A tiny historic Presbyterian church in Spain, which began whilst Fascist dictator General Francisco Franco ruled the country, is at last bearing much fruit for the gospel and is rapidly increasing in numbers.
The church, Iglesia Cristiana Reformada (Christian Reformed Church) de Madrid, which is part of the Egglesia Reformada group and a member of the European Missionary Fellowship, was founded by Jose de Segovia in the early 1970s.
The church, first located in the centre of Madrid, began by preaching the gospel to young people who were coming to live in the area. Jose also ran the first evangelical bookshop in Spain, which was hidden in an office building in the Main Street of Madrid, now renamed Gran Vía.
After the death of Franco in 1975 came the long transition to democracy, and the church moved in 1980 to Vallecas, a working-class area in the south eastern part of the city. It rented the old meeting-place of the Socialist Party, which had become legal. Then Jose de Segovia (his son, who has the same name) became minister of the church, but the congregation did not experience any growth until it moved to a more northern part of Madrid.
Evangelical immigrants
This was because, after 2000, many Latin American migrants came to Spain in search of work and started to attend services. They tended to choose Madrid over Barcelona because they did not speak Catalan, as many do in the capital of Catalonia. Many of those immigrants were from evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic churches, which have grown spectacularly in Latin America in recent years.
As membership grew, the building became too small, so it moved again, to an area called Ciudad Lineal. Since then the ministry has continued to grow strongly and now there are about a hundred people coming every Sunday.
Some of them have come to the Lord recently and were baptised, others have made a public profession of faith this last year.
