the plane—a Cessna 170—in 1959 for $5,640 from the Sudan Interior Mission,” said Harms. “It had a completely rebuilt motor, so it was good for 100,000 hours.”

This kind of research has been one of the joys of his job, said Harms. People call and want information. And often he can find it. But not always.

He recalls a time when he got a frantic call from someone on a Friday afternoon asking him to track down the baptism certificate of a man who was getting married the next day in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City.

“Apparently they have a rule that you can get married in the cathedral only if you are a Christian,” said Harms.

“We didn’t have his baptismal record, but I gave them the name of the minister who was at the church where they were members at the time and who probably did the baptism,” he said. “I gave them his phone number, and hopefully he was able to help. I never heard back.”

Harms does, however, have a baptismal certificate story that he knows had a happy ending. He recalls how a church elder called, explaining that he was visiting with a woman who was dying. The woman was very anxious; she wasn’t sure if she had ever been baptized.

“I was able to find [the evidence], make a copy, and send it to the elder, who could assure the woman that she had been baptized,” said Harms.

“Experiences like that remind me that there is a tremendous amount of grace in the world. I see how people in our churches are working very hard to help one another.”

Born in the Netherlands, Harms and his family moved to the United States when he was a child. He attended Christian schools in the Grand Rapids area and earned his undergraduate degree in history from Calvin College, his master’s degree in history from Western Michigan University, and his doctorate from Michigan State University.

Harms came to the denominational archives, which also include the archives of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary, in 1998 after working for several years as the assistant historian for the city of Grand Rapids. Among his early projects at the archives was the processing of the papers of former U.S. Congressman Paul Henry, who taught political science at Calvin College from 1970 to 1978.

“I also took care of the backlog and additions to the collections of other manuscripts and increased the opportunities for people to do research,” said Harms. “We were eventually able to expand the archives and to put in a much larger reading room.”

Harms and the archives staff have created and built up databases, such as a computerized database containing information on and photos of CRC ministers. They have compiled historical information on many CRC congregations, including minutes of church council meetings that are not open to the public until 100 years after they are written.

As part of his archivist role, Harms has attended the CRC synod every summer to keep the denomination informed of the archives’ work, and over the years he has helped the archives obtain and catalog a large collection of information on Dutch CRC immigration to North America.

“For instance, we have lists of Dutch immigrants who came to the U.S. and especially to Canada after World War II. You can see where certain individuals came from, who helped them, and where they ended up. The information is now available online, and genealogists especially find this helpful.”

The archives also contain the papers of such church leaders as Rev. Henry Beets, long-time editor of The Banner who served as the first stated clerk of the CRC and as the pastor of LaGrave Avenue CRC in Grand Rapids.

In addition, the archives have the papers of Albertus Van Raalte, a minister who left the Netherlands with a group seeking a better life and who established a “colony” in what is now Holland, Mich. Out of this group came some of the first CRC congregations.

Currently, the archives are working to compile and organize the papers of Vern Ehlers, a former Calvin College physics professor and longtime U.S. Congressman.

Walking along an aisle of the CRC archives, Harms reflected on the love he has for history, a love that goes back many years. It is a field of study that tells the stories of people, their joys, their struggles, and their amazing similarities, he said.

There are files in the archives that tell the stories of ministers who lost their jobs under difficult circumstances, of marriages and funerals, of churches that grew and prospered but then, for various reasons, died.

The archives also contain thousands of photos, such as a photo of the delegates to the first CRC synod held in Grand Rapids in 1881.

“History tells us where we have been. We need to know that in order to know why we are where we are and directions to go,” said Harms.

“Understanding things doesn’t make them good or bad, but history helps us understand why things happened a certain way.”

As he looked at files stored in the room, Harms said that working with them, and learning about people by seeing how they act and react to life’s circumstances, has taught him significant lessons.

“The older I get, when I look back, I see that the church is about dealing with people,” he said. “People have all sorts of problems, but the church goes on because of grace. I see this greater Spirit at work.”