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L:ong seen as a graveyard for foreign missionaries, Spain continues to be a country where ministry success is measured in ways different from those in other parts of the world, but where Christian leaders are all proclaiming that a revival is coming.

Bringing a Spaniard to make a public confession of faith in Jesus Christ and leading that convert to join a church is difficult. “The closest thing I can compare it to is working with Muslims,” said Dayana Elasmar of Latin America Mission (LAM), who works in Villanueva de la Serena. “Here, accepting Christ requires being rejected from your church and your community.”

Viewed statistically, the evangelical picture in Spain is bleak. The 2001 Operation World reports that less than half of one percent of Spain’s 39.8 million people are Protestant Christians.

“We have over 8,100 towns in Spain, but only 650 of them have evangelical churches,” said Pablo García, a Spanish pastor in Chiclana, near Cadiz. García heads an expanding church-planting ministry called the Kairos project. “This means that there are more than 7,000 towns without churches.” As a result, 30 million Spaniards live in places where there are no churches. “Egypt has more Christians than Spain,” he said.

Missionaries and church leaders in Spain consider the country strategically located to evangelize Europe and North Africa. Seventy million tourists flock to the country’s Mediterranean beaches each year while 1.5 million Muslims cross the Gibraltar states yearly to visit family. In 1990, more than 80,000 copies of the Jesus film were distributed to transient Muslims through an inter-mission port ministry called Operation Transit.

But, in a country where a congregation of 250 members is considered to be a large church, LAM missionary Jane Carrillo said, “People are much more open to the gospel because they see their needs.”

“People have broken down in tears in a public place and have raised their hand to say they want to accept Jesus as their savior,” Elasmar said. “But having them come to church and congregate is very difficult. People find themselves in a very strong struggle against their family, their community, their friends, everything around them.

“It is a price they have to pay, and many of them are not willing to pay it.”

Missionaries describe Spaniards as a traditional people who adhere to their Roman Catholic loyalties even when they no longer participate in the life of the church or even accept Catholic theology. Many young people see church people as hypocritical, giving lip-service acceptance of Christianity but involved in unbibli-cal lifestyles.

Evangelicals struggle with erroneous perceptions. Because of the evangelical outreach success among Spain’s Gypsy groups and the growth of the Gypsy Filadelfia Church, many Spaniards feel that the evangelical church is only for that group. Other evangelical churches have found great success in working with alcoholics, drug addicts and people with other addictions, leading to the perception that evangelical churches are primarily for dysfunctional people.

García says that whether Spain is viewed as a difficult country depends on the perspective that a missionary brings to work in the country.

Yet, an experienced missionary there says that portions of the Spanish evangelical church are reluctant to reach out publicly. Reflecting that the country suffered persecution for more than 450 years, and that religious liberty has been a constitutional right only since 1978, LAM missionary in Seville Edwin Kerr said, “There is a curious phenomenon that the oppressed adopt the same attitudes of the oppressor. We have met attitudes among evangelical church pastors and leaders which harken back to the dictatorship of General Franco.

“There was a secret police, [evangelicals] couldn’t say anything against the political leader, and the Catholic Church was predominant. Now, it’s difficult to help people understand they can come out of their bomb shelters.”

Some government officials think you can’t mention religion in buildings provided by city hall. “There is general suspicion of any religious manifestation that is not Catholic,” he said.

Kerr says that Evangelical churches must overcome their fear of working publicly and their cultural shame of being separate from the dominant Roman Catholic church if they are to impact society.

“Growth here is not what we are used to expecting in South America or Central America or North America,” said Colombia-born Elasmar. An average church has between 50 and 100 members. Spanish Christians are pleased by a church that grows to 30 or 40 members. In contrast, often from the perspective of sending churches in North America, such slow growth means there isn’t much happening in Spain. “Something is happening every day in that there are more and more churches,” Elasmar said. “It’s important for someone who has a calling to Spain that they inform their churches about the type of work that’s done here and the growth-that it’s very slow.”

Elasmar says that much mission work in Spain is done on a friendship basis, and that takes years. “It’s going to take living day in and day out and sharing with people where you might not talk about Christ everyday,” she said. “You need to find those key moments where they’re going through a struggle and you can take advantage of that moment to share the gospel with them.”

Missionaries Ken and Rosalyn Steinmueller agree. “We have realized that the old style of presenting the gospel through a film or a speaker is not effective anymore,” said Ken Steinmueller, who, with his wife, serves in Madrid with Decision, an organization that helps evangelical churches in outreach. “You need more of a personal, one-on-one approach.” The couple plans to start a coffeehouse in Madrid to reach the city’s skeptical younger generation.

Paco García says that to work effectively in Spain, missionaries need to train in Spain and understand its people and customs.

With all of the struggles, missionaries say that they feel the movement of God’s Spirit in today’s Spain. “Spain is living a key moment in general,” Elasmar said. “But there are key moments in different areas (of the country). The point is not us making that key moment happen, but being alert to God’s voice and being able to move with God in each different area.”

December 21, 2001