Robert P. Swierenga, "Why Timothy?"

Address at the Timothy Christian Schools (Elmhurst, IL) Heritage Dinner, Oct. 12, 2000.

     Do you know that next September, when Timothy opens its doors, our school will be 90 years old? It's time to begin planning for Timothy's centennial celebration!!

     Who founded Timothy so long ago? Why did they do so? What compelled them to sacrifice so much for the Christian education of their sons and daughters? Tonight I'd like us to reflect on the question "why Timothy?"

     I learned to love Timothy, like many of you did, by seeing how much the school meant to our families and to the entire community. My father John R. served on the school board, as did his brother Ralph, and more recently Ralph's son Butch, whose early death is a big loss.

     In our family, Timothy stood front and center. At the evening meal, each of us children reported on the happenings of the day at school. School programs and activities, along with church life, took priority in our schedules. The annual school picnic at Bergman's Grove was a highlight of the year. Teachers were invited to our homes for Sunday dinner, and our parents backed the teachers when we got into trouble at school. We quickly learned that the "teachers were always right," even when they weren't!

     Devoted teachers (like John Harkema) shaped and molded us to grow in the love and knowledge of the Lord. All that "seat time" was well spent, although there are moments that one wants to forget, especially having to stay after school and write "lines" for an hour: "I will not talk in class without permission."

     Last year my 8th grade class celebrated its 50th reunion. There were 22 of us in that February 1949 class--21 are still living. Although our lives went off in 22 different directions, at the reunion we picked up right where we left off half a century ago and hardly skipped a beat. The bonds of friendship remain as strong as ever. It helped that we all shared the same Dutch Reformed heritage. Religion and ethnicity together make for a powerful glue.

     Most importantly, every one of us committed our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and took an active part in the church. The training my classmates and I received at Timothy prepared us to  carry our faith into our families and churches, into our businesses and professions, and into our politics and recreation.      Many of you Timothy alumni have the same testimony. To encourage students to live for Christ has been Timothy's purpose since its founding in 1911.

     Timothy's history is actually much older, if you follow the time-line back. Timothy was a daughter of Ebenezer Christian School on Ashland Avenue, which was founded in 1893 by the First Christian Reformed Church of Chicago. This congregation had previously, in 1871, opened a parochial school (that is, a church-owned school) during summer vacations to teach the Dutch language and history. First Reformed of Chicago ran a parochial summer school even earlier, in 1866, at their church building near Des Plaines and Harrison streets. So Timothy's roots in Chicago actually go back 134 years!

     In a real sense, Timothy's heritage is even older. It dates from the year 1834 in the Netherlands when devout members of the corrupt national church seceded and began a reformation. The precious right to have Christian schools was a big part of that reformation. After a decade of struggles, in which the government persecuted the seceders, thousands of these pious people emigrated to America, including Chicago, and they brought their ideals with them.

     The key immigrant leader was the Reverend Albertus Van Raalte, founder of the Holland, Michigan colony and spiritual guide of the midwestern immigrant wing of the Reformed Church in America. Van Raalte believed strongly in Christian schools. He preached that "the fear of God must be the soul of our education, our Christian color must come out everywhere" (Van Brummelen, Telling the Next Generation, 47).

     Van Raalte's ideals were realized in the college he founded

--Hope College, but his plans for Christian day schools came to naught. Such schools seemed unnecessary in immigrant colonies like his own, where the local public school for many years was in essence a Christian school.

     In places like Chicago, however, where the Dutch immigrants were a small minority in a vast and hostile city, the impetus was greater to establish separate schools. Teaching children the Dutch language and church history was almost as important as the four r's--reading, (w)riting, (a)rithmetic, and religion. Church services and catechism were in the Dutch language and the children needed to know their heritage. Equally important, Christian schools were places where our young people formed lifelong friendships and found marriage partners.

     The first Dutch Reformed parochial schools in Chicago died out quickly. The early immigrants did not have a sound theological rationale for the schools, and they were unwilling (or unable) to make the necessary financial sacrifices.

     It took the next wave of Dutch immigrants, beginning in the 1880s, to build the Christian school system in America. These immigrants were the product of just such a system in the Netherlands, built by the political leader Groen van Prinsterer and his disciple Abraham Kuyper. Van Prinsterer insisted that education was a fundamental right and responsibility of parents (especially fathers), and not the state or the church. His schools were "free" in the classical sense--free of the tyranny of the state and free of the tyranny of the church. They were run by parent-controlled societies.

