OUR HISTORY

Our beginnings: A community of newcomers

As early as 1953, members of the Christian Reformed (CRC) denomination were meeting together regularly as a church community.  These meetings took place in adherents’ homes or in the Wiswell Chapel of the YMCA building on South Park Street.

A growing faith community

As the size of the church community grew, the attention of the Home Missions Board was drawn to the need for pastoral leadership. As a result, Ralph Bos, who had been serving as a home missionary to the Maritime provinces, began in 1954 to travel from his Truro home to lead the worship services, by then, held regularly at the YMCA chapel.  By 1957, the worshipping community had grown to fourteen families, and Rev. Bos relocated to Halifax to become more directly involved in developments here.  This ministry was directly supported by the broader CRC through the Home Missions Board, which purchased and provided a home for the home missionary’s use at 8 Rosemount Avenue in Armdale.

Making it official

In 1958 the Halifax congregation of the Christian Reformed Church was organized and the first consistory was installed. Rev. Bos continued to lead the congregation, exchanging his designation as a home missionary for that of a pastor.  He received salary support from various sources, including a large CRC congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  In 1959 Rev. Bos and his wife moved on to serve elsewhere in the denomination. Also in 1959, the Nova Scotia legislature passed An Act to Incorporate Congregations of the Christian Reformed Church (S.N.S. 1959, c. 88) whereby each congregation of the CRC then or thereafter established in Nova Scotia would be a body corporate by the name of the “Christian Reformed Church” of the place where the congregation is located.

In 1960, Rev. G. Andre came to serve as pastor and, during his brief tenure assisted the consistory and congregation in planning for growth and greater self-sufficiency.

In 1961, Harry Mennega, a recent graduate of Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was called to serve as the pastor.  At this time, the congregation was still meeting in the YMCA chapel, and it was decided that better facilities would soon be required. Needs surveys were conducted in the growing Halifax suburbs of Fairview, Princess Lodge and Rockingham. It was concluded that those areas would be appropriate venues for a new church building.  In 1962, the congregation acquired the manse building on Rosemount from the Home Missions Board. In 1963, four adjacent lots on Meadowlark Crescent, Rockingham, were purchased. Edward Gavel, a member and an architect, prepared drawings for a small church building to be built on the site.  Unfortunately, the cost of building the structure proved prohibitively high and building plans were suspended.

Shifting from Dutch to English

Nonetheless, the Halifax CRC continued to grow.  A church school program was established, with classes held on Saturday mornings at First Baptist Church on Oxford Street. The language of worship shifted from Dutch to English.

In 1964 Mennega was called to serve elsewhere and his position as pastor was filled by Jerry Dykstra, another recent graduate of Calvin Seminary.  The search for permanent facilities resumed, Options ranging from renovating abandoned houses on Lower Water Street to building across the harbour, in Dartmouth, being considered and rejected.

A church home in south-end Halifax

Eventually, in 1965, a historic Victorian-era house at the corner of Inglis and Lucknow Streets (5651 Inglis Street) was acquired.  The building had previously been converted to several apartments, so extensive renovations were required, including

• the construction of a chapel on the main floor which could hold 90-100 people
• church school rooms in the basement, and
• a manse on the second floor.

In 1966, the Meadowlark lots (now civic nos. 5-13 Meadowlark Crescent) were sold. The creation of a new manse in the Inglis St. building permitted the sale, also in 1966, of the Rosemount Avenue property.  The congregation, which then numbered approximately twenty-two families, held its first worship service in their new church building on November 5, 1966.

In 1969 John Winters became the congregation’s regular organist and, in 1972, a new organ was acquired for the Inglis Street chapel.

In 1971, Jerry Dykstra began a full-time university and hospital ministry in the south end.  As a result, Wayne Gritter was called to serve as a pastor, with Jerry Dykstra as his associate.  During Gritter’s ministry, a number of changes occurred, including holding church school on Sundays and conducting monthly evening services at Joseph Howe Manor (a seniors’ residence nearby) and, during the summers, in members’ backyards.

By 1976, Rev. Gritter had taken a pastoral position elsewhere and the congregation was experiencing decline. The option of disbanding was seriously considered. However, the process of seeking God’s will led to James LaGrand being called to pastor the struggling congregation, beginning November, 1977.  By 1978, the ministry had been revitalized and the congregation informally changed its name to “All Nations Christian Reformed Church” in recognition of the congregation’s widened ministry as well as the increasingly multi-cultural character of its membership.  Under LaGrand’s leadership the congregation reached out to the local universities and also developed a number of diaconal programmes, including an emergency food service and children’s clothing centre. The congregation also broadened its ecumenical contacts within the city, through the Halifax-Dartmouth Council of Churches and also through the establishment of the annual “Epiphany Series” in which local ministers of other denominations preached at All Nations during epiphany on the theme “Light to the Nations”.  James LaGrand also served as a part-time lecturer in New Testament Studies at the Atlantic School of Theology.  During these years, the congregation advocated for change within the denomination, particularly as regards the promotion of the gifts of women in ecclesiastical office and also the severing of ecclesiastical ties with the Gereformeerde Kerk in South Africa because of its acceptance of the policy of apartheid.

Creating new affordable housing

Anathoth Housing Co-operative

In 1981, as a response to the need for affordable housing in the urban core of the city, several families within the congregation began organizing a housing cooperative.  They partnered with others in the community and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). By 1984, they had built a twenty-two unit housing cooperative on Creighton and Charles Streets in an economically disadvantaged and racially mixed area of the city known as “the old north end”.  A number of All Nations Church members moved into the cooperative and served on its board of directors.  The co-operative was named “Anathoth” to commemorate the prophet Jeremiah’s faithfulness in buying an abandoned property as a sign of the Lord’s intention to redeem the city.  During this time, many of these same members began organizing the worshipping community that came to be known as the “North End Mission”, which was designed to serve as a street-level outreach to the surrounding community. This was motivated by a vision for a new ministry in the north end and by the need to alleviate overcrowding in the Inglis Street building’s small sanctuary. With funding support from the Home Missions Board, the North End Mission called John VanDonk as its pastor in 1986.  The group met for worship first at the Joseph Howe School on Creighton Street and then later in a storefront unit on Gottingen Street near North Street. The North End Mission recieved insufficient support, and by 1989 had been wound down, with attendees returning to worship with the rest of the All Nations congregation.