Meet Scholarship Recipient: Christopher Kingdom Grier II

The LEAD Scholarship Fund is one of the strategies employed by Thrive, the CRCNA’s congregational services agency, to develop multiracial congregational leadership in the CRC denomination. Recipients of this scholarship attend one of the higher learning institutions affiliated with the denomination -- Calvin Theological Seminary, Calvin University, Dordt University, The King’s University College, Redeemer University, Kuyper College, and Trinity Christian College. These students have also expressed a strong desire to advocate for biblical justice and racial reconciliation through the church and/or in community settings.

Through bountiful gifts given last year, Thrive was able to award scholarships to two students for the 2025/26 school year. It’s our privilege to introduce you to one of these recipients: Christopher Kingdom-Greer II. Read his brief biography below and some of his thoughts on the importance of biblical justice.

Hello, my name is Christopher Kingdom Grier II, and I am privileged to have received the LEAD scholarship for 2025-2026.

I am currently a Junior at Calvin University studying Political Science with minors in Religion and Urban Sociology. I grew up as a pastor’s kid in the heart of Holland, Michigan. A place where you can find a church on every corner and a heavy concentration of Christian academics (having Hope’s campus and Western Seminary in the city). What this meant was I have always been not merely in proximity to, but in a deep relationship with Christian academics who went to my church, worked with or studied with my parents (at Western Seminary), or just lived in the neighborhood. In these relationships, I have always learned a lot about the Bible, but never truly had an intimate relationship with Jesus.

I was privileged enough to go to a Christian school for middle school and high school. This allowed me to learn about what it would mean to be intimate with God. It allowed me to take a class called Discipleship with Ray Vanderlaan. RVL invited us into a new lifestyle that was not merely academic but fully in pursuit of experiencing God intimately so that we might make him known.

At Calvin, I have had the privilege to serve in many spaces. I was able to serve on the student senate, the residence life team as a Resident Assistant, a section leader within the Gospel Choir, a committee member on the President’s Intercultural Advisory Committee, and mentor orientation leaders, as well as a program for incoming students as an Orientation Intern. Alongside my on-campus activities, I also serve as a Worship Leader at my church in Holland called Maple Avenue Ministries.

As I transition from Calvin next year,  I hope to continue my education to serve as an Old Testament Professor. I have been privileged enough to study under some great Biblical minds, and it was their intentional discipleship that brought me into the deep desire to make Jesus known by way of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. But these were also the people who zoomed in on Mishpat & Tzedakah (Justice and Righteousness).

I seek to engage these biblical languages of justice in the pursuit of creating an intentional space that can acknowledge the hardship of being a minority in this world and a church that centers the majority. My favorite preacher once said that “if whiteness moves away from the center, then Jesus can take His rightful place (Rev. Dr. Denise Kingdom)." I hope to be the hands and feet that pursue Mishpat and Tzedakah in spaces that often have little hope.

Shalom & Shema!

If you feel led to support this valuable scholarship fund and students like Christopher, please give online at this link. Your gift today will bless future students as they train for and prepare to engage in the ministry of racial reconciliation in church and in society.

For those who wish to be considered for a LEAD student scholarship from Thrive, information and an application are found at this link.