News, July 2011

News from the Churches

Seminaries one step from government accreditation. Summer outreach activities under way. 76 baptised in Mallorca. Differing responses to new euthanasia law. Excitement as the Gospel encounters the 'Indignants' in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square. Bookshop at Madrid book fair. New web services flourishing.

Summer outreach activities are under way in numerous cities and smaller places across Spain. Pocket Testament league is holding its annual activities in Aragon, in the cities of Barbastro (Huesca) and Zaragoza, between mid July and mid-August. PTL has also been busy running the annual Evangelical Olympics in several cities, including Malaga, Madrid and A Coruña. The original event, held in Barcelona, happens in September. Over 40 years, 250,000 children have heard the gospel during these events.
A novel experience will be the 'Gospel Commandos', a choir of 25 voices, who sing acapella and is reaching out in plazas and parks in the town of Almansa over these weeks. An older choral outreach is Coral Mensaje (Message Choir), a joint Spanish-Swiss group, which draws young people from the two nations together to learn new works and perform on and close to beaches in a variety of regions.

The Lleida city council in Catalonia is to turn down works permission for a church which wants to open a new meeting hall. Right wingers are also campaigning against the establishment of the church - It seems to be a particular problem in the city, where several meeting halls have been closed on shaky legal grounds.

On 8th July the National Accreditation Agency ANECA gave the go-ahead for accreditation of seminaries linked to the Evangelical Federation FEREDE. This means that Bible Schools such as IBSTE, in Barcelona, founded by GEM, as well as several denominational seminaries, will now be able to grant degrees of university status. The Baptist seminary in Madrid will also offer Masters courses. Only a royal decree is now required for this to become law. The Ministry of Education will be responsible for writing the decree and will subsequently responsible for overseeing the quality of the courses. As usual, evangelicals will debate the convenience of state involvement in an area as sensitive as that of the training of pastors. But the fact is that most in FEREDE have been involved in the decade long process which is now nearing completion.

On Sunday, 3rd July, 76 people were baptised in Mallorca. The baptisms, by immersion in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, were held at two beaches, where members of the island's two largest churches gathered to celebrate. The AoG church now has close to 2,000 members, after 64 more were added into membership though the baptism at a small cove or Cala. In the case of the 140 year old Methodist church, 12 were baptised on the famous El Arenal beach, close to Palma. A few days earlier, 20 braved the chilly waters of the Bay of Biscay, being baptised in San Sebastian. In a country not known for burgeoning internal church growth, each of these figures commands great excitement and respect in the evangelical community.
On 29th June, 2 million viewers on TVE saw a televised baptism of two new believers, a feat in a different sense, as TV stations rarely take notice of the evangelicals except on the rare occasions when they do something 'wrong'!

The Assemblies of God are growing. In addition to the experience of Mallorca, where 64 were baptised on 3rd July, a recent symposium of the federation FADE agreed to set a target of planting 1,000 new churches in the coming decade. The FADE has also recently launched an online news service: Kerigma online.

On 5th July, the Spanish government, with a slight delay, launched its Religious Observatory web site. In addition to listing all registered religious communities (i.e churches, mosques...), it suggests guidelines for local authorities and other such bodies on how to cope with religious groups. Not all of the suggestions please the evangelical federation (FEREDE) and the EA, but at least it is an attempt to level the playing ground in issues such as how to deal with an application to open a new place of worship, what facilities to grant a group which wishes to have hospital chaplains, etc..

Evangelical responses to the new bill on the end of life are varying. The socialist government's final piece of social legislation has met with condemnation from the Evangelical Alliance, which the Evangelical Federation (FEREDE) looks more kindly on it. As the government agonises through the end of a legislature with no hope of re-election, it is hopeful to put this final nail in the coffin of divinely inspired laws on the sanctity of life. Over the past 8 years laws have reduced marriage to a 3 month prolongable contract, abortion free on demand up to 14 weeks into a pregnancy and now it hopes to move towards the legalisation of euthanasia. The FEREDE has come out in favour of a law which does not appear to promote active euthanasia and regulates a bit better the complicated business of switching off machines which might otherwise prolong life unnaturally. The Alliance is harder on the law, which appears to do away with the lex artis, a remnant of the hypocratic oath which aimed at ensuring the doctors always ensure the best for the patient.

When the 'Indignants' occupied Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square, the daily open air team of Kilómetre Cero faced an unruly crowd. Usually filled with shoppers, immigrants, pensioners and older unemployed folk, tourists and pickpockets, all going about their business, the crowd of young people with a mega-chip on their shoulder found it hard to share the space they had recently occupied with the square's regular users. So when the KM0 team turned up one evening they were attacked by people waving banners demanding things such as 'Freedom of expression', but not allowing that freedom to others. However, Jacob Bock, leader of KM0, reports that the following day the Lord turned things around, with an immigrant who couldn't wait for the appeal to get saved!

On 14th June leading daily El País published an article about the growing conversion rate of former muslims: you can read it here.

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.

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!

Other news and events

Another web we have recently come upon, thanks to email contact, is Prayer Sharers, set up by English speaking residents in Andalusia. It brings a weekly prayer update, among other items of interest.

Earlier news in bullets:

• For the 39th time, the Calatrava Evangelical bookshop in Madrid had a stand in the Madrid book fair at the beginning of June. Most evangelical institutions, such as schools, hospitals and bookshops, were closed during the Civil War (1936-9) and not allowed to reopen. The Calatrava bookshop was one of the exceptions. During the 1960s, they were encouraged by the young George Verwer (founder of Operation Mobilisation), who also opened a bookshop for a time in Madrid. Last year queen Sofia visited the Calatrava book stand.
• On 9th May the first ever 'demonstration' was held by Madrid evangelicals to protest against closures of meeting halls in the city.

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.