Flight Hill Church

We live in a time of change and turmoil. Today this, tomorrow that. Yet we are looking for peace and security. Something or someone we can hold on to. Where do we find that? De Vluchtheuvel has been such a place in Zetten for about one hundred and fifty years. Hidden among the greenery of tall trees. A white building, with a small bell tower. And then a finger points up. Upwards, to the higher. De Vluchtheuvel is a church community. But a special one. And with space... We all have talents, you can use them. Space means respect for each other's insights, feelings and beliefs. Wherever there is room for doubts. But where we always look again. We want to offer a place to everyone who wants to share in that space, in that search. The visitors of the Flight Hill feel free and casual, but at the same time connected where necessary. That's how you could characterize the Flight Hill. The Vluchtheuvel municipality originates from the Foundation Church of the Heldringstichtingen that has existed for more than 150 years. Officially, the Vluchtheuvel municipality belongs to the PKN, the Protestant churches in the Netherlands. However, it has its own ecumenical character.

In 1870 the Vluchtheuvelkerk in Zetten was consecrated. But what preceded that and how did the church develop into the Flight Hill Church of today? Read the history around the Vluchtheuvelkerk below. Thanks to Mr. J. Maats for the text.

Rev. Ottho Gerhard Heldring was born in Zevenaar in 1804, then German, but since 1816 Dutch again. His father was a minister there. Heldring studied theology at Utrecht University from 1820 to 1826; bourgeois rationalism stamped theology as a doctrine of virtue, religion as a barren branch on the tree of philosophy. For a long time, religion remained too much science, too little a matter of the heart. In 1826 he became pastor in Hemmen in the Betuwe, where he remained until his retirement in 1867. In preparing his Christmas sermon on the night before Christmas, he came to understand that the way of the Christian is another like that of virtue, a way of faith; it is about the righteousness that is in Jesus Christ. Because of the consequences of one of the periodic floods in that year, he had to deal with the resulting misery and the bitter poverty that prevailed there. In many articles and popular booklets he has raised the issue of poverty and advocated job creation. Heldring's name is forever linked to the work of the Heldring foundations, which started in neighboring Zetten. The impetus for this began in Gouda, where he visited the women's prison in 1847; The impressions he underwent there were decisive for a new period in his life. It turned out that there was no shelter for neglected girls when they were released from prison, with the result that they usually ended up in prostitution. Thanks to a large fundraiser, he was able to buy a beer brewery in Zetten, which after a renovation in 1848 became "asyl Steenbeek" for the care of neglected girls and ex-prisoners. The first director was Sister Pietje Voute, who donated thirty years of her life and her entire estate to "Steenbeek". Other victims of the impoverished society were admitted to the second Zets institution. In 1856, Talitha Kumi was founded, which at its opening housed one hundred children under the age of 16. In 1861, Bethel opened its doors to sexually endangered girls over the age of 16. In 1864, the Nursery School for Christian Teachers was established, where girls were trained as governesses and teachers, the first in the country on a Christian basis, which had to be built without state aid. With all this work Heldring continued to work as pastor of Hemmen until his retirement in 1867; in that year he got his own director's house in Zetten. His work was crowned with the construction of an asylum church as the centerpiece: the Flight Hill Church. The idea of raising the church on a high, specially raised mound (also called escape church woerd, see book Safe Places at High Tide pp 126-129), went back to the year in which Heldring had occupied the presbytery in Hemmen and when the water at the umpteenth dike break also washed over the presbytery (1827). The heavily capped attic could accommodate 300 people. The design of the hill was tendered for fl 4600 (guilders) with slopes over half a bunder, extended and 1.30 Ned. el above the highest water level at the dike breach in 1800. In 1870 the Flight Hill Church was consecrated; On the bell tower there is a hand pointing upwards as a weather vane. In 1897 the church was extended with a west wing.

N.B.: Most of the data is based on the book "In God's Name - Eight lives for others - by Johan Winklier, published by the N.V. Arbeiderspers in Amsterdam in 1950. Furthermore, the publication "High water in the Betuwe" by Mrs. I. Hittema has been included in one of the issues of the BET Zetten-Hemmen.

The Vluchtheuvellaan is closed to passers-by every day between 19:00 and 8:00.

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