More than half of Seventh-day Adventist congregations in The Netherlands are 'homeless.' No, members aren't panhandling on the streets, but they are in dire need of permanent church buildings to worship in. Affordable church buildings rarely hit the marke
More than half of Seventh-day Adventist congregations in The Netherlands are ‘homeless.’ No, members aren’t panhandling on the streets, but they are in dire need of permanent church buildings to worship in. Affordable church buildings rarely hit the market, and building new ones is often out of the question.
“To buy a plot [of land] is very costly and the mass of governmental regulations push most new church [construction projects] outside of our reach,” says Pastor Reinder Bruinsma, president of the country’s Adventist church.
Also expensive is maintaining the few church buildings Dutch Adventists do own. One congregation, meeting in The Hague, will soon be worshipping in a new church building, thanks to what many church leaders in the country see as a providential sale.
The cramped location the congregation had met in for 45 years needed extensive repairs that exceeded the church’s surplus funds. On March 28, the church in Holland sold the building to a group of project developers interested in converting it into an apartment complex.
Proceeds from the sale allowed the church to immediately buy a vacated church building, also in The Hague, to adequately meet the needs of its 300-member congregation. Worshippers will continue to meet in the old church until the new location is fully renovated.
With ample parking, convenient access to public transportation and a 600-seat auditorium, the new location will accommodate church growth. Currently, some 5,000 Adventists meet in 55 congregations—many in rented buildings—across The Netherlands.
Bruinsma says for many of the country’s small congregations, renting a building to worship in makes sense. But for larger congregations, such as The Hague congregation, securing a permanent location is crucial. He also says the country’s largely immigrant congregations find it difficult to rent church buildings since they tend to spend the entire Sabbath day in church. Plus, he says, “Most people still expect their church to look like a church.”
Adventists in Holland are not the only ones facing the conundrum of church ownership. Limited finances and waning membership have forced many denominations in The Netherlands to rein in new church projects. Because Dutch Catholics prefer their buildings—once sold—to remain places of worship, the Adventist church has recently been able to affordably purchase buildings Catholic congregations no longer use. The new church in The Hague is one such building.
Two years ago, Dutch Adventists converted a similar formerly Catholic church building into an Adventist church in the country’s southern province of Zeeland [See ANN June 21, 2005: “Church Members Save for Decades to Purchase Church Building”].
Bruinsma reports that when Catholics vacate a church building, they remove their liturgical paraphernalia and perform a ceremony that removes the building from Catholic use. With a few tweaks and the installation of a baptistery, the building will be ready for Adventist worship services. “Of course,” he adds, “we will make sure people [in the community] know that it has become an Adventist church!”
Bruinsma finds such purchases encouraging. “It shows that the church in The Netherlands still believes in launching new initiatives,” he says. “[While] most denominations in Holland are trying to sell, we are still in the market to buy church properties.”
Providing permanent church buildings for Adventist congregations will remain a top priority for church leaders in The Netherlands, Bruinsma indicates. Highest on the list is a building for the Ghanaian Adventist Church in Amsterdam. The global church’s special mission offering collected on the last Sabbath of June will, in part, help finance this project.
After renovations of the new church building in The Hague are complete, church officials expect to have leftover funds to help secure churches in the urbanized, Western part of The Netherlands.