Student Profiles

Introducing Fred Struik

Hi, I’m Fred Struik, and this is my beautiful wife Alexandra (Alex). We graduated high school together in 2010 (I’ll let you figure out how old that makes us), and we’ve been married for 10 wonderful years now. In that time, we’ve been blessed with many children, about half of whom have gone before us into glory (whom we can’t wait to meet there one day), and others who sit around our dinner table and make our home very fun and very loud. You’ll see pictured Josie (8), August (6), Luther (4), and Bethany & Fraser (2). In the meantime, we’ve also welcomed our son Hayden into the family, born on February 24, 2025.

I grew up in the distant western reaches of the CanRC: Surrey, BC. I’m the second of four children to my loving and godly parents. I’m blessed to have a very typical, “boring” story: born and raised in the church, attended catechism, and went to our covenant schools. And yet, though this trajectory is typical, it turns out that it wasn’t boring at all. God was hard at work on me during those years, nourishing and growing my faith, and they were years filled with the excitement of discovering ever more deeply his truth and his love. My story is one of God’s remarkable faithfulness through the generations.

Credo Christian High School plays a particularly important role in my story. It was there that I first laid eyes upon the history teacher’s daughter who would one day become my wife; it was in those halls that I developed deep and lasting friendships; it was under that school’s banner that I competed in basketball and track and field; and it was to those burgundy-coloured hallways that I one day returned to serve for five years as a teacher.

Though I worked my way through university by doing my best at farming, landscaping, and agricultural construction, the truth is that I’m not very handy, and it was in teaching that I felt I was truly at work using the gifts God had given me. At Credo, I taught English (my undergrad degree) and Bible, and it didn’t take long for Bible teaching to become my passion. Teaching Bible was an incredibly spiritually formative experience for me, and was also a major factor in my sense of God leading me to seminary. The pull to pursue ministry was an urge against which I struggled for some time, because I was reluctant to leave teaching behind. I loved and deeply cherish those years as a teacher. I’m grateful to all my colleagues and to the admin there who encouraged me both in my teaching and my preparations for seminary, and most of all to my students, who were so very patient with me as I developed my teaching (and, let’s be honest, often preaching) skills in the Bible classroom. Those experiences of sharing the faith with the next generation are memories I will always treasure. Nevertheless, eventually God’s nudging became too obvious for us to deny any longer, and we soon found ourselves packed up and traveling across the country.

It was no easy thing to uproot and leave behind our families in the Fraser Valley, but God has blessed us immensely in these years. Our family has grown – in number, in love, and in van-size. These four years have flown by, but in the meantime, we’ve developed wonderful friendships, and Hamilton has truly become home.

During the course of my studies, I was privileged to enjoy internships with Pastor Phil Grotenhuis (Pathway), Pastor Rolf den Hollander (Living Light), and Pastor Winston Bosch (Streetlight), as well as filling a vacant pulpit in Caledonia for a summer. I cannot overstate how much of a blessing these times were for me, and how much they’ve contributed to my growth. A special thank you to these men and congregations, as well as to my professors for all their wisdom and mentorship.

After this semester ends, I hope to present myself to classis to undergo my preparatory exam, and so we stand at the door of another new beginning. As we contemplate this wide-open future, we do so with much excitement (and trepidation!) of what the Lord has in store for us next. We trust that no matter where and what he calls us to, he will use us as instruments in his hand to bring glory to his name. Soli Deo Gloria!