Building Determinationby Amy Scheer

Construction of Christ Chapel began in 1986, despite a Midwest farm crisis, thanks in large part to the leadership of board member Marv DeWitt. He was awarded an honorary doctorate during the building’s dedication two years later.

Land values plummeted. The fiscal year ended in the red. Northwestern’s president declared it “a time when economic conditions in our immediate vicinity have seldom been worse.”

The year? 1985. That August, Jim Bultman stepped into the presidency of Northwestern College and faced both a budget shortfall and a large-scale farm crisis in the Midwest.

He also received an invitation to lunch from Marv DeWitt, a board member with a mission: Build a new chapel.

DeWitt and his brother, Bill, had bought a few turkeys back in 1938. They raised them on their parents’ farm north of Zeeland, Mich., and sold eggs the following spring. The turkeys multiplied, waddling through wartime even as other hatcheries failed, and the brothers moved into year-round production by 1958. Naming themselves BilMar Foods, the DeWitts turned a few turkeys into a multi-million-dollar business, eventually merging with the Sara Lee Corporation in 1987.

Farm crisis? College budget concerns? DeWitt could see a light at the end of the tunnel—or, rather, sunlight streaming through the tall, elegant windows of a new chapel and adjacent music hall. A fund for the building had begun some 25 years prior, and DeWitt was determined to see its construction through to completion.

“It was a tough time for the college,” says DeWitt. “Some thought we shouldn’t go ahead with the chapel. I pushed hard for it. I said it was the best time to build.”

After pledging to give $50,000 a year toward the project, DeWitt presented the board with a check in the amount of $180,000. In response, four other members of the board stepped forward and promised to bump up their own pledges as well.

In March 1986, the executive committee unanimously approved the project. Ground was broken two months later. The building was dedicated on April 10, 1988, and DeWitt was awarded an honorary doctorate.

“It is his positive spirit, his contagious enthusiasm, his ‘you can do it’ attitude that has most endeared him to those closest to Northwestern and to me,” Bultman said at the dedication ceremony. “This came at a time when we needed it most.”