Why does the PC(USA) produce resources in Spanish?

by Marissa Galván-Valle
Associate for Spanish resources and relationships

This is a question I often hear as I travel around doing workshops for Latinos and others. Sometimes it seems like resources do not sell well. Budgets are decreasing and we are, after all, a mostly English-speaking denomination and society. Why not devote our resources to creating materials for the majority of the denomination? There are obvious and not so obvious reasons to continue doing this. I want to share some of them with the hope that you can add others as the Spirit leads you.

1. The growing presence of first-generation Latinos in the United States of America. With or without documents, Latinos are the fastest growing segments of our population. Latino churches exhibit an interesting and contrasting mixture — in generations, native countries and social and economic realities. It is true that the children, youth and young adults speak a kind of Spanglish that no curriculum that I have seen can cater to, but the people coming in are young people too: 18-to-25-year olds. These are young families hungry for opportunities and for the Word of God. They deserve to hear the gospel in their own language.
2. Do you know the name of the only fully Spanish-speaking synod of the PC(USA)? It’s not Puerto Rico, but Boriquén. This is a name derived from the name the natives gave the island. Native of Puerto Rico, I grew up with the awareness that there is a synod out there between the Atlantic and the Caribbean that is part of the PC(USA). They do all of their business in Spanish. They do Christian education in Spanish. They have belonged to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) since the end of the nineteenth century, and they made this church multicultural and multilingual before those terms became common!
3. It is a New Testament mandate! Have you ever wondered what the church would look like if Pentecost had not happened? For one thing, we would all be speaking Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek.
   Those would be considered the sacred languages, much as Latin was at one time the chosen language of the Roman Catholic Church. But Pentecost did happen, and the Spirit of God chose to speak to everyone present in his or her own language. Look at the impressive list of countries: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:9–11). The gospel reached them all. They were transformed by Peter’s story about a man who lived and died for them. They were moved to repentance. We are called by God to deliver the powerful message of the gospel in all tongues that are in our immediate area — and one of them is Spanish.
4. It is a Reformed mandate: One of the most important things that Luther and Calvin did was to translate the Bible from Latin to the language of their people. Before the reformers took on this task, the only people who could understand the Bible were some of the clergy. Now studying the powerful Word of God was possible for everyone. A pastor recently told me the story of a person in his church who learned how to read by reading the Bible. People are hungry for the Word of God and we need to live our Reformed tradition by making the Word and the tools we use to study it available in any language. The Word has to be accessible to all people.

These are some of the obvious reasons why we need to continue to produce resources in Spanish. Consider too that we live in a changing society that is challenging our way of doing church. We are called to be hospitable and speak in a way that is understood by the people we are called to receive. This is not an option; it is something we need to do to be the Pentecost church that God wants us to be.