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'Far away from tourists and ex-pats'

More years ago than I care to remember, I stepped off a train in Cuenca, in the Castilla la Mancha region of Spain, ready to start a year there.  I’d been before, for a couple of weeks, and stayed with EMF missionaries Luis Cano and Pilar Herrera, who pastored the church there at that time.  And now I was returning to live.  As a Spanish student, I wanted to experience “real” Spain and speak only Spanish, far away from tourists and ex-pats, and I definitely got that in Cuenca.

Cuenca is a provincial capital, right in the heart of Spain - almost exactly halfway between Madrid and Valencia, if you’re looking at a map.   While it now enjoys high-speed train links with the rest of Spain, when I was there, it was quicker to drive if you could.  If you had to go by train, which I usually did, it was a slow, 3 hour journey from Madrid. The train stopped in places that seemed to me to be in the middle of the desert, stops where there were no stations or even platforms! Passengers just hopped off and wandered away…  I loved it.  Cuenca is a city with ancient roots, currently with a population of around 50,000, and life there felt so quintessentially Spanish, so authentic and so different from home.  It was what I’d hoped for.  I loved learning how to live like a local.  How early the day started, how to siesta, how normal it was to be heading out for a bite to eat at 9 or 10pm, even on a school night!  I enjoyed the sunshine and blue skies; although Cuenca can be VERY cold in the winter, it’s almost always sunny there.  

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And I enjoyed joining the church.  One of the (many) wonderful things about being a Christian is that pretty much wherever you go in the world, you’ll be able to find a little community, your family in Christ.  I felt part of this community almost immediately.  

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My very first Saturday there, the church was hosting a morning meeting for local pastors and spouses (local is relative - some of these folks had travelled maybe 3 hours to be there), so I went along to help look after the children. I remember feeling so out of my depth, playing with children I didn’t know and couldn’t always understand!  But once the meeting was over, we all headed up into Cuenca’s gorgeous “old city” for lunch.  It was here that I met a number of other EMF workers, experienced some white-knuckle driving around tiny cobbled streets, and started to appreciate the true feeling of family that these believers shared.  Throughout my time in Spain, I would attend all kinds of regional youth meetings, women’s meetings, conferences etc. with these same people.  The churches were small, and often a great distance apart, so they needed each other and made such a great effort to meet up.

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To me, the church in Cuenca and these others nearby (again, nearby is a relative term!) seemed more like the early church we read of in the New Testament than what I was used to at home, and it gave me a lot to think about.  I felt like I belonged there in ways I couldn’t have put into words at the time, but I’ve never forgotten that feeling in the years since.  I learned so much about church, and faith, and effective witness during my time there, and benefited so much from Luis’ faithful teaching, Pilar’s wisdom, and from the Bible studies, conversations, and social times with my friends there. 

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The lessons learned then are lessons I’ve thought so much about and revisited so many times since.  Here are just a few:

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Church as a family.

When you live in a (albeit nominal) Christian culture, where there are churches in most towns, and where they are often well-established and self-sufficient,  it’s easy to lose the significance of being part of the family of God.  We can become so comfortable in our little world that church is a “nice-to-have”, rather than a lifeline.  The church in Cuenca was very small, and it was made up of a fairly random mix of people - old, young, Spanish, Romanian, long-time Christians, seekers…  Some of them travelled significant distances in, from the villages and towns outside the city, to attend.  There was little choice - if they wanted to go to an evangelical church, this was it.  Many of them were the only Christians in their families, and outside of the church they never came into contact with another believer in their workplace, school, gym etc.  So they needed each other and leaned on each other in very real ways.  This is pretty different from what most of us in the UK experience.

