How one community center in Ghent opens its doors to evangelisation, music, conversation, and the beauty of chance.
Ilse Spiloes is 58 years old and leads the Clemenspoort community center in Ghent with great care and energy. Her path began early on – she spent many years in a school as a teacher of music and councillor for her students, engaged in pastoral care, organizing, and developing creative formats. She was shaped by an early connection to the Redemptorists, in particular by a priest who took her seriously as a young girl and offered her support.
That trust and sense of being seen has stayed with her ever since. Around eight years ago, she accepted the invitation to join Clemenspoort. At first, her focus was on the business-side of this project, but over time her responsibilities – and her commitment – grew. Today, she oversees the big picture: events, volunteer coordination, musical leadership, networking, communications. She’s the president of this open houses community, though she never appears distant or hierarchical. She doesn’t see it as her profession only but as a personal commitment to be a partner in the mission of the Redemptorists.
Clemenspoort is an unusual place. Born out of the Redemptorist spirit and built in cooperation with various partners, the center brings together communal living, spiritual offerings, social engagement, and cultural openness. The building is located just steps from Ghent’s main train station, Sint-Pieters, and houses not only event spaces but also a religious co-housing, social services, a chapel, and workshops. Both the architecture and the activities reflect a shared purpose: openness, sustainability, participation.
Ilse speaks of very practical initiatives, like the Repair Café, where volunteers regularly fix broken items—devices, clothes, household goods. A simple act, almost mundane, yet one that quietly builds community. Or the Alpha gatherings, which unfold over ten weeks: people share a meal, watch short videos about catholic faith, and then talk freely about questions, doubts, and experiences. There’s no pressure, no dogma. It’s important to Ilse that people don’t just listen passively, as in traditional church settings, but that they become active participants, the so called ‘Missionairy Disciples of Jesus Christ’—that they can bring their own voice into the room in order to grow in their faith. That applies to music, too—the area where she first began her work. For her, music is never just background or ornamentation. It’s a way to create an atmosphere, a space that connects people, that remains open to difference and the unexpected.
She shares touching stories of small moments when something suddenly lights up. One Pentecost, Clemenspoort invited people to a shared meal—not just to attend, but to contribute. The guests didn’t come empty-handed; instead, they brought dishes to share. By the end, two refrigerators were full of food prepared by the community. For Ilse, this was a sign that responsibility had shifted—from the host to the people themselves. These seemingly small shifts are what she pays close attention to—because they show that people are beginning to see the space as their own.
Serendipity plays a central role in her work. When the center suddenly needed help updating its website, a 36-year-old man reached out—seemingly out of nowhere—and offered to take it on. Ilse doesn’t see such moments as mere coincidence, but as part of a movement that can’t be forced, only noticed. To her, Clemenspoort is a place that gives space to such movements. She doesn’t believe in rigid programs, but in attentive listening and open sharing. This is what gives the place its unique quality: that it is never truly finished, but remains, in the best sense, a work in progress.
What drives Ilse is not a grand vision but a quiet conviction: that people are looking for community—even in a secular, fast-paced city like Ghent. Clemenspoort is not only a missionary project, she says, but a space of resonance—open to believers, seekers, the curious. Anyone who walks through the door should not feel lectured, but welcomed. And those who stay do so not because of rules, but because of relationships.
In conversation, one senses Ilse Spiloes’ warmth, her calm, and her quiet resolve. Her work at Clemenspoort is not just a profession, but the expression of a deep inner commitment: that it is meaningful to create spaces for others. Spaces where music can be heard, where people listen, laugh, repair things, eat together—and hopefully feel something that is often lost in the noise of daily life. It is not a loud place. But it is a bright one.
Alpha is a starting point — and Clemenspoort is a place where community takes shape: with music, open conversations, and room for serendipity. Come by and discover what does you good.
Get to know Clemenspoort