Bethel Baptist Church - Drachten, NL
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N 53° 07.077 E 006° 04.415
32U E 304166 N 5889393
This is the Bethel Baptist Church in Drachten. The building is one of the biggest church buildings in the Netherlands.
Waymark Code: WM14V13
Location: Friesland, Netherlands
Date Posted: 08/24/2021
Views: 5
According to Wikipedia, this megachurch has 3000 seats (
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History of the Church
"Salvationist Sjoerd Veltman (Drachten, 1877 - Leeuwarden, 1952) built a small church on the Vogelzang in 1921, after he mainly evangelized in Haulerwijk in the previous years. By World War II, the congregation had about 50 members. On October 1, 1966, the new church on the Brouwerssingel was moved into.
In 1988 Rev. Orlando Bottenbley was called in Drachten. Since then, the municipality has experienced rapid growth. Membership grew from 60 to about 2,250 in mid-2007. In 2009, the Church had approximately 2,700 members, up from around 3,000 in 2015.[1] Including the children, about 3,500 people attend the services on Sundays.[2] Independent ecclesiastical congregations were founded from Drachten in Groningen, Dokkum and Leeuwarden. Bottenbley was succeeded as pastor in 2016 by Jacob Folkerts.
The church building on the Brouwerssingel was drastically renovated in 1992, adding two-thirds of the surface area. In 2000 the church moved to its current location on the industrial estate De Haven."
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