Lecture Celebrates Urban Ministry

John Algera, a pastor in Paterson, N.J., along with David Beelen and Emmett Harrison, pastors in Grand Rapids, Mich., told stories earlier this year about their decades of doing work as urban ministers in the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

The three spoke as part of the inaugural Tony Van Zanten Urban Ministry Lecture, titled “Have You Heard of the City?”, at Calvin Theological Seminary.

VanZanten served for several decades as the director of Roseland Christian Ministries in Chicago, Ill. His ministry touched the lives of many people and paved the way for the Christian Reformed Church to reintroduce the gospel message and Reformed theology to the heart of the city.

Algera, Beelen and Harrison each sketched the ways in which Van Zanten helped to touch and shape their work. Their lecture also allowed people to think about the future of urban ministry.

“This lecture was the inaugural event and we hope it will become an annual opportunity,” said Jul Medenblik, president of Calvin Theological Seminary. 

The event itself, he said, gave people an opportunity “to ask what is God doing for the future …. To listen to what God has in store and to think about urban ministry.”

Roseland Christian Ministries

Van Zanten was an urban pioneer for the CRC. He first served as pastor at Madison Avenue CRC in Paterson, New Jersey from 1965-1976, helping to shepherd the congregation through several significant cultural shifts.

He later moved to Chicago to serve as director of Roseland Christian Ministries. During his tenure, he helped the ministry to expand into a 23,000-square-foot former car dealership that had housed the Back to God Ministries International headquarters and then the Christian World Relief Committee (now World Renew).

Over time, Roseland included a shelter for the homeless, job training, legal aid and a drop-in center, among other things. Ministry there was hard and full of daily ups and downs, but it was satisfying and showed that the CRC had a place in the heart of the city.

“This truth is self-evident,” said Van Zanten in an interview for the book Flourishing in the Land. “To be CRC, urban, and black, is not a contradiction. I really believe that there is a cadence, and a really good beat to all of the work that we are doing down here.”

Van Zan Zanten, who was raised on a farm in Iowa, attended the lecture at Calvin Theological Seminary with his wife, Donna.

John Algera

Algera grew up in the Paterson, N.J., area. and attended Prospect Park CRC, not all that far from Madison Ave. But he didn't meet Van Zanten until he was attending Calvin Seminary and Van Zanten was by then serving at Roseland. Nonetheless, Van Zanten became an enduring influence and gave him an idea of how important is it for the church to be rooted in the city.

In fact, after graduating from Calvin Theological Seminary, Algera took a call to Madison Ave. and stayed there for more than 40 years, only retiring a year ago. In many ways the ministry that Van Zanten helped to begin, Algera helped to expand and flourish.

“Tony taught us the importance of being present to our neighbors,” he said. “The city is a very diverse place …. It is a place where we come to pray, where we come to hear the truth of God in every area of life and in the lives of all of the people.”

In it is in the city, he said, that beauty abides right next to struggle and sorrow and Van Zanten preached and spoke and taught others about that in Paterson and then in his many years in Chicago. 

“The city is where we are called to make deep disciples — and that includes us,” said Algera. “That means we are called to deal with ourselves. Often we don’t want to go below the iceberg of ourselves.”

But prayer helps us to do that, he said, to go deeper and to see how we share a common world and humanity — and that helps us to be of ,ore value to others. Prayer also opens us to what we might not normally see.

“We see how God is  present in a huge way in the city — in the flowers coming out of the cracks in the sidewalk, in a brilliant orange sunset,” said Algera.

Madison Square CRC

Dave Beelen, the long-time pastor of Madison Square CRC, now a multi-site congregation in West Michigan, said he clearly recalls Van Zanten teaching Sunday school at First CRC in Grand Rapids, the church at which Beleen’s father, Marvin, was pastor.

Van Zanten was finishing school at Calvin Seminary at the time. Sporting dark black hair and with lively eyes and an engaging manner, Van Zanten would stand in front of the room, writing excitedly on the board. He was eager to teach the young people what he knew.

“Tony loved theology and taught us about the providence of God,” said Beelen. “He taught us that even when we think things aren’t going well, it doesn’t matter. Wherever God sends us will turn to good because he loves us.”

