Margareth VanMinde and her family joined the group in 1960, after immigrating from her husband's homeland in Indonesia. Formerly a Dutch colony, the country had gained its independence, and rather than adopting Indonesian citizenship, the couple came to Salt Lake City, because Holland was closed to non-natives as it struggled to recover from the war.

VanMinde and Molenaar became fast friends, with their children quickly learning to call the other set of parents "Aunt" and "Uncle." "We had no relatives here, so our friends became our relatives," Molenaar explains. "We became family," and the ties continue, with VanMinde hosting Molenaar for a two-week stay during the church's celebration.

Though it began as something of a Dutch enclave, the church readily opened its arms to others who found themselves outside the mainstream in Utah. Cambodian refugees flocked to the church in the 1980s before forming their own Cambodian Christian Reformed Church.

American Indians joined early on, many of whom had come in contact with the faith via a missionary who worked on the reservation. They then attended a school for American Indians in Brigham City, and as they moved into the community, they sought out the church as a way of reconnecting with the familiar, according to Bill Heersink.

A faculty member at the Salt Lake Theological Seminary — which also grew out of a CRC ministry called the Utah Institute for Biblical Studies — Heersink has traced the denomination's roots in Utah to the early 20th century. Missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were finding great success in Holland during that time, he said, and many of the new converts came to Utah.

A majority of them settled in Weber County and the Ogden area, prompting a church official in Denver to send a pastor to Utah to minister to those who wanted to return to their former faith. They met in a Presbyterian church for a few years, but eventually, the group disbanded.

First Christian Reformed Church, 803 E. 900 South, provided the genesis for a rebirth of the faith in Utah when it was founded by Dutch immigrants in the mid-1950s.

Today, newer members are raising children among the older generation, sharing in the spirit of the original community and seeking to expand it in the context of 21st-century family life where both parents usually work, and time together is more limited.