Pastor of multicultural church to speak at Northwestern

The Rev. Dr. Denise Kingdom Grier, lead pastor of a multiethnic, multicultural and multigenerational church in Holland, Mich., will speak during Northwestern College’s chapel service on Friday, Sept. 22, at 10:05 a.m. in Christ Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Kingdom Grier serves at Maple Avenue Ministries. The congregation is a union church of the Reformed Church in America (RCA) and the Christian Reformed Church.

“Denise is a tremendous leader in the RCA,” says Mark DeYounge, dean of Christian formation at Northwestern College. “Her voice is one that could be characterized as pastorally embracing and prophetically visionary. Her life as a pastor and her witness as a follower of Christ truly put forward a picture of what it means to be a minister of reconciliation. And, speaking out of my personal opinion and bias, she’s one of the premier preachers in the RCA today. For all these reasons, I’m excited for her to be joining us here on campus.”

Kingdom Grier graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., where she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology. After serving as a social worker for many years, she went on to become the first African-American female to graduate from Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich., with a Master of Divinity degree. She recently earned a doctoral degree in ministry from Western, researching apartheid in the American church toward the development of an embracing model of ministry. She served as chair of Western’s diversity team for four years and consultant to the seminary’s president on matters of diversity for two years.