The Covell Avenue NRC of Grand Rapids, Michigan (1)

Six years after the present First NRC (Crescent Avenue) was organized, a small group of people, dissatisfied with existing Reformed churches, began to meet together in 1876 in a rented storefront building on Bridge Street, the west side of Grand Rapids, for the purpose of holding worship services where sermons of forefathers would be read. Most of the adults originated from the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands, and had attended the ministries of the Reverends L. G. C. Ledeboer, P. Van Dyke, and D. Bakker.

From 1876 to 1883, services were conducted under the superintendency of a committee, which appointed two men to read sermons at the two Sunday worship gatherings. From 1883 to 1887, both services were led by the gifted, God-fearing Marinus Donker, who also catechized the children. By 1887 the group had increased sufficiently to warrant the calling of a minister. Upon recommendation of friends, they contacted Rev. Teunis Meijster of Haarlem, the Netherlands, who had temporarily settled in Rochester, New York. After preaching for them a few times, he accepted their call in October, 1887, and pastored them for nearly three years.

1887-1890: Rev. Teunis Meijster (1835-1890)

Teunis Meijster was born in 1835 in Schiedam, the Netherlands. It appears that no historical details about his conversion are known. He became a candidate for the ministry in 1873 at the age of thirty-eight and was called by three congregations. He accepted the pastoral call of Meliskerke, but did not pass his classical exam.

Trials and conflicts pursued Teunis Meijster throughout life. After being rejected by Classis, he became an exhorter in Zeist. In 1875 he was ordained as an Article 8 minister1 in the Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk, the old secessionist Christian Reformed Church. In 1877 Rev. Meijster accepted a call to Maasluis, and in 1880, to Haarlem. After three years at Haarlem, his wife died; he was left a widower at the age of forty-eight. The following year he was deposed from the Christian Reformed Church, probably for improper conduct. As a lonely man, bereft of his spouse and a flock to shepherd, he moved to Rotterdam. Shortly thereafter he moved back to Haarlem where it appears he served a small, independent congregation for a brief time.

From Haarlem Rev. Meijster set sail for North America with his children.2 They arrived in Rochester, New York on September 1 7, 1887. Less than two weeks later, the Donker-led Grand Rapids group invited Rev. Meijster to preach for them. He arrived on October 16, 1887. Despite some reservations about his background and why he came to America without a pastoral charge, a call was issued to him a few weeks later during a group meeting at which he was present. Rev. Meijster accepted the call and was installed in December, 1887 by two elders.

Several weeks prior to Rev. Meijster’s installation, an important meeting was held at which time a decision was made by the group to organize as a congregation and a new church building was purchased. Marinus Donker and Marinus de Winter were chosen as elders; Jan Jansen, Marinus Bliek, and James De Meester, as deacons. The Turner Avenue No. 6 Schoolhouse was purchased from the City of Grand Rapids for $2,600 as a new place of worship to serve the growing group.

Prior to completing the remodeling of the new building to accomodate a seating capacity of six hundred, the congregation was officially organized on December 10, 1887 in a special service led by Rev. Meijster. The following official charter, drafted for the purpose of inaugurating the congregation, was signed that evening by thirty-four male members:

In obedience to the Word of God, the undersigned, being wholeheartedly committed to the Reformed confession, desire to unite into a congregation on the basis of this confession.

To this end they declare God’s holy and everlasting Word, the doctrinal standards and liturgy of the Reformed churches, and the Church Order of Dort (1618-1619), to express their confession, and reject everything at variance with them.

Whereas they desire to stand on this foundation and to live and die with this truth, they can and may accept no other name than that which the church of God has always borne, namely, Gereformeerde [Reformed]. Since they have been brought together from various congregations in the Netherlands, for the sake of distinguishing it from other Reformed denominations, they add to this name as follows: Nederduitsch Gereformeerde Kerk [now: Netherlands Reformed Church].

Simultaneously, in prayerful submission to the blessed Head of the church, they bind themselves by their signature to deport and conduct themselves in conformity to this confession, so that the name of the Lord may be glorified and that also here (in America) His church may be established to His praise in the earth.3

May the Spirit of the Lord guide and lead us so that our beginning may be in the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Done the tenth of December, eighteen hundred eighty-seven at Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The congregation experienced some growth under Rev. Meijster’s ministry. In the summer of 1888 a parsonage was erected for the minister and his children on the south side of the church for $1,200. Two years later, in the summer of 1890, Rev. Meijster developed a serious illness. He passed away on August 2 of that year at the age of fifty-five.

