Dude, we're getting the band back together

Welcome back to the Spain Music Mission blog. In 2010, members from the McKinney Memorial Bible Church Worship team had a remarkable opportunity to use the musical gifts God gave us to serve a small church in San Sebastián, Spain. During that trip, our focus was evangelism through music. We used music as our form of outreach for a growing church, Encuentro con Dios – Encounter with God, and its young pastor named Unai. We took steps in faith and service together to help Unai reach his community.

It's now two years later and that church is growing. Once again, a group of musicians will head back to San Sebastián and again serve along-side McKinney missionary partner Manny Fernandez. (Manny has an extensive church-planting and evangelism ministry there and in other countries around the world.) Our time in Spain will be to support Unai who was one of Manny Fernandez's seminary students. We will meet with him on Sunday for church and help encourage him and his church body. Most of our time will be spent doing outdoor concerts and maybe even a few radio shows like the previous trip. Our purpose for being there is to serve Unai and his church.

There will be more to come on this trip, the team, music and other progress updates. Thank you for your interest, encouragement, support and prayers.

The Spain trip in the rearview mirror

It's been three weeks and a day since the Spain music mission team returned from our trip across the Atlantic. Upon reflection and conversations with people I've come in contact with since then, I think it's important to share a few thoughts on the journey.

I've been asked by many friends and family the same question, "How was the trip?"

At first I stumbled through an answer with a standard, "It was remarkable," and that usually did the trick. But, to leave it at that does our experience an injustice in my opinion.

As a trip, yes, it was an unbelievable time in Spain. The beauty of the land, people, and food was truly exquisite. As a music mission trip, it was the sort of experience that lingers and if we are listening to God, can shift words and actions as we move forward.

For us to have played a small role in God accomplishing his purposes in the life of the church in San Sebastián and its congregation is still an amazing thought to me. Taking a group of musicians and singers (even though each of us are flawed people) and allowing us to serve the living God through our music tells me we did what we were called to do. For a brief moment in time, we were fulfilling our short-term purposes.

Not everything was as expected and the group had to work through a variety of challenges brought on by internal as well as external influences. Looking back, it is obvious that we had a group of prayer warriors interceding on our behalf and covering us as we went. We are truly loved and richly blessed to have such support networks in our lives.

We've all seen this written on a car's side mirrors: "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." Getting perspective on this trip means allowing the experience stay close to our hearts.
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In the beginning there was a binder

Thank you for stopping by the blog for the Short-term Music Mission trip to Spain for McKinney Memorial Bible Church. More posts on the team, location details, and more will be provided in the coming weeks leading up to the March 2010 trip.

 

The photo above is of the binder each team member received explaining a variety of necessary steps, important information, and other items to get us started on this remarkable opportunity to share God's Word through music. More to come...