By fall this year, this church will be 190 years old. That’s a wild thought to me. I won’t go into an extended history lesson today, but Grand Haven and First Presbyterian Church are inseparable. The Rev. William Ferry, who was both a pastor and a businessman, traveled the length of the Grand River — from Jackson to here — in search of a place to settle down, and he knew he was home upon arriving here.
In his massive history of Grand Haven, Dave Seibold described Ferry like this. “Rev. William Ferry had come…in 1834 to better his worldly interests through dealings in land, lumber, and merchandise, but he never really left the pulpit. He prayed daily and kept the Sabbath. His first public act upon arriving at Rix Robinson’s log home and trading post (on) November 2, 1834, was to preach a sermon of thanks and (of) a resolve to master the challenges which would confront his small band of 21 souls. Through the first winter, Sunday worship was held in Robinson’s home which the Ferrys occupied until their log home was completed the following spring.”[1]
Worship moved into the Ferry’s home in 1835, which was located where the Kirby Grill presently sits. Soon, the first church and Sunday School (led by Mary A. White) was built on the second block of Washington. There’s a lot more to this history, but names that are still common around here — Ferry, Robinson, and White — were part of both the founding of the city and its institutions and part of starting this church, which has carried on ministry for almost two centuries.
I’m done preaching through the stained glass windows, but you should know that a window in our sanctuary depicts the four buildings which have been home to our congregation. The window pictures the trading post in which the first worship service was held, the first building that was built on our current site in 1885, the “church house” that was built in 1911, and our current sanctuary, which was built in 1955. Just as the Rev. Ferry’s first sermon was based on the text, “Do not despise small beginnings” (Zechariah 4:10), so the window pictures an acorn and an oak leaf. Great things can come from small beginnings.
This church has met in three locations and has had four sanctuaries over its history, yet its place and purpose have remained steadfast. We are a congregation committed to Grand Haven and the Tri-Cities. Our purpose has been to serve the people of this area and beyond with the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel that not only shares eternal life but one that also cares deeply about the welfare of people right now.
Today I’m focused on our church’s third Core Value: We are at the heart of the community. Our elders fleshed this value out like this: We believe God has placed us at the heart of Grand Haven to be a light in our community. From our beginning we have been essential to the fabric of this community. We use our facility to welcome many community groups. Several nonprofits have launched from our church. We aim to grow as a force for good in our community in the years to come.
You’ve already heard some of the history that ties the church and city, and down through the years the members of this congregation have been a vital part of shaping it. We’ve been home to teachers and business leaders, mayors and childcare givers. I mean, even the musical fountain was the brainchild of a church member!
Yet, our attention hasn’t simply been in places like industry and education. In my lifetime, this church has incubated and helped launch two significant nonprofits that continue to serve well. As many of you know, there used to be a house on our property where the playground now is on the southwest corner. The house was home to Tri-Cities Ministries, which formed in 1978. As I’ve said, we believe that place and purpose are important, but we also care about partnership. In this case, our church banded with several others to found TCM, and we housed it for around forty years.
As that ministry grew, it changed its name to Mosaic Counseling. Its mission to remove all barriers between people and mental health care continues on. It’s a service I regularly refer people to. It’s one I’ve used myself. This church has been an important part of Mosaic’s story for almost 50 years.
Here’s another one. Through a grant from the Grand Haven Area Community Foundation (which also has deep roots in this church), the Center for Women in Transition also was initially housed on our church grounds. In 2019, it rebranded and is now known as Resilience: Advocates for Ending Violence. It is focused on responding to, reducing, and preventing domestic and sexual violence in Ottawa and Allegan counties.
Our church values joining with others to get things done. We work with other churches. We gather in prayer with other pastors. We’ve been home to a significant camp grant program that last year helped send over 650 children to Christian summer camp. The level of cooperation among pastors and churches this brings is hard to overstate. As your pastor, I bear with me our good name to every situation — when I pray at City Council, when I attend Rotary meetings (where I’ll soon serve as Club President), and even when I show up at a coffee shop or restaurant and people recognize me as the pastor of this church that has done and is doing so much in our community. We believe in cooperating with others for the common good of all.
