When I last visited Netherlands I heard about the problem of churches there closing. The picture above is from a church that had been converted into a book store. But this has now been confirmed by Dr Arjan Plaisier, secretary of the general synod of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands:
"According to expectation one quarter of the churches in the Netherlands will be closed within the next 10 years. We read about church closure in The Hague and other cities. But churches are closed in rural areas as well. Some buildings have not been there for a very long time. They were built somewhere in the 20th century. Other churches have been there for ages. Now they are being closed down. They are being destroyed or get another utilization. A part of history is finished. A place of worship, where baptism, marriage, mourning, prayer, singing and preaching took place, ceases to exist."
Sounds like this is a report about buildings, not churches.
ReplyDelete