Inspired by the ministry of his father, who was a passionate advocate for racial reconciliation, and of the work of Van Zanten,  Beelen stayed in the city after graduating from Calvin Seminary. Early on, he partnered with Dante Venegas, one of the first African American pastors in the CRC, to help move Madison Square CRC from its status of a chapel to an organized church. It became a thriving, multi-racial congregation.

In addition, Madison Square has been  one of the first CRC congregations to open itself to the leadership gifts of women, and the church, having learned from its own internal efforts,  has worked hard to help lead other congregations toward racial reconciliation.

Madison  Square now has three locations, including the main campus and two others.

Meanwhile the church is working with a local nonprofit organization to redevelop the building that was the original home of Grand Rapids Christian High School—creating both worship space and contributing to affordable housing in the community.

“The building is more than 70,000 square feet and we are raising funds to rehabilitate it,” said Beelen. “We continue to figure out how to do this in the city. We are looking at what God does with little seeds that get planted.”

Emmett Harrison

Now senior pastor of Oakdale Park CRC in Grand Rapids, Emmett Harrison served as a part time pastor and was selling insurance to supplement his income when he passed by the large Roseland Ministry Center in the 1980s and dropped in to see if he could sell them a policy.

He learned that the building was busy with activity and various kinds of ministry, but he would need to talk with Tony Van Zanten about the matter of insurance.

“I made an appointment to see him. When we met, I introduced myself and got right down to business,” said Harrison at the lecture. “Tony listened to all that I had to say. When I finished, he told me that they were self insured.”

But the meeting didn’t end there. Van Zanten filled him in on his ministry and the vision for Roseland. “He shared the dream of why God sent him to the area in which so many other CRC churches had fled.”

Van Zanten told Harrison he was there to raise up leaders who were from the area. Harrison had a leaning toward full-time ministry, but had not met a mentor, someone who could teach him and help to form him into a pastor who served the city.

“Selling insurance was killing me. I needed a change and I sensed that Tony could help expand my horizons and take me to places that I’d never been,” said Harrison, adding that he jumped right in to learn from Van Zanten.

“He taught me about the Reformed faith. He became my friend and mentor. He showed me how to love the people in the city.”

Harrison ended up serving for five years at Roseland before answering the call to serve for more than 20 years at a CRC congregation in Cleveland, Ohio. He came to Oakdale Park in  2012 and has found ways to help expand its ministry in the city. One of them is to partner with refugees from Rwanda who have joined Oakdale in its work.  “Tony made is possible for me to be a pastor in the CRC and I am forever grateful,” Harrison said.

The Intensity of a Pioneer

Reggie Smith, director of the CRC’s Office of Race Relations and its Office of Social Justice, said he is hopeful that the first lecture in honor of Van Zanten can lead to many more and can continue to feature those leaders, especially those of color, who have committed themselves to ministry in the city.

But beyond that, he applauded the choice to honor Van Zanten with this series. “Tony symbolizes the work of the CRC during that time of the 1960s and into the 1970s,” he said. “He was an example of the justice-minded and racially enlightened seminarians who were starting in ministry. He began his work at a time of ferment when the CRC was at war with itself over race.”

Roseland was among those ministries that saw a need to reach out beyond the Sunday service and address issues such as poverty, violence, inequity in education, and lack of affordable housing in inner cities. Madison Avenue in Paterson and Madison Square in Grand Rapids were also churches that ran into instead of fleeing from the cities and all of their challenges.

Smith said he especially supports the lecture series because he knows Van Zanten. Smith grew up at Lawndale CRC and his church and Roseland gathered for many services, events and other times.

One of the things that sticks in his mind is the softball league in which Lawdale played Roseland. Van Zanten was on the Roseland team. And he played with purpose. He was a presence on the field. 

“Roseland was our arch enemy and those games were pretty intense. I remember Tony out there running around the field and slinging the bat ....

“Here was a guy from Iowa who was playing softball with us. Here was a guy  who got involved in the city …. Tony is one of those who raised the profile and showed us that ministry is still viable in the city.”

A video of the inaugural Van Zanten lecture was recently made available. Watch it here.