About Us
Who We Are:
Welcome! We are a congregation of approximately 220 members in Byron Center, Michigan.
Our congregation belongs to the Protestant Reformed Churches in America, a denomination of 32 churches with over 8,000 members based in the United States and Canada. We confess our salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ. We are a close-knit and welcoming congregation who gather twice each Sunday for worship. We invite you to join us!
Our services are held each Sunday at 9:30 AM and 5:00 PM, and the emphasis of our worship services is the preaching of God’s word as it centers on Jesus Christ and is summarized in the Reformed Creeds. Our services are also live-streamed, and we encourage you to listen to our past sermons.
It is our prayer that by our witness as a church, the name of God will be magnified, the true gospel will be promoted, sinners will be saved, and His church will be gathered!
Our History
The original Byron Center Protestant Reformed Church was formed in 1929. The congregation enjoyed Rev. George Ophoff as her faithful minister from 1929 to 1945, at which time the church disbanded. Our church had its second beginning when a group of Protestant Reformed adults from the Cutlerville / Byron Center area met in the library of Byron Township in the spring of 1981 to study the Canons of Dordt. This interest eventually developed into a new church. It’s first services were held on August 14, 1988, with 41 families and seven individuals. Today, we have 57 families and 220+ members.
Our Pastor
Our current pastor is Prof. Russell J. Dykstra, who with his wife, Carol, came to us in 2021. Prof. Dykstra accepted our call having recently retired from his position of professor of Church History and New Testament studies at the Protestant Reformed Seminary, where he served for 26 years. Prior to this, he pastored two congregations after completing seminary training at the age of 32. Before seminary, Prof. Dykstra was administrator and teacher in a small Christian school. In his spare time, he enjoys teaching, traveling and spending time with Carol and their nine children and families.
Denominational History
The Protestant Reformed Churches in America are a denomination of 32 churches and over 8000 members in the United States and Canada. Founded as a separate denomination of Reformed churches in 1924, the PRC stand in the tradition of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Their origin as a denomination was the doctrinal controversy over common grace within the Christian Reformed Church in the early 1920s, occasioned by that church’s adoption of the doctrine of common grace as official church dogma. The result of the controversy was that several ministers with their congregations were put out of the Christian Reformed Church. These men then established the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) on the basis of the truth of God’s sovereign, particular grace in Jesus Christ as taught in Scripture.
For additional information about PRCA, click here.