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Go Global – Go Local

22/7/2024

Last year, Ruth Burke travelled with a team from Stranmillis Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Belfast, to the church in Almuñécar, Spain (Manuel López Franco and Alba Ortega González). She writes…

We all enjoyed and benefitted from the experience, but there was one thing most of us found frustrating – our lack of Spanish. Manuel and Alba did a wonderful job of translating, but they couldn’t be everywhere all the time, and some of the conversations we would have loved just weren’t possible.

 

So, imagine arriving at your holiday destination, to discover that months of practice on Duolingo just aren’t cutting it; are you best, come Sunday morning, to settle down to listen to an online sermon from home?

 

Here are some reasons why making your way to a local congregation might be a better option.

·      We gain valuable insight into what church lifeis like in the country we arevisiting, and it’s easier to pray intelligently for a congregation we haveexperienced first-hand.

·      Seeing visitors (even tongue-tied ones) can be a huge encouragement, especially to a small congregation.

·      Meeting with other believers is good for our souls. Christianity transcends culture and language, and the warmth of the welcome reminds us of that.

·      As we are used to biblical language and what happens in a service, we may understand more than we expect. The songs might be familiar, for example. In Almuñécar we witnessed a baptism.

·      It’s likely that someone will be determined to communicate with you, by a shared language, Google translate, or gesticulation!

·      We may be challenged about the way we do things at home - biblical or merely cultural?

·      There are many in our UK churches who do not have the privilege of worshipping God in their heart language. Being one of them, however briefly, helps us to empathise.

·      We are encouraged to long for Heaven when people ‘from all tribes and peoples and languages’ will worship God together.

 

Prayer Points