Sea to Sea Tour Remembers Pastor

. —Sea to Sea participants will pay special tribute to Rev. Mark Van’t Hof today on the tour’s last day in Michigan.

The 47-year-old pastor of Grosse Pointe Park Christian Reformed Church near Detroit would have loved to join the Sea to Sea Bike Tour but felt he couldn’t spare the time from his work. Instead, he supported the rides of others. In February he died suddenly of a heart attack.  

His wife Marcia and six-year-old son Braden attended Tuesday night’s “peloton” meeting—normally a time when all the cyclists and support crew members gather to share their experiences on the tour and find out necessary information about what’s ahead.

Tuesday’s peloton was different.

Marcia Van’t Hof shared her late husband’s heart for the poor and passion for the tour.   His passion for Christian social justice began when he grew up in urban Grand Rapids. His family, Christian school, and church resisted “white flight,” she said. They changed in order to meet the changing needs around them. When he was a pastor in Kalamazoo and Denver, he became an advocate for the Deacons’ Conferences there and developed strong, supportive relationships with their leaders. In Grosse Pointe, Mark struck up friendly relationships with transients and sometimes gave them his own money, she said.

“He really wanted the relationships not to include handouts, so he avoided taking cash to church. But he commented to me, ‘Yet, when I actually have money, God almost always sends me some one.’

 “I hope the extra attention Mark’s passing has brought to Sea to Sea will be an affirmation of the wonderful thing you are doing,” Marcia told the 220 tour participants. “And I hope you will also be affirmed in whatever work you do in the future to end the cycle of poverty. Maybe this tour will be the flashiest thing you ever do to work for social justice. Maybe you will be like Mark once the tour is finished, working quietly behind the scenes, often in one-on-one ways. I hope you will feel affirmed in your quiet contributions. Maybe others in this group will go on to end the cycle of poverty in ever more high-profile ways. In either case, may you be affirmed.”

Josh Nyenhuis, 29, a cyclist and member of Grosse Point Park CRC, originally signed up to ride the two-week eastern leg of the tour. He told the group that Van’t Hof was a strong supporter of his and, two weeks before he died, he told Nyenhuis he had hoped to ride three weeks from Denver to Grand Rapids.

“Sometimes we question the way God works in our lives, but Mark was one of those people that really made God apparent,” said Nyenhuis, who subsequently extended his ride by starting in Denver.

Earlier this year, Nyenhuis received overwhelming response to an e-mail he sent to his fellow cyclists before the tour began asking if anyone would be interested in riding Van’t Hof’s recumbent bike in the tour.

He ended up connecting with Mark Deckinga, 50, of Kokamo, Ind., who was signed up to ride the same three weeks that Van’t Hof had hoped to.

“Right then I knew that God wanted that bike on the tour.”

In lieu of flowers, the Van’t Hofs requested donations to support Sea to Sea.

Len Riemersma, Sea to Sea chaplain and fellow pastor in Classis Lake Erie (a regional group of congregations), shared at the peloton meeting how Van’t Hof’s work on a classical committee made his ride more financially feasible.

About a half dozen cyclists from Grosse Pointe Park CRC are planning to join the Sea to Sea riders today for the 20 mile trek from Richmond to Marine City, Mich., where the tour will cross into Canada by ferry.

Tour notes:

Friends and family who may wish to cross with the Sea to Sea tour by ferry into Canada on Wednesday are asked to do so separately to expedite the customs procedure. “Do not say you are with the tour because your names won’t be on our list and it will just confuse the process,” says Ed Witvoet, tour operations and logistics manager.

The last few miles/kilometers on both Thursday’s and Friday’s rides into London and Hamilton, respectively, have been changed slightly. Please refer to the web site www.SeatoSea.org for the latest update.