Movie Night in Alcora

A few weeks ago our ministry team hosted a free movie night open to the town of Alcora.  We originally had intended to show The Nativity Story (being December and all), but since the movie distributor wanted 300€ ($400!) to do a public screening, we settled on a much more economical movie called The Climb that was put out by the Billy Graham Association some years back.  About 30 people showed up, between the support of our church in the neighboring town and people from our town, and the experience was quite informative for us.  Here are a few observations I have about the night:

• Relationships matter:  The people who came from Alcora were nearly all people we knew and had personally invited.  One random Alcorino saw one of the signs we had put out and came, and then when he asked who we were and why we were putting on a free movie night, thus finding out that we were an evangelical church group, he left and said he'd come back in a few minutes...we're still waiting for him to return.
• The "evangelical" stigma:  We just posted about this with one of our recent conversations, so I won't go into detail.  But people (especially people from a small, predominately Catholic community) still view the evangelical church as a cult...or at least as something very strange and foreign.  At times it even causes us to question how we should refer to ourselves, call our church group, and publicize events.
• People are busy with their own lives:  Thirty years ago, when Rachel's parents first arrived in Spain, doing big outdoor campaigns and showing the Jesus Film really worked because people weren't all that busy and a lot of them didn't have their own TV's.  But now everyone has their own LED TV sets to watch movies, and they're busier than ever, taxiing their kids to soccer, dance, piano and tae-kwon-do lessons after school.  Just finding an ideal day and time to put on a movie was challenging enough.
• We're still learning:  It could be easy to get discouraged with the fact that only 30 people showed up for a free movie, and, in fact, a few of our group did seem a bit down about it.  But a big part of what we're doing at this stage in ministry is testing the waters, experimenting with events and ministries, and seeing what kind of response we have.  This is an extremely important step in the process of evangelism and church planting, but it can be frustrating, as well, because having big numbers would be really nice...they make us feel good and look impressive in prayer letters.  So we could look at it from a very Eeyore-ish point of view and be disappointed about the numbers, or we can take it all in stride, learn from it, and actually have fun with the ministry and events that we do, even if no one outside of our small group shows up.
• God's at work:  Several of the non-Christians who did show up for the movie were quite moved by the plot and the themes presented, true love and sacrifice (especially God's love for us) being central.  Some even cried at the end.  Our neighbors who went continued to mention it (unsolicitedly) in conversations for days after, and we had the opportunity to share the Gospel with them at a deeper level than we ever have been as a result.  They remain interested and even accompanied us to our church's annual Christmas program.  They may not know it yet, but the Holy Spirit is softening their hearts, and the Lover of their souls is wooing them softly towards Himself.

Christmas Cookies...

"Wise men still seek Him..."

Well, this post is a bit late, now that we're past the Christmas season, but we thought it was worth mentioning.  Given that we had been living in our apartment in Alcora for about 7 months around Christmas time and had yet to meet all of our neighbors, and since Christmas is a great time to mention Christ (though this is getting less and less common all over the Western world), we decided to make Christmas cookies and cards for our neighbors.  The responses were quite positive:

• Many neighbors were very surprised and appreciative:  surprised because it's not common to do thing in Spain (in fact, it never happens) and appreciative because, hey, who doesn't like cookies?
• A couple neighbors went from skeptical (who are you and why are you at my door?) to confused (you want to give me cookies?) to appreciative (I guess this is all right and, by the way, thanks for the cookies).
• One neighbor was clearly high from smoking marijuana...He was quite happy and appreciative (wreaking of pot).  We figured he and his buddies would be appreciative for something to cure the munchies.
• The neighbor directly below us said, "(Expletive!!!) I can't believe that you're doing this.  I mean, I've seen that Americans do this sort of thing in the movies, but I never expected that someone would actually come to my doors to give me cookies and a card!  Thanks so much...Wow, I just can't believe someone would think of others like this!"  Then he and his wife invited us in for coffee, and we spent half an hour or so getting to know them while the wife played with little Miriam.

So apart from giving the Christmas card with a brief but clearly Christ-centered message on it, we didn't "share the Gospel" directly with anyone.  But our neighbors now know who we are, we've formally met, and we can talk with them a little more comfortably when we pass in the hallways or on the elevator.  And this is the foundation for building deeper relationships with them in the future so that we can talk about the deeper things of life and faith.  And, by the way, they probably already know we're the strange evangelical Christian foreigners.

Calendar Evangelism (or just learning about how Spaniards work)

A few weeks before Christmas, we decided that it would be a good idea to give a small Christmas gift to the neighbors who live in our apartment building, not only to be nice but also to be mildly evangelistic (but certainly not pushy).  So through our church we bought 24 daily devotional calendars (they have a Bible verse and a mediation for each day of the year), and about a week before Christmas we knocked on 23 of the 24 doors in our building (the one we didn't knock on was ours, of course).  Most people answered their doors, and the various responses were quite insightful into people's mindsets here:

• One elderly lady answered the door with a puzzled look and asked us if we were Jehovah's Witnesses.  After convincing her otherwise, she finally accepted the calendar.
• Several neighbors, whom we had yet to meet, seemed kind of skeptical as they asked us, '¿Cuánto vale?' or 'How much does it cost?'  When we explained that we weren't selling the calendars and we just wanted to give them a small Christmas gift, they received it.  
• One particular gentleman explained, 'It's just that this isn't the custom here, so I wasn't really sure what you were up to.'  It seems that Spaniards are pretty skeptical of any stranger who just knocks on their door, probably due to the number of quick talking sales people going around trying to take advantage of people.
• One elderly fellow broke our hearts when he told us that he and his wife would be spending Christmas and New Year's alone because their sons don't come to visit them often.  It turns out that even with loads of people around Spaniards can be quite lonely, too.
  
• A few neighbors whom we had met before invited us into their apartments and asked us about our plans for the holidays, and we actually had nice conversations with them before they accepted the calendars and we went on our way.  

A few closing thoughts.  It seems that having a relationship with people here is so central to being received by them that we cannot neglect to take the time to get to know people a bit before even thinking about sharing the Gospel with them.  Perhaps we should hesitate to define evangelism so narrowly that it only means sharing the Four Spiritual Laws or the Romans Road with them.  After all, Jesus spent 30 years simply living as a human, getting to know His context (how the humans of His day and culture thought and lived  and worked), before He started the 'important stuff': teaching, preaching and healing.  May we be willing to take the time to get to know and love people here as we seek to share the truly Good News of Jesus with them, and may a few seeds be planted by this simple Christmas gift.