Joint CRC-Alliance Congregation Shares New Building

Harrison (S.D.) Community Church lives into its name. The congregation has built community between what had been one Christian Reformed congregation and Harrison Reformed Church, originally a Reformed Church in America congregation, over the past 60 years—first sharing special services like Ascension Day and summer Vacation Bible School, later sharing evening services as congregation size dwindled, sharing a pastor between two congregations, and eventually merging. They solidified their union church identity last September (2024) with the dedication of a new building, constructed just south of the former congregations’ older buildings, which have since been sold.

“Being in it (the new building) for a year has been good. It seems to be a joyous place to worship,” said the church’s pastor, Gary Maas.

Maas believes their congregation is the first with dual affiliation in the Christian Reformed Church of North America and the Alliance of Reformed Churches, a denomination formed in 2021 with departing churches from the RCA. In October the board serving the Alliance of Reformed Churches voted to accept a “church in communion” status with the CRC. The CRCNA approved that closest level of ecumenical relationship at its annual synod in June.

Maas said the formalization didn’t really change anything for their congregation, which had been joint with the RCA before. “We were a union church when it was the RCA, and it’s stayed the same,” Maas said. “The only thing that’s changed is we go to classis meetings of both, and now (the Alliance regional meeting) is called a network meeting instead of ‘classis.’”

Maas said it’s been good for the church’s council to experience the benefits of participating in both denominations, noting the organized and orderly approach of the CRC that “does a good job of training pastors for ministry through the seminary” and the “more of a relaxed atmosphere” of Alliance network meetings that once a year gather for mutual encouragement, workshops, and sharing one another’s experiences.

The November meeting of the Midwest network, which includes about 70 congregations from North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and one Michigan church, focused on congregational care, Maas said. “You’re encouraged to take things back to your church” and try them, Maas said, sharing that the Harrison Community Church elders recently took back the idea of “writing thank-you notes from elders to people in the church” serving in quiet ways. “It’s creating a stronger bond in the congregation,” Maas said.

Marlin Maas, current chair of the Harrison Community Church council, who is also the pastor’s brother, said he notices, “People come early to church just to visit, mingle, and talk to all the little kids” in what he called a “young congregation.”

Gary Maas said they’ve had “quite a few baptisms for a small congregation” over the past year—“more than funerals,” he said, saying that 22 children aged 5 and younger are currently part of the church family.