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Recent Audio - 16/11/2008 (Sp.) |
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Behind every name (well, unless it's the name of some purely
fictional character), there's a birth and a there's
a history. And that's true of the Reformed Baptist
Church of Palma, Majorca, too.
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The church was founded in 1960. Times were far from easy
for Protestants (or Evangelicals) in Spain. There
were still fifteen years left of a political regime
which didn't look too kindly on any church or religion
that was not the Roman Catholic Church. In fact the
first years of the Palma Reformed Baptist Church were
marked by unavoidable illegality, all sorts of restrictions
and even open hostility on the part of the authorities
and from not a few of the local people. The meetings
each week had to be held in people's flats and houses,
sometimes in more than one home at a time so as not
to arouse suspicion on account of the number of people
attending, and without the freedom to sing to the
Lord. And even after the church had been able to buy
their own flat, with the generous help of a foreign
lady, the flat in question had to be sold again as
a result of the (anti-Protestant) protests of the
neighbours! Then, around 1964, the church was able
to purchase the land on which our meeting-place continues
to stand, and the building was put up during the years
that followed, almost entirely by the church-members'
own hands and in their own spare time.
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The man God used to found the church was Joaquín
Ranero Gascón, who was born in Cuba, an artist
of widely recognised talent, and a great preacher
of the Word of God. Since his death in 1989, there
have been three other (official) pastors: Juan Bascuñana
González (1990 – 1992); Trevor Thomas
(1994 – 2000); and the church's present pastor,
Andrew J. Birch (from 1st August, 2004). Between 1992
and 1994 the church benefited from the invaluable
help of a 'retired' missionary, Fred Webb, along with
his wife, Ruth.
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"No one can lay a foundation other than that which is
laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1st Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 11).
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