Picture of the Cathedral in Salamanca
During my time here in Salamanca I have had the wonderful privilege of interviewing two pastors of local congregations. Pastor Timothy (London) has been in Spain for nearly 40 years. Pastor Kent (Kansas) has been here nearly 15 years. Both of these men gave me absurd amounts of their time to ask all my questions which I am very grateful for. Also both meetings were over coffee as if they spoke my love language. I had an interview which consisted of over 20 questions and I loved their answers on all the questions. But one question that both pastors answered almost word for word was #14 "Is there one doctrine of the Church that Spaniards tend to find difficult to grasp?"What I was hoping to dig up from the combined 55 years of ministry experience between these two guys was some thread of similarity. And I think we found it. Their responses went just like this, "Hmmmmmmmmm, is there a doctrine of the chur......GRACE. If there is one thing the Spanish people struggle with is Grace. They don't know how it can be FREE and they still feel they have to work to pay off God"
I told them that as Evangelicals we tend to think that we came up with the phrase "SAVED BY GRACE" rather than Paul, and yet even we, at times feel like our good works get us in to heaven. Both Pastor Tim and Kent feel that after centuries of oppressive religiosity from a distorted form of Catholicism, Spaniards who are believers in God, still don't understand GRACE.
What I have learned is that when working with a culture who has been oppressed, whether by the Church or the Government, in Spain's case both, the Doctrine of Grace must be taught and lived out all the more. We are talking about God's most precious gift to us and we simply can't jack this up in our communication and in our daily lives with one another.
3 comments:
How interesting...that must be a difficult concept for them to understand after so many years of work based faith being taught.
I sometimes feel like here in the US we misuse/abuse grace, thinking we can justify what we do by saying we are sinful but 'thank goodness for grace', you know? We use it to excuse our actions sometimes, I think, without being truly repentent.
With 55 yrs. of combined ministry to what extent did these men go to correct misconceptions and or doctrinal errors regarding Grace?
Possibly the multiple uses of the word in the New Testament leads to confusion - we are saved by grace - His grace is sufficient - grace and peace unto you. It is now incumbant that we understand we are to walk over the highway of holiness after grace has saved us -and it is in that state of holiness grace is appreciated.
Man I struggle with this issue every day!!! It is so easy to slip back into a "God loves me because I have done a good job loving/serving him today" mentality.
I just read the most encouraging article in Christianity Today that reminds us all that God called blessed not those who are righteous, but those who hunger and thirst to be righteous. We're not expected to have it all together in order to walk in his blessing... that's goooooood news for me!!!
Alright, enough with the personal journal entry- I can't believe you have less than a week!! What an amazing trip, we've been so glad to be a part of it via prayer and blog.
Post a Comment