Should Hispanic Churches in the US Preserve Spani… | Christianity Today
Villanueva has seen how Spanish worship has deepened his faith and blessed the church, but he doesn’t believe churches should make it their goal to preserve language or cultural practices.
“After living in America for a while, I was able to observe that the Hispanic church had barricaded itself, on the one side thinking that work was the top priority of their lives, and on the other trying to live in a bubble in order to preserve their language and their culture,” he said. “But that is not the calling of the church; it is not to preserve any language or any culture, but to find ways to impact the culture that surrounds us with the gospel.”
Source: Should Hispanic Churches in the US Preserve Spani… | Christianity Today
Comment: The dilemmas presented by this article face Christian’s who immigrate into a new culture all the time. Growing up in Alberta, Canada, I knew of German speaking churches, Ukrainian churches, etc. The kids were educated in the public system, spoke English better than their home language, and often fell through the cracks as time went on. Hard to achieve a balance, but something worth thinking about.
One thing churches can do is make use of modern software to translate notes and helps for our people who are “from away” (as they say in Newfoundland). See our article here. That article led me to translate my notes into Korean and Arabic, to the blessing of two of the families in our church.
— Don Johnson
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