     Kuyper, the great theologian and statesman who became prime minister in the 1890s, took Van Prinsterer's system two steps further. His education bill secured full public funding of all Christian schools and he founded the Free University of Amsterdam to provide a capstone for the system. Free schools for a free people, was Kuyper's slogan. [I should note that full public funding has not been a blessing for the Christian schools in the Netherlands. Over time, they lost their freedom and largely came under control of the secular state. The tyranny of the state is always a greater threat than the tyranny of the church.]  

     As a theologian, Kuyper worked out the rationale for a Christian curriculum. It must teach how God rules in history; how He structured the good creation and the laws of science; and how His beauty is shown in art, music, and literature. The curriculum is broad, because Jesus our Lord is the sovereign ruler over all. His kingdom knows no bounds. So Kuyper concluded that everything must be studied and brought under the Lord's sovereign control. He called this the "world and life view." Our forbearers brought these Kuyperian beliefs to America as part of their cultural baggage.

     Christian schools, the believed, woulod partner wit the church and home. As one Chicago-area consistory put it: "We love to speak of the chain consisting of three links--home, church and school; regarding it as a chain which cannot be easily broken." 

     Christian schools were controversial and often divided the church communities in America. In general, members of the Christian Reformed churches were supportive, and members of the Reformed churches were not.

     The general synods of the Reformed Church went on record twice in favor of public schools, in 1892 and again in the 1950s.  They viewed separate Christian schools as un-American. Public schools, they believed, were the key to building a democratic

society, and Christian pupils were to be salt and light. As a result of such attitudes, fewer than 10 percent of the students at Ebenezer and Timothy came from Reformed Church homes in the early decades, and the number dwindled to 6 percent by 1940.

     Christian Reformed leaders acknowledged the need for salting, but they saw even more clearly the increasing secularization in the public schools. The rise of Darwinian evolution as the new orthodoxy frightened them, as did the "liberal" social values known as modernism.

     The die was cast in 1907 when the president of the Chicago Board of Education declared the Bible to be an "unsuitable and even dangerous" book for children. Three years later the Illinois Supreme Court banished the Bible and religious instruction from the public schools.

     The Christian Reformed churches on the West Side were blessed with strong, school-minded leaders like Dr. John Van Lonkhuyzen and the Rev. Benjamin Essenburg of the First Chicago congregation, and Dr. Frederick Wezeman and elder James De Boer of the Fourth Chicago church. All were disciples of Abraham Kuyper; Van Lonkhuyzen had even earned his doctorate at the Free University. With such leadership in Chicago, it is no wonder that the National Union of Christian Schools (now Christian Schools International) was founded here in 1920.

     By 1926 the Christian school system in greater Chicagoland had grown to seven schools, including Chicago Christian High School, with a total of 2,000 pupils. After the Second World War Illiana Christian High was founded in 1946 and Timothy Christian High in 1952. In 1959 came the keystone of the arch, Trinity Christian College.

Now let's recall Timothy's history

     Timothy first served members of the Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church, which in 1899 was founded by families who had moved into the Douglas Park-Lawndale district. C.F. Speckman spearheaded the effort, with the strong support of pastor Cornelius De Leeuw. The first school board officers in 1907 were president Abe Bulthuis, vice president George Slater, secretary Nick Knol, and treasurer Nick Noorlag. [I wonder how many of you are descendants of one of these men. If you are, please raise your hand.... You can be proud of such strong ancestors.] 

     This board in 1908 chose the name "Timothy" for the school, in memory of the New Testament evangelist who was reared in a Christian home by a devout mother and grandmother and became the apostle Paul's spiritual son.

     Classes began in 1911 with 34 students and one teacher,  George Duer. The classroom was a rented storefront on Twelfth Street (renamed Roosevelt Road in 1919). Tuition was $1.50 per week. The next year the Society built its own school, a 2-story brick building, costing $8,000, that stood (actually it still stands) on the corner of Thirteenth and Tripp (4200 west). This was about two blocks from the Douglas Park Church.

     The Timothy School Society in 1913 had only 100 members, and the first graduating class in 1914 had two students! But this was soon to change under the able leadership of the new teacher-principal Nick Hendrikse. Enrollment grew and the board kept hiring more teachers. In 1916 Timothy won full accreditation from the Chicago Board of Education.

     In 1926, the year that Hendrikse left for a career in real estate, the Timothy board launched a successful financial drive that paid off nearly the entire debt on the Tripp building. It was just in time, because families were moving west to Cicero and Berwyn. As a consequence, the board in 1927 decided to build a new school in Cicero on 14th Street at 59th Avenue. The school cost $115,000 (15 times as much as the old school). It stood in the shadow of the relocated Douglas Park congregation, then called Second Cicero (later Warren Park).

