News, April 2005

News from the Churches

Spanish evangelical reactions to the election of Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI are sure to be quick in arriving. P4S suspects that whoever had been elected would not have been especially good news for evangelical relations with the Spanish branch of the Roman Catholic church, but the choice of a well-known conservative will not bode well for an improvement in (almost non-existent) relationships.

Madrid's evangelicals mourn - but not for the Pope! Doña Elfriede Fliedner was the last of a family line dating back to the first missionaries in the late 19th Century who made a significant impact on Spain through church planting and, in particular, the establishment of the El Porvenir (the Future), an evangelical school in central Madrid. Many of the country's evangelical leaders were educated here at a time when all other evangelical schools had been closed down by the Franco dictatorship. El Porvenir survived due to it's being owned by a German family.
Doña Elfriede died on 1st April, aged 92. On Saturday, 2nd over 400 attended the memorial service held at El Porvenir.
El Porvenir continues to provide an evangelical education to this day and the Fliedner Foundation also has a second school in the eastern districts of Madrid, as well as a book shop. The shop also publishes an annual Vademecum which for over 100 years has been listing the addresses of all the churches and other evangelical organisations, shops, etc., in Spain.

500 young people meet to pray Over 500 young people met in Barcelona on 2nd April for the 3rd interdenominational prayer meeting, organised by Venga Tu Reino (Thy Kingdom Come) and the Evangelical Alliance. Leaders of 4 churches prayed for the young generation: one Pentecostal, one Brethren, one Baptist and one Methodist. Prayer for unity and other petitions followed.

750 young people attended a Missions Congress over Easter in Huesca. Under the title Mission Possible the event, hosted by the Free Evangelical Churches, the young people were from many different churches across Spain. The date for the next Mission Possible event is 2007.

Mission for the 3rd Millennium A congress is being organised to be held from 4th to 7th May in Madrid. George Verwer and Samuel Escobar are among the keynote speakers.

Buenas Noticias TV, the weekly evangelical programme on the national station TVE, has now double the air time, with 15 minutes each week. In addition, from March it is now aired in Spain at the later time of 9.00 on TVE2, a welcome change for Spaniards who like to lie in on Sunday mornings! It can also be seen on the international satellite ch l TVE Internacional on Sundays at 06.30 GMT in Europe, Africa and Asia and 10.10 GMT in the Americas. More info at http://www.rtve.es/tve/programo/index.html Note that the timing on the programme is Madrid time (GMT +1), final programme, still subject to change, published 24 hours ahead.

Sources El Mundo, TVE, EP, ProtestanteDigital, Ferede