GCRC Heritage Center

Thank you for visiting Graafschap Church, and welcome to this special commemoration of our history.
We are people from a tradition that goes back to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and to the teachings of
John Calvin.
His writings led to the formation of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands in the 1570s. The Synod of Dordt in 1618
affirmed the Biblical doctrines that came to be known as the Five Points of Calvinism. The church grew, strong in faith
and doctrine.
Later, however, it began to drift away from orthodox Calvinism when liberal ideas entered the government-controlled
church.
The government also began to interfere in our convictions. And so in 1834, many who still held on to the orthodox
Reformed theology felt they had to break away from the Dutch Reformed state church.
This Secession began in Ulrum, in the province of Groningen, under the leadership of Rev. Hendrik de Cock.

We are the people of that Secession.
Soon after the Secession came persecution and sometimes loss of employment for our people, followed by blight and
disease in the potato and rye crop of 1845-46.
Emigration fever began to sweep over us. A vision of planting a Christian colony of true believers in the New World
began to take shape.

Rev. Van Raalte and his group were the first to leave in early fall of 1846. We had wanted to travel with that group, but we
couldn’t get ready in time.
So we didn’t leave till the next spring, without a pastor to lead us.

What you will see here is the story of faith that brought us across the ocean, the story of God’s grace that enabled us to
overcome great hardships and establish a community here and a church that became the Graafschap Christian
Reformed Church.
It is our prayer that this heritage will pass on to the generations that will follow us, to the glory of our faithful God.