Resistance to and Receptivity of the Gospel among Indigenous Spanish
Evangelical churches in Spain have experienced significant growth in recent years. The Observatory of Religious Pluralism[1] counted 2944 Evangelical places of worship in its inaugural report in 2011. In their 2024 research they found 4455 evangelical churches, a growth of over 50% in just thirteen years.[2]
Yet Spanish evangelical leaders are well aware that this growth is largely the result of inward migration. In fact, despite constant efforts, there are relatively few conversions among the native Spanish population.
“In fact, despite constant efforts, there are relatively few conversions among the native Spanish population.”
I am a native of Spain, and I have spent the last forty five years in ministry. After obtaining a Masters in Religious Studies with a specialism in Theology of Mission in Costa Rica, I returned to Spain to become the director of Evangelismo a Fondo (In Depth Evangelism). I have spent the last three decades conducting ethnographic studies to assist church planting initiatives and have created a national map of towns currently without an evangelical church. So, when I was considering the topic of my doctoral research, I wanted to investigate this resistance to evangelisation and biblical conversion on the part of indigenous Spanish people. This research has now been published under the title, El Español y la Conversión a Cristo: Resistencia y Receptividad (Conversion to Christ: Resistance and Receptivity).[3]
The research revealed that evangelical churches in Spain are in need of an indigenous theology of mission. For many years, we have understood and carried out evangelism in a theological framework that came from outside of Spain. Thus, within the project that Evangelismo a Fondo is carrying out, our contribution is envisaged such that, together with other ministries and theologians of mission, we can develop a contextual theology which will reflect our missiological and practical worldview.
In short, missionaries and migrant church leaders need a deeper understanding of Spanish society if we are to evangelise Spanish people.
Spanish Society
In Spanish society, significant and rapid changes are taking place, leading to a new understanding of the nation's identity and, with it, the identity that each autonomous region defends as its own. Among these important changes, we find that Spanish society is no longer interested in the old concept of a singular identity; rather, it advocates and pursues the belief that it can embrace a variety of identities. This has enormous consequences for religion and spirituality.
“The Spaniards of today have chosen to give themselves the right to design the type of spirituality that interests them.”
Spanish society is becoming ever more attached to the general spiritual sentiments of the rest of Europe; a Europe that is more interested in drawing from the spiritual resources of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, New Age, and many other Eastern and African currents and practices, than it is from Christianity. There is a veritable swarm of mystical practices that have transformed it into a society with an exotic spirituality.
In general, European society no longer finds the Christian faith attractive; it is incompatible with the values of a secularised society. Thus, the Christian faith must adapt to the demands of this multicultural, multilingual, and multispiritualised society. Therefore, evangelisation among Spaniards is similarly affected: the call to conversion and, consequently, to embrace Jesus as the only Lord and Saviour, and the taking of the Bible as a book of faith and practice, meets a resounding NO from society.
Conversion
A significant obstacle is that Spanish people do not understand the biblical concept of conversion. In the religious minds of the Spanish (both those who practice some religion and those who are atheists and agnostics), this concept has never been included in what they have been taught in Catholic catechism classes. So, for them, conversion is a word and a concept that is related to changes within industrial processes, business plans, or government plans; never as something related to their own lives. Therefore, evangelists must adopt other words that help us understand each other in the dialogue. For example: new life, rebirth, new beginning, change, transformation, change, evolution, or modification.
When we explain to Spaniards what the Bible says conversion means, they very quickly reject anything that will require them to accept a lifestyle different from the one they have been practicing. They interpret this as meaning they will have to abandon or modify the type of freedom they have experienced, as well as their way of thinking about sin, their relationship with God, the Bible, and the life of faith in community.
Challenges for the Church
Regarding the Church, there are a series of issues which have a decisive impact on its spiritual health, as well as on its participation in mission. For example: a church where little of the power of God is manifested; where believers have little experience in walking in the Spirit of God; believers who are too busy with the affairs of their personal lives; where the faith of many is weakened by the lack of response to the conversion of Spaniards; where there is a severe lack of Bible study; where all that exists is a Sunday worship life; where there are no changes related to the liturgy; where only cosmetic changes are taking place in places of worship; where most church members feel incapable of leading others to conversion; where pre-evangelisation is seen as wasted or unproductive time and effort; and where the financial contributions of believers go towards the maintenance of the meeting place, the presentation of Sunday worship, only a small part to evangelisation, and even less to missions and social work.
Many church leaders feel that reforms are necessary, both to address the task of becoming a relevant church in how it shares the Gospel, but also in serving the multiracial, multilingual, and multinational congregations of today´s Spain. The complexity of teaching and pastoral work in such a context demands a series of new adaptations.
“The complexity of teaching and pastoral work in such a context demands a series of new adaptations.”
Furthermore, since the vast majority of those gathered come from other theologies and faith experiences, in order for everyone to feel spiritually cared for and able to socialise with Spanish believers, these reforms are both urgent and essential. The research found that we must confront not just the intercultural challenges, but the inter-spiritual challenge too, if we are to communicate God and his actions in the new context of Spain. Because God, our God, is the same, but his ways of manifesting himself and responding may be different from how he was experienced in their countries of origin.
Indigenous Mission
The majority of the leaders interviewed in this research, both Spanish and foreign, all agreed evangelistic work is being carried out with too much foreign influence. The methods used, as well as many of the materials, have a foreign bias (since some have been brought from Latin America, it is assumed that Spaniards will understand them and there is no need to adapt them to Spanish). This impacts the willingness of Spaniards to approach the churches and to become interested in their salvation. The churches, due to their methodologies, liturgies, and methods of approach, feel like churches for foreigners rather than native Spanish. This means that the majority of Spaniards do not feel comfortable being among non-Spanish evangelicals; many feel that by being in Spain, they have entered into other countries.
This research discovered many of the reasons for the walls of resistance to evangelisation and Christian and biblical conversion on the part of the Spanish people. Its analysis of how a person in their social context perceives conversion to Christ, whether they experience resistance to it or, on the contrary, feel receptive to it, was focussed on Spain, but it can equally be applied to any country in Europe. For when the central message of the Gospel is rejected we must seek to understand why. We know that the Gospel will be rejected by some, but we hope and believe that it will be accepted by others and will produce the invaluable conversion to Christ the Lord.
Máximo Álvarez is a pastor, evangelist, and Director of Evangelismo a Fondo, a research institute based in Seville (Spain).
Endnotes
[1] Observatory of Religious Pluralism, https://www.observatorioreligion.es/index_en.html
[2] Evangelical Focus, “In Spain, 96 new evangelical places of worship in just one year”, 24/10/24, https://evangelicalfocus.com/europe/28772/in-spain-96-new-evangelical-places-of-worship-in-just-one-year
[3] Álvarez (2025), El Español y la Conversión a Cristo: Resistencia y Receptividad, EVAF: Sevilla