Westlake Seventh-day Adventist Church

Our History

 "We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our history."  EGW,   LS 196

A Short Summary of the History of the Westlake Seventh-day Adventist Church

 

  1.  The Beginning:  1958-1968
  • 1956 – Andras Nagy first started mission work in the city of Cleveland

 

  • 1957 – a small group met regularly at the YMCA on Sabbath afternoons

 

  • 1958 – an organized church was formed, with 10-12 members

 

  • 1960, April 12 – the Erlacher family arrived in Cleveland.  Sister Dengel was already a church member

 

  • 1961 – Andrew Nagy retires

 

  • 1961-1963 – Karoly Daly serves as pastor until he passes from an illness

 

  • 1964 – Jakab Slezak begins his ministry in the church

 

  • Within a few months the church moves to the newly built Yugoslavian church on the east side and holds services in the basement.

 

  • 1965 – the Slezak family buys a home and converts the dining room and living room into a house church on Sabbaths

 

  • 1968 – the members start to put aside little bits of savings in the hope of someday building a church

 

  • 1969, March 31 – the Slezak family sells their home and moves away from Cleveland, at which time the church was in danger of disintegrating

 
 

  1. Period of Renewed Growth
  • 1969, April – the church was without a pastor or a building.  Tibor Urmos was the church elder.  Meantime, a large number of Hungarians immigrated and joined the church family.

 

  • Within a few weeks the church family found a new place to worship.  The Lakewood Seventh-day Adventist church offered them a room to meet in in their basement.

 

  • 1969, November 24 – the Sukola family arrives in Cleveland.  The following month he was elected as the church’s elder.

 
 

  • 1971 – the church board together with the church family decides to build a church

 

  • 1973, August – the new pastor, Pastor Danyi Istvan,  arrives.

 
 

  1. Church Building
  • 1975, July 15 – the foundation is laid

 

  • 1978, March 25 – the new church is open for the first worship

 

  • The total cost of the church building was $164,623.49 and involved approximately 31,200 hours of labor.

 

  • The membership at the time of the new church opening was 38 members, approximately 12 families

 

  • 1978 – in the fall of that year, Pastor Danyi received and accepted a call to serve in California, and moved away with his wife

 
 

  1. Stabilizing years
  • 1979, January 1 – Pastor Igor Botansky accepted the call to be the pastor and began his ministry in Cleveland.

 

  • 1988, September 9-11 – the 23rd Annual Hungarian Bible Conference was held at the Cleveland Hungarian Church in Westlake (for the third time at this location).  At this time the church was dedicated and the mortgage was burned.

 

  • After faithfully serving the church family for 22 years as Pastor, Elder Botansky and his wife retired.

 

  1. The 21st Century
  • 2001, May - after the retirement of Elder Botansky, Edward Marton took over as the new pastor.  He served the church for 8 years.

 

  • 2010 – Elder Laszlo Hangyas took over as the pastor of the church.

 

  • 2015, April - The conference invited pastor Marius E. Marton to serve this congregation.