The Decision 2023 Summit gathered a hundred people in the Spanish city of Gandía from 20 to 22 January on the theme “Language as a creator of culture”.

Ana Ruiz, head professor of the Department of Linguistics at the Autonomous University of Madrid and PhD in Philology, spoke on the need to review the language used by evangelicals in presenting the gospel to the Spanish culture.

She also presented the conclusions of a study carried out by her University about the communication of the evangelical community in Spain.

Cultural relevance sharing the Gospel

Other speaker of the summit was José Pablo Sánchez. With his experience directing the evangelical program Buenas noticias (Good News) on the public channel TVE, and in evangelism, he presented the necessary guidelines to achieve cultural relevance when communicating the gospel to Spaniards.

In his presentation he showed some of the criteria that can be used to discover the contrasts between individualistic or collective cultures, of high and low context in communication, monochronic or polychronic.

Applying them to the Spanish culture, he emphasised the need to review the evangelisation methods created in foreign cultures which do not respect the Iberian reality.

Pastor Marcos Zapata was in charge of the biblical exposition, inspiring all the listeners to follow the model of Jesus and to take the gospel to a culture that has changed radically due to the post-pandemic situation and the change that cultural meanings have undergone in recent years.

A training workshop for the coordinators and promoters of Operation Christmas Child was also held during the Summit, given by José Manuel Castellón, a consultant and executive coach focused on working with teams and the development of initiatives aimed to make their leadership more effective in coordinating and providing this missionary project.

Over 40 years of service

Decision is an evangelical entity that has been serving Spanish evangelical churches for over forty years with the vision of seeing evangelical witness in every town of Spain.

This summit is part of its work to raise awareness and train evangelical leadership so that they are more effective in proclaiming the gospel with cultural and social relevance.

Both the Lausanne Movement and the church planting movement La Plaza (The Square) have supported this initiative and identify with the need for further research and innovation in this area of the mission of the church in Spain.