     At the time, Timothy was the only school in Cicero to have a gymnasium, and it was also the only National Union-affiliated school nationwide to have one. This special feature had to be sacrificed in 1946 when Timothy made room for 120 students from Ebenezer, which was closed due to the declining number of families still living on the Old West Side.

     Timothy has had many able principals and teachers over the years. Hendrikse brought the infant plant on Tripp Avenue to academic maturity, and his successors built on this foundation. Louis Zuiderhof (1926-36) ably directed the move to Cicero and had to deal with the effects of the Great Depression on the school. The board in 1932 cut his salary and those of the six teachers, but no one was laid off and the spirit of the staff remained strong.

     To increase income, new first graders were permitted to begin in February. From then on, Timothy had both February and June graduating classes. The board also raised money in other imaginative ways. They auctioned off donated foodstuffs, had parents put pennies in coin boxes every day for tuition, sold Netherlands Day souvenir buttons at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 (which brought in $135), and they staged an annual Rally Day dinner (which in 1936 raised $1300!). This Heritage Dinner had its predecessor!

     The Eunice Society, a boster club organized in 1923 by 35 women, formed Friendship Clubs to help purchase needed items. The  Clubs have meant much to the school over the years. By 1983, after 50 years of work, their contributions to Timothy totaled a whopping $640,000. The amount now is probably nearing $1 million.   Richard Tolsma became principal in 1941 and ably led Timothy for 27 years, until 1967. During his long tenure, the school had to overcome three challenges--integrate Ebenezer students into the student body in the 1940s, develop the junior and senior high schools in the 1950s to lessen space problems, and in the 1960s to deal with the gut-wrenching racial issue in admission policies.

     Board presidents Albert "Swede" Kieft and Bill Buiten bore the brunt of the Timothy-Lawndale controversy, and they ably laid the groundwork for the move to Elmhurst, which was completed in 1972. This gave Timothy the freedom to open its doors to Christians of all races. The school has been on its present campus for more than 35 years. But most of you here know this recent history better than I do, and so I need not go on.

Conclusion

     Over the years Timothy has sent out thousands of alumni, and last year U.S. News and World Report magazine ranked Timothy Christian High School in the top 10 percent among more than 1,000 schools evaluated in 6 metropolitan areas. David Larsen could rightly say: "It is affirming to have a national magazine notice our mission of developing academically prepared disciples of Jesus Christ." Amen.

     Christian schools have also had a huge impact on our churches. I can quantify one aspect--membership. When Ebenezer and Timothy opened their doors about 100 years ago, the Reformed and Christian Reformed churches on the Old West Side were nearly equal in membership--each with about 1,000 souls. Today Reformed church membership on the Far West Side is less than one-fourth that of Christian Reformed church membership. Could it be that Christian day school education has made the difference in maintaining a Reformed presence in Chicagoland? Ponder that thought when you count the cost of Christian education.

     We are beneficiaries of a great tradition passed down from our parents and grandparents. Let's not forget our heritage or slough it off as old fashioned. This post-Christian age is no time to waffle.

     The Christian worldview that Van Prinsterer and Kuyper espoused is still very vital. Much to our amazement, Chuck Colson, Nixon's former counsel, convicted criminal, and founder of Prison Fellowship, has discovered Kuyper. In his recent book, co-authored with Nancy Pearcy, How Now Shall We Live, and in several columns in Christianity Today, Colson has revitalized Kuyper's teachings. Colson quotes Kuyper's famous line: "Everything in this world, Jesus cries out, is mine. Everything we touch, we see, we feel, we learn, shouts of God's creation and the outpouring of His love for us." This statementis nothing new to us. These truths have undergirded Timothy and Ebenezer for a hundred years.

     Our responsibility is to take our solid base and build on it. A covenant parents, we must tell our children over and over again why we send them to Timothy. We must impress on their minds and hearts the rich spiritual heritage that is theirs, and help them understand that they are linked to the generations that have gone before, and they have a duty to carry on.

     Teachers, you have to know the spiritual history of our communities and of our nation, and pass it on to the next generations. Hold to a solid classical curriculum, and don't succumb to the latest fads, which are so shallow and misguided.

     Board members, you have the ultimate responsibility and duty to keep Timothy orthodox and true. You set policy, hire the staff, and approve all curricular changes and programs. Hold firm to the foundation that has been laid so well.

     May God bless Timothy--its parents, students, alumni, supporters, and friends. We hold a jewel in our hands and we must preserve it. Let us remind one another to keep the faith, teach Godly knowledge and truth, and pray for the wisdom to instill in the next generation the great tradition of Christian education that our parents have bequeathed to us. Above all, may our children, like the boy Jesus himself, grow in "wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men."