News, May 2011

News from the Churches

First ever evangelical 'demonstration' protests against church building closures outside Madrid's city hall. Protestante Digital English service to relaunch in June. Canaries hear gospel. Easter day is day of prayer for the Basque Country. Churches threaten demonstrations over church building closures. Saturday 2nd was Spain Prayer day. Actualidad Evangelica web news service launched. Protestante Digital renewed - English service temporarily unavailable! MariLuz murder trial took place. Hospital chaplains finally at work in Madrid. This and more... Read on!

Now on or coming soon!

The English language service of Protestante Digital has been closed during the relaunch of this news service of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance in Spanish. PD's director has assured us that a completely new service will be launched in June to replace the one which we knew until January. The Catalan language service will take a bit longer, possibly being relaunched after the summer.

The government is to include the recognition of certain protestant academic (theological) titles in a new adaptation of its way of relating to the evangelical community. A number of seminaries have been campaigning for this for years. Also a number of pastors, who were not permitted to contribute to the Social Security under Franco (and later) are now finally to get a pension. In addition, evangelicals will be granted the right to request 0.7% of their tax bill to be granted to the Federation of Evangelical Churches (FEREDE) in future years (hopefully as from the 2012 tax year), as has for many years been the right of Catholics. Finally, the status of church buildings will be defined. Over the past few years many buildings have been closed by municipal authorities, often on spurious grounds.

Mi Esperanza (My Hope), a TV campaign, will take place at Christmas 2011. It was launched in mid-November 2010. The campaign aims to unite the best of mass and personal evangelism, by training church members to invite neighbours, family and other contacts to their home to watch the 30 minute TV show together. They will then give a 3 minute testimony and invite people to turn to Christ. In this simple way, local churches can take advantage of a nationwide broadcast on a main stream channel to reach out at a time of year when people are most open to the gospel. This outreach is being supported by most of the largest denominations and many local churches, as well as backed with a major contribution from the Billy Graham Association. See the Spanish website!

Recent news and events

On 9th May evangelicals demonstrated for the first time in Spain. The cause was closures of centres of worship in Madrid. Over one thousand gathered in front of the City Hall, until recently the central Post Office building, in plaza Cibeles, better known for the celebrations of Real Madrid FC. The government is working on a web site which will help local authorities decide what is the right way to proceed when churches open centres of worship. It will use the name www.observatorioreligioso.es, but is not due to go on line until 15th June.

From 11th March Madrid's hospitals have recognised chaplains to attend the evangelical patients. Although it has long been recognised as a fundamental right of protestant pastors to visit their church members in hospital, this is the first case of a specific role being permitted within the public health system. It is to be desired that there will soon be similar recognition across Spain. Health services are now directed by regional governments, requiring separate agreements in each one.

Easter activities once again took various forms.
There was a major outreach in Grand Canary from the 19th to the 26th. Ken and Alison Barrett flew out to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to join up with five churches in a week of training and campaign. Alison taught childrens´ work, Ken did “Homiletics with sketch-board” classes and for a couple of days and they were joined by other leaders of the “On the Red Box” ministry from Madrid. This was a follow up to contacts and evangelism done when Ken was there in September to represent the OM Spain board.

Easter Day (24th April) has been declared International Day of Prayer for the Basque Country. In addition to prayer for the political situation and the end of ETA terrorism, the region is less evangelised than other parts of Spain. The Basque language and culture is in part the problem, since most churches have been planted among Spanish speaking migrants (initially those from other parts of Spain). You can download the prayer information here.

Easter is a key date for numerous special conferences and church or group retreats. This year the main event was Mission Possible, a national youth missions event which took place in Madrid. Also in the Canaries the first regional Protestant Congress took place.
On 19th April pastors in Madrid representing churches across Spain gathered to discuss action after a spate of church building closures on spurious legal grounds, particularly in Madrid and Catalonia. A demonstration was planned in front of the Madrid City Hall on 9th May. Meanwhile, the European Court has accepted a case against the government for refusal to pay pensions to pastors who served the churches during the Franco dictatorship and are excluded from social security pensions.
On 2nd April the 3rd Spain we are praying for you national prayer day took place in locations across the country. In Mallorca prayer took place at meetings throughout the preceding week. The main events united churches at rallies in most provincial capitals on Saturday evening, with a 10 minute national video link bringing all the main centres together. Thanks for praying for Spain during the week.
The Brethren Assembly in León has been awarded a grant of 5,000 sqm to build a 3,000sqm (30,000 square foot) facility. After 145 years in the city, the church is finally able to dream of moving out of its very cramped building in the centre of the city. They will have to pay to build, of course, a great challenge for the coming years. Cecil Hoyle arrive to plant the church in 1869, the year when religious freedom was declared in Spain. He opened a church building and annexe with school houses for boys and girls.
The trial of Santiago del Valle, accused of the murder of MariLuz Cortés, daughter of an evangelical pastor, took place between 16 February and 22 March. The little girl (3 years old) went missing from her home in Huelva, Andalusia in January, 2008. Her body was discovered several weeks later thrown into the harbour close by. More information is the separate article.
[Image 104???] On 9th March the new news service of the Evangelical Federation was launched with the name Actualidad Evangélica. This is part of a larger project, called Red de Servicios Informativos Evangélicos (Evangelical News Services Network). It takes the place of the previous FEREDE news service. We wish this new news channel well as it attempts to communicate the reality of the Spanish Evangelical world. AE thus complements the news service of the Evangelical Alliance, Protestante Digital, which was itself relaunched earlier this year, sadly to date without its English language news service. One of the novelties of AE is its sections for rather more regions than PD currently offers.

Earlier news in bullets:

An evangelical master chocolatier has become Spain's chocolate champion.
Protestante Digital, the Spanish evangelical news service, was revamped and relaunched on 31st January, 2011. The English language service remains to be reconnected at the time of writing, but we look forward to the positive effects of the transformation. We congratulate them on the amazing growth and effectiveness of the service, approximately over the same period as PrayforSpain has been in existence.

For earlier news from the churches, click here!

Finally, more news from the churches is (usually) always available at the Protestante Digital site.

As of 1st February, the transformation of the PD web means there has been some interruption to the service. You can also listen to some reports and comment.