After the death of Rev. Meijster, the Turner Avenue congregation was vacant for three years. On July 30, 1893 they received their second minister, Rev. Kasper Werner, of Leiden, the Netherlands, who would serve them for the last months of his life.

1893-1894: Rev. Kasper Werner (1843-1894)

Kasper Werner first became an exhorter in the Doleantie churches by the appointment of Classis Middelburg in 1888. In October, 1889 he received a pastoral call from Leiden, the Netherlands.4 He accepted the call, was ordained there, and pastored this flock for four years.

Rev. Werner received a call from Rijssen-Wal during his Leiden pastorate. After much struggle he declined, but lived to regret it. He felt he had been disobedient to the calling of God. When he received a call from the Turner Avenue church, he felt he had to accept this call as a divine chastisement for disobeying God.

Rev. Werner left for America July 12, 1893. He arrived in Grand Rapids on July 30 to face disarray in the congregation. Dissatisfaction had arisen with regard to the hasty installation of Rev. Meijster; in fact, the proper organization of the congregation was called into question. Two days after Rev. Werner’s arrival, a meeting was held under the leadership of Rev. Titus Hager (then in Paterson, New Jersey) and two elders of the Grand Rapids Division Avenue congregation. The result was that Rev. Meijster’s ordination was deemed illegal and the consistory was dissolved. Free elections were held for the offices of elder and deacon. Some of the previous officebearers were elected again; others were newly elected. Rev. Werner installed Marinus Donker, Marinus de Winter, and Cornelius Oudersluis as elders; James De Meester, Jasper Wieland, and Arie Vander Male, as deacons. Rev. Werner himself was then installed by two of the elders.

Rev. Werner was not as gifted a speaker as was Rev. Meijster. Nevertheless, he served the Turner Avenue congregation faithfully for fifteeen months. On October 28, 1894 he died quite suddenly at the age of fifty-one from pneumonia contracted only days before.

In 1896, less than two years later, Rev. Titus Hager was installed as the third minister of the Turner Avenue church. Under his seventeen years of ministry there, the congregation would become a flock of nearly one thousand persons. (More about this next month, the Lord willing.)

How vividly we see once again that despite the vicissitudes and frailties of broken, human vessels, God builds His church! The gates of hell shall not prevail against His Zion. The Father declares of His Son, “Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion” (Ps. 2:6). May that be our encouragement in this dark and needy day, for this alone is the solid hope of an afflicted and poor people who trust in the name of the Lord (Zeph. 3:12).

1Article 8 of the Church Order of Dort states that no one shall be allowed to enter the ministry without prior theological study, “unless there is definite assurance of their being exceptionally gifted, godly, humble, modest, and possessed of good sense and discretion, as well as gifts of public address.” Thus, “an article 8 dominie” came to signify a minister who was allowed to enter the ministry without theological training.

2Among his children was a six-year-old son, who would be orphaned at the age of ten. Born when Rev. Meijster was forty-six years old, this son (1881-1959) was to engage in a lengthy ministry in the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, outliving his father by sixty-eight years.

3Translated from Dutch.

4This is the identical congregation which Rev. W. C. Lamain would later serve from 1929-1932.

Dr. J.R. Beeke and Rev. J. den Hoed are continuing a series of articles on the histories of individual Netherlands Reformed Congregations.

Poor Yet Rich

Sweet thought, ever to keep in view, that it is the Lord that prepares the heart, and gives answers to the tongue. And oh, how sudden, how unexpected, how unlooked-for, sometimes, are the visits of His grace! “Or ever I was aware (saith the church) my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab.” Is my heart cold, my mind barren, my frame lifeless? Do Thou, then, dearest Lord, make me to rejoice, in warming my frozen affection, making fruitful my poor estate, and putting new life into my soul. All I want is a frame of mind best suited to Thy glory. And what is that? Truly, that when I have nothing, feel nothing, can do nothing, am worse than nothing, that then, even then, I may be rich in Thee amidst all my own bankruptcy. This, dear Lord, is what I covet. And if Thou withholdest all frames which might melt, or warm, or rejoice my own feelings; yet if my soul still hangs upon Thee notwithstanding all, as the vessel upon the nail, my God and Jesus will be my rock, that feels nothing of the ebbings and flowings of the sea around, whatever be the tide of my fluctuating affections.

— Rev. Robert Hawker

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