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This of course brought its challenges.  There were people at vastly different stages in their journeys, with different pasts and baggage, and often with very different outlooks on life and even on faith and on the Bible.  And here they were, pushed together in a small church.  It wasn’t always easy!  Isn’t this what church should be though?  When we have the choice, we tend to gravitate to the people who are most like us.  Who are educated similarly, dress similarly, and in terms of church, who believe the exact same things, and like the same kind of music, and have the “right” number of services and style of preaching and approach to worship.  It’s too easy to become a consumer: critical, quick to move on if we’re not happy, and easily offended by secondary issues.  But where you’ve no choice but to muddle along together, then that’s exactly what you do.  You learn to recognise what’s important, what’s non-negotiable.  And that you can and should compromise on other things, for the sake of unity.  You learn that we are meant to love each other in spite of our differences.  You learn how to fully and wholeheartedly welcome newcomers, be they seekers, or even Christians from abroad like me, with some strange beliefs and customs, but the same undeniable love for the Lord.  It’s sometimes messy, but is also so, so beautiful.

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The influence that our culture has on our theology.

I’ll start this by making it clear that I am so grateful for the rich Christian heritage that I have, for the men and women of faith who have gone before, and for the wisdom and experience that surrounds me.  That being said, there is a downside to coming from a culture that has been, in some shape or form, “Christian” for many generations, and from an established denomination with its traditions, norms, and expectations.  I recently heard someone talk about “decolonising” their theology, by which they meant that when they read the Bible, they want to strip away, as much as possible, anything incorrect that their church / culture had told them about certain things, and determine clearly what God and God alone says.  I immediately identified with this, as I had to face up to the realities of this during my time in Spain.  

When a church which is made up largely of first-generation believers and seekers, and when that church is something relatively new and very different in society, you again get a taste of what the early church must have been like.  Radical, forging a path in a hostile or apathetic world, reading God’s word, working out what it means for life and church, maybe getting it wrong and going back to the word to see what else it has to say…  All with very little expectation of what a Christian should look like or how a church should run.  While I know that many in this kind of situation might crave the wisdom and stability of a more established church, for me, stepping out of that environment helped me to see how much rules and traditions had influenced my beliefs and behaviours in ways that weren’t always Biblical.  Something I still ask myself or others when facing a decision is “are you worried about this because of what God says, or because of how you have been told to feel about it?”  I have no doubt that I don’t always get this right, but I’m grateful to have seen what a fresh, radically different faith can look like: earnestly seeking God’s face, unencumbered by fear of getting it wrong in the eyes of those we share a pew or a denomination with.

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How we evangelise.

This links with my previous point in a way.  I loved seeing how passionate the Spanish believers were about evangelising their neighbours, a passion that put me to shame.  As many of them were not from Christian homes or backgrounds, they felt very keenly that they had left darkness to come into the light, and I believe that is what inspired their passion for those around them. 

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I noted how willing they were to try new things, new ways of reaching out.  The ability to recognise if something isn’t really working, and look for a new opportunity, is something that’s vitally important in evangelism.  Again, in more established Christian cultures, we often have tried and tested ways of doing things and we don’t always recognise when that perhaps is no longer working.  Society is different now from 20 or 30 years ago.  People tend to be less receptive, less welcoming, but also in many ways, much more confused and desperate for some kind of peace and sense in their lives.  Is the best way to evangelise, in this current climate, to keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years?  Probably not - and it’s ok to recognise that, try something different, and try and try again.  

And in terms of personal evangelism, how open many of these believers were about their faith, in gentle, joy-filled, and winsome ways, with their co-workers, families and friends, and even with strangers in the supermarket or on the bus, is something that continues to challenge me to this day.  

All these years later, I still feel like my time in Spain was so impactful, and I still consider some of the lessons I learned (and some of the people I met) as among the most significant of my life.  It also cemented my lifelong relationship with EMF, having seen how the work operated in that small corner of the continent, and having been so blessed by the workers that I met there.  God, who has richly used and is still using these people to share the Gospel in Spain, also in His goodness richly used them in the life of that wee 20 year old from Northern Ireland.  So imagine my delight now, in being able to call them my colleagues!

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