Greetings from Mexico,
Imagine yourself sitting in a church service on a Sunday morning. But instead of the pastor preaching in English, he is preaching in a language that you do not understand. Now standing next to that Pastor is another man that is then is translating that preached sermon from that unknown tongue into English so that you can understand it. Most people would never in their right minds choose to attend a church where they had to hear the sermon translated into their language, yet that is exactly what most of the people in our church have chosen to do week after week.
Now back when I began preaching many years ago, our church was a bilingual church because of my (very J ) limted Spanish! The original goal was I would study Spanish enough to lose the translator and we would be a Spanish church like the other 100+ churches in our city. But over the years, as many Americans and other English speakers joined us, we realized that God’s unique plan for our church was to be a bilingual church. And over the past 14 years, we have worked on and improved this bilingual church model and seen God’s blessing.
In this update, I wanted to talk about #1- how our bilingual services work and #2- how God has used this model to plant four other bilingual churches! As you enter into our church on any given Sunday, you are going to realize (and hear) our church’s bilingual atmosphere. In the patio, we have at least 10 different languages being spoken, but in our services we had to whittle it down to two, English and Spanish.
In the worship portion of our service, our worship team will sing a verse in Spanish, then a verse in English, but we always have both sets of lyrics up on the video screens. Our prayer counselors and new believer counseling is also done in both languages! Our announcements, and the weekend sermon, they are all bilingual. We even have a bilingual Sunday service for our children’s ministry where all of those classes are bilingual!
Our bilingual church model will not work everywhere, but we have found it to be very affective in a community like Rosarito with our unique combination of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Expats. Over the past two years we have planted two bilingual churches in Mexico (La Paz and Playas de Tijuana) and they are both thriving.
Last month we planted our first bilingual church in the US in the border city of San Ysidro. On Sunday July 1st, we are having the Grand opening of our latest bilingual church plant, located in a small city called La Mision. (Half way between Rosarito and Ensenada) We even have another bilingual church planned for 2016 up in Central California, but we can’t reveal those plans quite yet.
I like to think of a bilingual church as a little touch of heaven, because the Bible teaches us in Revelation 7:9, that in heaven there is going to be “every tongue, and tribe, and nation!” When we moved to Mexico 14 years ago, we never thought that God would use this bilingual church model to help reach the nations, but that is exactly what He is doing!
Finally, I want to once again thank you for supporting and praying for our family and ministry. It is through your financial support that God provides for our physical needs, and your prayer support that God provides for our spiritual needs!
Con mucho amor de Mexico, (with much love from Mexico)
Mike, Sarah, Grace, and Daniel
Prayer Requests:
#1- Pray for that God will bless our two new bilingual church plants in San Ysidro and La Mision.
#2- Pray about YOU JOINING US for this summer missions tour! (ONLY 2 SPOTS REMAIN)
#3- Pray that God will provide for the financial needs of our family and ministry!
