Premise
Zion Christian School was founded on the deep conviction that Christian education is the responsibility of the covenant community as it seeks to train up its children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, enabling them to apply His Word to every aspect of their lives. Since the Christian school is understood to be an extension of the Christian home, the instruction and climate of the Christian school must agree with and support the teaching and example of the homes and churches of its students’ families.
The Early Years
The formation of the United Reformed Churches in North America in the mid 1990’s increased the feasibility of starting a new Christian school for families who belonged to these and other churches seeking to remain faithful to the historic Reformed faith. After many informal and unrecorded meetings, a group of concerned parents in these churches sent a letter to 22 area church councils and sessions explaining their interest in a new school and inviting each church to send a representative to an exploratory meeting on February 3, 1998. At this meeting a steering committee was formed. The focus of this new school would be: teaching every course from the perspective of biblical authority, infallibility, and inerrancy; teaching a Reformed world and life view; creating a school culture that encouraged sincere student piety.
It was the general consensus of this committee that, since parents of younger children still had a number of acceptable educational options, this new school should begin with high school grades and eventually add lower grades. Over the course of several months, these parents prayed often, sought instruction and inspiration from Scripture, and consulted local pastors, parents, and other Christian education professionals in order to craft a mission statement, bylaws, and a philosophy statement. In October of 1998, Dr. William Dennison spoke to a group of potential supporters on the subject, “Recovering Reformed Christian Education.”
Articles of association were also drawn up and on November 4, 1998, Zion Christian High School held its first official association meeting at which time the steering committee was named the Board of Directors Pro-Tem.
Throughout that first winter and spring, approximately $41,000 was raised to form an initial pool of operating funds. On April 22, 1999, the association met duly and elected the first official Board of Directors. On September 7, 1999, Zion Christian High School held its first classes at the Home School Building in Wyoming, Michigan for fifteen students. The school then relocated to Hudsonville, Michigan in January of 2000 and leased portable classrooms adjacent to Cornerstone United Reformed Church. Three new students were added here.
In the fall of 2002, grades 5 through 8 were added thanks to the requests of many families. This year proved to be a successful one, despite increasingly crowded facilities including the basement of Cornerstone United Reformed Church.
The Move
The Lord richly blessed Zion with more supporting families and in the summer of 2003, the school relocated once more, this time to its current and permanent locale on the corner of 76 th Street and Byron Center Avenue. Also at this time, grades pre-k through 4 were successfully added. Since this time, the school has enjoyed the Lord’s blessing of significant enrollment growth and teachers who remain faithful to God’s Word.
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Facility Updates
In the summer of 2004, tiered parking was added, as well as baseball, softball, and soccer fields.
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In the summer of 2005, Zion broke ground on a large addition, nearly doubling the size of our facility. Included in the expansion was a gym, classrooms, computer lab, library, science lab, music room, and kitchen. This beautiful addition was compled in time for the fall of 2006 and has been utilized to the fullest due to enrollment growth.
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