A History of Faith Community CRC

Home / CRC Index / Mich. Index / Wyoming / Faith Community

A History of Faith Community Christian Reformed Church, Wyoming, Michigan

John P. Battema, February 2000

While browsing on the Internet, I came across your listing and found the information extremely interesting. You see, the second pastor, John P. Battema, was my father, and the first pastor, Edward Pekelder, was my uncle.

When my father accepted the call to Wyoming Park, he was pastor of the Third CRC in Kalamazoo. The church furnished the pastor with a car, and when we arrived in Wyoming Park, my father was startled to find that the car was a Model T Ford. Of course, at that time the Model T was a very new automobile, but the problem was that my father had never driven a Model T, and someone in the church had to teach him how to drive it.

The church was a little white building with a small steeple on it. On Sundays there were three services, English in the morning and evening, and Dutch in the afternoon. My mother, Regina Battema, played the pump organ and sang during the service. She was a very talented pianist and organist with a beautiful soprano voice.

After about six months, the crowds at the evening service grew so large that the small church could no longer hold them, and in the summer people drove their cars up to the open windows and sat on the car tops to hear the sermon. Obviously, a larger church building was badly needed, and soon plans were under way to build a new building.

The little white church building was sold to the Seventh Day Adventists and moved across the open fields to a new location about a half-mile from the original site. After the building was raised and placed on timbers, I used to play under the church, not a very safe pastime for a seven year old boy. But, fortunately, after a week or two the actual move was underway, and soon the church was in it's new location and construction began on the new building.

Unfortunately, when the building was completed, it was found to have a serious acoustic problem, a very bad echo. That problem was partially solved by hanging heavy drapes on the walls. I accompanied my father and mother on a trip to Hagerstown, Maryland, to the Mohler Pipe Organ company, where the organ was being built.

The new church was beautiful, although, for financial constrains, the steeple was not built immediately but was to be added later.

I believe it was about a year later, we were awakened one morning by someone pounding on our front. My father, mother, and I hurried down the stairs to answer the front door. A very agitated stranger screamed at us, "Your church is on fire." This was very early in the morning, about three or four o'clock, and it was very dark. Yet the flames inside the building was so intense that it looked as if every light in the church was on. The roof of the church was slate, and a few minutes later it sounded like a hailstorm as the slate shingles exploded. As I write this, I can still hear the slate shingles exploding and see the flames start coming through the roof.

The fire department arrived a few minutes later, but there were no hydrants in the area. Instead, they had to string a hose across Beals Road down to Buck Creek to get water to fight the fire, but it was hopeless. By midmorning, our beautiful church was a burnt out hulk of a building.

Besides my mother, the church had hired a full time organist. She had been practicing the evening before the fire, and it was believed, although never proven, that an electrical short in the wiring of the organ started the fire. But soon, within a matter of a few weeks, the ruins of the church were torn down and a new church, more beautiful than the old one, was under construction, this one with a tower and a ceiling with a special acoustic plaster so that there would not be an acoustical problems. And, of course, the new building was fireproof construction.

My mother was very well known at that time for her beautiful singing voice and her talent for playing the piano and pipe organ. Occasionally she would asked to play and sing on WASH and WOOD, the two radio stations operating in Grand Rapids at that time.

Unfortunately, during that period she developed sugar diabetes; she passed away in 1931, at the age of thirty seven. She was buried in Rosedale Memorial Park on Lake Michigan Drive on Saint Valentine's Day. My father had left the Christian Reformed Church by that time and started the Wyoming Park Gospel Tabernacle. Her funeral service was held in the then-new Calvary Undenominational Church in Grand Rapids with Dr. Martin De Haan officiating. According to the Grand Rapids Press, it was the second largest funeral ever held in Grand Rapids up to that time. The only larger funeral was for an ex-mayor of Grand Rapids who had died a few years before. It required just over one hour for the people to pass by the casket after the service, and the procession of cars going to the cemetery was over one mile long.

I still visit her grave whenever I am back in Michigan - the last time was July of 2000. Probably her greatest attribute was her unswerving Christian faith and her belief in the power of prayer. Several people who had known her told me later that, during the last year of her life, she prayed constantly for the Lord to watch over her two sons, me and my younger brother, Ted. I believe that her prayers were answered and that she would be proud of my brother and me. Although neither of us entered the ministry, we are both Christians and the Lord has blessed us, both spiritually and materially.

I am now almost 82 years old. I live in California with my wife. Next August we will be celebrating our 63rd wedding anniversary. We have three fine, successful sons, ten wonderful grandchildren, and three beautiful great grandchildren.

One of our grandsons is currently a Captain in the U.S. Air Force and is stationed in Korea, where he flies F-16 fighter aircraft. He has his wife and two small sons (two of our great grandsons) with him there. He will be stationed there for two years. But he is already making plans to attend a seminary when he is discharged and to become a minister. I am certain that he will reach his goal and I know my mother (his great-grandmother) would be very proud.

The Lord has blessed our family in so many ways and so greatly that it is sometimes hard to believe. We thank and praise Him every day for the many, many blessings that he has given to us. Often we visited Kalamazoo in the summer and drove up to Grand Rapids to visit my mother's grave. We take a short cut through Wyoming that takes us right by the church that I describe in this letter.

Incidentally, it broke my heart a few years ago when they tore down the old parsonage. That house held so many memories for me.

Yours truly in Christ, John P. Battema

go to the Faith Community profile