News, December 2011

News from the Churches

Now on! My Hope TV outreach in follow-up to TV campaign, 15th to 17th. 3rd Protestant Congress of Catalonia takes place in Terrassa. Christmas TV service on TVE on Christmas Eve.

Mi Esperanza (My Hope), a TV campaign, took place on 15th to 17th December. The campaign unites 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 are taking advantage of a nationwide broadcast on a national 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 a total of some 1,440 local churches, as well as backed with a major contribution from the Billy Graham Association. (More information here from BGEA.
After lengthy negotiations with several national broadcasters, only Intereconomía has agreed to air the programmes, which will go out on the evenings of 15th to 17th December. Other better loved channels refused to take the programmes due to a fear of loss of advertising revenue, among other issues. In any case, 15,000 DVDs have also been prepared for the 'Matthew Homes' where the programme will be seen by guests of the owners, so nothing less than a power cut will stop the airing! Pray that people will not be put off by the poor reputation that the Intereconomía channel has among the general public. A business and finance channel, it is considered excessively right wing or outright fascist. See the Spanish website!
One prayer concern at mid-November was that over half of the churches officially signed up to the outreach had not made a financial contribution at that date, despite encouragements to have special offerings, special events and so on.

On Christmas Eve (24th December) Spain's evangelicals will again be able to enjoy a national TV broadcast, as TVE 2 puts on the annual Christmas service. It will be at 19.00 CET. Recording takes place at the calle Trafalgar Brethren Assembly on 18th. We will attempt to inform you if it is also available on the International channels of TVE.

Over the bank holiday weekend 8th to 10th December Catalonia's evangelicals are celebrating their third 'Protestant Congress'. With the background darkening with threats of church closures over the past year, Catalonia is still the region with the largest proportion of evangelical church members. Indeed, there are close to as many active congregations as there are Roman Catholic ones. The Congress will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of the TV programme 'Neixer de Nou', which is broacast every week on the rgional channel TV3.

On 31st October, the FEREDE (Federation of Spanish Evangelical Churches) has called all its member churches to join demonstrations to call attention to the ever poorer state of religious freedom in the country. Churches (and other buildings of religious minority groups) are being closed at the whim of municipal authorities, especially in Madrid and Catalonia. A new project before the Catalan Parlament is to rewrite its regional law on religious liberty, giving local city councils the last word on how and where religious groups can meet. This fundamental right, upheld in theory by the 1988 Constitution, is now seen to be severely under threat.
Catalan pastors already demonstrated in early October, but a mass demonstration of the membership is planned for Saturday, 5th November. In reminiscence of the British 'gunpowder plot' of 1605, they hope to put a virtual bomb under the seats of politicians in the run-up to the 20th November elections.
On 20th October evangelical representatives met with Madrid's deputy mayor Ana Botella (wife of former president Aznar) and held a very fruitful meeting, which involved discussion of the problems the churches are having with the city council over buildings. They outlined a future procedure for resolution of the difficulties.
The churches of the Balearic Islands placed a half page twice in the region's leading newspaper, Diario de Mallorca, to get the situation into the public eye. On the 30th the notice was placed below a report on Mallorca against Barça, a sure favourite of many readers!
Churches in Aragon gathered in Zaragoza's Plaza del Pilar on the 31st to join the protest.
On the eve of November 5th's demonstration against church closures, the Barcelona City Hall has given one church 48 hours' notice to stop all activities. Apparently a neighbour has complained about noise and in addition the building has no licence, despite having existed legally since 1985, well before the current law (2009, with 5 years for churches to adapt). It is not exactly a noisy pentecostal church, either, but a Brethren Assembly. Once again, the authorities have overstepped their brief and by attacking a conservative church they will certainly have stirred up those who might not have demonstrated this day, thinking the closures only affect new, noisy upstarts. <http://actualidadevangelica.es/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3320:ultima-hora-el-ayuntamiento-de-barcelona-da-48-horas-a-una-iglesia-evangelica-para-que-cese-su-actividad&catid=46:actualidad|More here (in Spanish)>

Other news and events

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 very soon to replace the one which we knew until January. The Catalan language service will take a bit longer, possibly being relaunched some time in the autumn.

Earlier news in bullets:

• 11/11/11 was a busy day for evangelicals around Spain. OnTheRedBox in central Madrid held a day of open air evangelism in the Puerta del Sol, starting their open airs at 11.00. Meanwhile, many believers everywhere spent the day in prayer -and celebration- for the coming My Hope TV outreach.
• John MacArthur has visited Spain for the first time. On 1st October he gave several conferences in the Auditorium in León (north west Spain). Over 1,000 attended the conferences.
• The Gideons report that some 70 prisoners are coming to the Lord each month at a remand centre north of Madrid. Hundreds are doing a correspondence course of follow-up. They also report that the entire length of the main Pilgrims' Road to Santiago has now been covered, with Bibles being offered to 240 hostels.
• TWR has signed a new deal with the broadcaster Canal de Vida, linked to the Spanish Churches' Federation FEREDE. In particular, Radio Encuentro, which has struggled for years to obtain licences to broadcast from within Spain - although it has a strong presence through Internet- will now be able to use TWR's transmitters to reach a wider audience. The deal will be put into practice when the current MECOVAN series of programmes comes to an end in 2013.
• On 5th July, the government 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.

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.