After standing empty for two years a former Roman Catholic church in Zeeland Province, Netherlands will be transformed into a Seventh-day Adventist congregation’s home. Before the June 15 purchase, the 100 members of the Adventist church in Zeeland were the only province that did not have their own building.

“I consider this a true blessing for the church in this part of the country,” says pastor Reinder Bruinsma, president of the Adventist Church in the Netherlands. “It will put the [local] church more clearly ‘on the map’ and will surely strengthen the sense of mission of the members in this province.”

Due to heavy membership losses the 70-year old church is just one of the latest Catholic churches to be closed and sold to other Christian denominations. Members of the Adventist church in Zeeland—which has been around for 100 years—have saved for decades to purchase their own house of worship, says Bruinsma. They raised about 40 percent of the amount needed for the purchase while the church’s headquarters in Netherlands provided the rest.

The congregation had been renting a space in a Mennonite Church and a Dutch Reformed Church. The new building was chosen for its solid construction, favorable location, and 250-seat capacity.  With the church building comes a house, which will be adapted for children and youth work.

While the selling parish took items that were specific to Catholic worship from the building, there will be other modifications such as removing the altar and constructing a new liturgical center and a baptismal font.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Netherlands now has more than 4,500 members.  Church officials say that with the church there growing at a rate of two percent each year they will soon look at providing a number of additional church buildings.