Welcome to Sioux Center First CRC! We love having college/university students join us for worship and participation in the life of our church and community. We encourage students to plug into a local church for mutual support and accountability, and have created a Student Membership to help you do just that.

Recognizing that the church is “the gathering of those who are saved and there is no salvation apart from it, [and that] people ought not to withdraw from it, content to be by themselves, regardless of their status or condition,” it is appropriate to encourage college and university students who are geographically separated from their home congregation to unite with a local congregation in a meaningful manner, thereby “keeping the unity of the church by submitting to its instruction and discipline, by bending their necks under the yoke of Jesus Christ, and by serving to build up on another according to the gifts God has given them as members of each other in the same body” (Belgic Confession, Article 28).

First CRC, Sioux Center, therefore, offers university students a temporary student membership in order that they might come under the care and accountability of the local church, both receiving its loving shepherding and the ability to use their God-given gifts in service of the local church.

A student membership:

• Is temporary, lasting only for the duration of the student’s studies.
• Is conditional:
  • Not replacing the student’s membership in his or her home church and not seeking to displace the authority of the elders and deacons of the student’s home church.
  • Not opening the student to all the benefits of professing membership (e.g., student members will not be able to vote in congregational meetings and will not necessarily be able to serve in all capacities without further conversations and approval of the council).
  • Must be a professing member in good standing or has a healthy relationship with their home church.
• Holds agreement with the ecumenical creeds (the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed) and a willingness to respect the teachings of the three forms of unity of the Christian Reformed Church (the Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, and Canons of Dort).
• Opens students to the possibility of various types of service and responsibility (some dependent on further conversations with elders about confessional alignment and the approval of council).