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About Us
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Fairlawn Christian Reformed Church is a congregation of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. Located in the charming
New England village of Whitinsville in the town of Northbridge, Massachusetts, we are nestled within the picturesque and historic Blackstone River Valley about 40 miles west of Boston, 15 miles south of Worcester, and 25 miles north of Providence, RI.
We are a welcoming congregation of believers committed to historic Reformed theology and worship, genuine Christian fellowship and community, local and global missions and evangelism, and the Christian education and nurture of our covenant children.
Our Beliefs
Have you ever noticed that things in our world never seem to be the way they ought to be? There are hints of goodness, but always it seems, tempered by ugliness. We've noticed this in the world around us, but even more undeniably, we've noticed it in ourselves. Things are just never what they should be.
We believe that God created all things good, but that our first parents rebelled against God's loving authority, plunging themselves, their descendants, and all creation into a state of guilt and corruption that the Bible calls "sin". This explains why things never seem to be the way they're supposed to be. We all have a tremendous problem: our sin has made us enemies of God, and we deserve the penalty of death.
But from the time of our first parents' rebellion, God mercifully promised to reconcile our relationship with him, and to restore all creation. His promise does not depend on our own attempts to live morally upright lives, for if we are honest, we realize that would give us no true hope. The reconciliation that God promised comes not through our efforts, but came through the work done by God himself when he took on human flesh and entered our world two thousand years ago. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's promise to reconcile our relationship with him.
We believe that Jesus reconciled us to God by acting as our substitute. First, Jesus lived the life of perfect goodness and obedience to God which all of us have failed to achieve for ourselves. Second, in his death Jesus, though innocent himself, experienced the punishment that is justly due to those who are guilty of sin. Though we do not deserve such good things from God, we believe his promise to count what Jesus did for us as if we had done it ourselves. The penalty that we owed has been paid in full, and God is perfectly pleased with us, as if we ourselves had lived a life of complete goodness and obedience. We hope you'll agree that this is good news.
This good news is the focus of our weekly worship, and of our entire life together as a church. We believe that the whole Bible is the unfolding story of God's promise to us in Jesus Christ. We believe that our confessions (The Belgic Confession, The Heidelberg Catechism, The Canons of Dort) are rich and faithful summaries of the teaching of the Bible that unify us together in a common understanding of God's truth.
Our History
Founded in 1958, Fairlawn was initially organized in response to overcrowding at the Whitinsville Christian Reformed Church (now Pleasant Street Christian Reformed Church). By January of 1960, the current church building on Goldthwaite Road had been completed (by a largely volunteer crew), and was ready for use. Sixty-six families and thirteen individuals formed the new congregation. By God's grace, many of these charter members who helped launch Fairlawn over fifty years ago continue to worship with us and play a vital part in our fellowship today. We thank God for his faithfulness to our congregation through the years, and pray for his continued blessing upon generations to come.
Below are some vintage color snapshots of the 1959 ground-breaking ceremony and the subsequent construction process.
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