First Presbyterian is the chartering organization for Scout Troop 246 that meets here on Tuesdays. We are also now the home to a Girl Scout Troop (they’re selling cookies today) and a Cub Scout Pack.
For over thirty years, our church has supported the childcare needs of our community through Joyful Noise Christian Childcare. This is a sixty-hour a week ministry of the church. Even as I was writing this sermon I could hear the “joyful noise” of the four-year-old class on the other side of the wall from my office. It’s huge and hard work to have an excellent childcare center in our building. It’s also costly. But we are serving our community and welcoming families into our building five days a week because of it.
Being at the heart of the community means that we strive to be a welcoming space for all. We want people in our building and using our facilities. And they do. Recovery Court meets here. AA and other recovery groups have found a place here. Our chapel is home to a Banjo and Ukulele group. Our high school fiddle club, GOTAK, holds an annual concert and workshop here. Even the the boys’ swim team has been holding their pre-Conference taper dinner in our Lounge. We live out being at the heart of the community.
So, I hope this has given you a picture of some of the ways this church matters to this community. I’ve been part of visioning retreats for various churches throughout my ministry, and one of the questions consultants often ask is this — if your church went away today, would anyone outside of your congregation miss it? It’s a question getting to the heart of what it means to have an outward focus. In the case of this church, I would say the answer is an emphatic “Yes!” If we weren’t here, our community would miss us. Sure, we can always do more, and we should be working towards new ways to be a force for good in our community. Still, let’s celebrate how God has been faithfully at work among us through the years. Friends, no church is perfect, but this church is solid, and it matters to our community. We are rooted in our place, and we have a purpose to share Christ’s love in word and deed with Grand Haven and beyond.
Let me circle back to the scriptures we read this morning because they are part of what undergirds our purpose in being a church that is heavily invested in our community. We heard part of the story about the earliest Christian community. Our passage came on the heels of Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to go into all the world and share this good news of Jesus Christ.
We see in this some of the most basic elements of what it means to be a church. Peter has preached about Jesus, and the crowds respond with repentance and the desire to be baptized. Sounds an awful lot like worship, doesn’t it? The Holy Spirit empowers those who have turned to Jesus, and their lives change. How so?
They devote themselves to learning about Jesus. They give time to fellowship — that’s koinonia in the Greek, we’ll get that word again in Philippians — that is, they gave of themselves to one another, sharing in life together. They broke bread, which means both sharing food around the table and, of course, the sacramental purpose of bread at the communion table. They prayed.
This earliest version of the church went far deeper into that than most do, certainly deeper than we are willing to do here. This community held all of its possessions in common. When there was need, they’d sell what they had to provide for the need. We continue to do that in bringing our gifts to the church, which is one way we take our names off of what we have and we put Jesus’ name on them. Their generosity is startling, and it presents a challenge to all of us who tend to think in terms of investments and budgets and personal choice.
We’re almost 2000 years and an ocean away from this earliest version of the church, but the model in Acts is one we still strive for today in our own way. This model of life together and generosity forms how we live out our core value of being at the heart of the community. Going to church isn’t simply about what you, as an individual, get out of it, although I hope you receive plenty of encouragement and challenge. Rather, it’s about how the sum of our lives together generates glimpses of God’s reign where we are.
Paul and Timothy, who weren’t even believers when this first Christian community was forming in Jerusalem, share a similar encouragement for the believers in Philippi. Paul thanks God for them often in his prayers. Why? As he writes, “Because of their sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.” That word “sharing” is koinonia again. It’s what we all get to do together on behalf of the wider community.
And Paul continues with encouragement. “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” I would hope Paul could say that about this church 190 years in and still going strong. More than numbers or size, more than good music and sound preaching, I hope that God finds us faithful and that God, who has begun a good work in us, will see that work to its completion.
This church has a sense of place and purpose. I’m glad for it. I make a point to walk from the church all around town to meet our neighbors and to see the kind of community we are forming. I pray that we all continue to value how we are at the heart of this community.
[1] Seibold, David, Grand Haven: In the Path of Destiny, 115.