Van Dykens in Mexico: Guadalajara and Church

These past two weeks have been busy, what with language school, trying to figure out how to buy a car in Mexico (an epic story in itself), and trying to keep our house high and dry during the highly unusual and unseasonal February rains here. Anne-Marie: Yes, Matt has had lots of opportunities to use his fix-it skills. And I’m not complaining. It’s a whole lot more pleasant to do laundry when you don’t have to mop up all kinds of water off your kitchen floor by the end! Lots could be said about each of these, but we thought that it was high time that we give you a little update about our church situation here in Guadalajara.

We have been attending a Presbyterian Church here (Presbyterian Church of Mexico) in Bugambilias, and have been greatly blessed every Sunday. This church has two services, one in English and one in Spanish. Usually the same sermon is preached in both services, though in different languages of course. This is a huge help in understanding the Spanish service, as you can well understand. We also attend a Spanish Sunday school at Bugambilias, which means that we are in church usually from 9:30am until 2:30pm. Then we go home... and eat lunch! By then the two of us are very ready for a meal. Matt’s usually pretty hungry too. :-) ...and usually go to another church service, whether a church plant or to the other established Presbyterian Church in town (Rey de Reyes). This makes for quite the busy day! But it is always a blessed time. Our church in Bugambilias is very welcoming and we have gotten to know some of the brothers and sisters there well. A missionary family here, the Meyer family, has taken us under their wing a little bit and are always inviting us out to different activities – Bible studies, different church plant services, shopping at Costco (great for Anne-Marie) where we can buy cheddar cheese!, seminary classes, and more. They have been so helpful to us and a blessing from God. Just last week we bought from them a beautiful Pack-and-Play, stroller, baby carrier, and more!, for an amazing price. This was quite the provision, as things like these can be very expensive new – even more expensive than at home – and finding good things second-hand is not always easy. We are very thankful and are definitely looking forward to trying them out soon, not too long from now! :-) 9 more weeks. We’re into single digits now!

The Presbyterian Church here, as are more Presbyterian churches (to my knowledge), are believers in weekly communion. Though weekly communion is not something that we grew up with, yet since seminary in particular, I have been wishing that we could have communion a little more regularly. (That’s a separate discussion, one that I think is much better on the phone or face-to-face.) But now we actually are partaking of Lord’s Supper every week. This has taken a little bit of getting used to, and sometimes can create little conundrums for us. For example, Lord’s Supper is served to communicant members at both the English service and the Spanish service, as many people only go to one of the services. But then the question becomes: in which service do we take communion? And Anne-Marie is expecting too (so too much wine is not good)! But as we realized, to not have communion with one of the groups would implicitly say that we were not in communion with them. As a result, we now have communion twice a Sunday (as do others in the church). Anne-Marie will usually pour the second little cup of wine into my cup, which takes care of the other question. :-) But that is not the whole of the conundrum. At a church plant we visited one Sunday evening, we were greatly encouraged by the fellowship and the message. As this was their only service, they served communion, and so we were more than willing to partake with them. But when we saw the size of the wine cups, we were quite worried! These weren’t the little cups of Bugambilias, but just about half of a normal cup. Oh no! Both Anne-Marie and I were quite worried, as you can imagine. But we were thankful to find out that this church plant uses grape juice, not wine. :-)

Seriously though, weekly communion has been something that we have grown to appreciate. The biggest thing for me was to see the close connection between Word and Sacrament. This should always be there, of course, and is properly already there in our Reformed churches. However, what I appreciate about weekly communion is to see how from that particular Bible passage, a certain aspect of the Supper comes out. Our form, for example, describes all of the aspects of the Supper (e.g., the one-time sacrifice of Christ, communion together, eating and drinking by faith of Christ). But with weekly communion, just one particular aspect can be highlighted. I would compare the difference between the two to the difference between a Thanksgiving Day feast and a normal supper meal. Obviously, a feast is more special. But on the other hand, that doesn’t mean we should stop eating supper every day! :-) To conclude this topic, (here I’m doing what I said I wouldn’t do), I should say that I don’t think moving to weekly communion in our Reformed churches would be healthy. But having monthly communion would be healthy, in my opinion, and could easily be done if we keep our long form but have a short form as well (which could include a place for the minister to tie in the sermon to the sacrament). And now, I desist. :-)

All in all, we have been very encouraged to see the “inside” of the Presbyterian Church here. Though there continue to be some smaller differences (a praise band, for example), yet we continue to be impressed by what we have seen and heard of their committment to the full-orbed Gospel of Jesus Christ, both in the preaching, the outreach, and the discipling. The following story will help you see what I mean, I think. Listen carefully, as it gets complicated.

Last night, we had a Christian couple over for dinner and we had a very special night together. They are engaged and are in the midst of planning their wedding, so we had more than enough to talk about. :-) But during the night, I was telling Ezra about our visit to the Florestra church plant. It is a tiny little church plant in a poorer section of Guadalajara, with quite a minimal building but yet full of people. I mentioned this church plant to Ezra, and said how impressed I was with the PCM’s committment to church planting. You see, this church plant is not a church plant of the mother Bugambilias church, but rather is a church plant of the Santa Ana church plant, itself a church plant of Bugambilias. I was remarking on the fact that I had never seen such a thing before. Back home, we get excited (and rightly so) about a church plant. But here was a church plant of another church plant! Wow!

But that is not the end of the story. As Ezra and I were talking, we realized that we were talking about two different church plants. He thought that I was talking about a different one. You see, there is actually another church plant from the church plant (La Florestra) that we visited. This means – note well – that there is a church plant of a church plant (la Florestra) of a church plant (Santa Ana) of a church (Bugambilias). And the original Santa Ana church plant is less than 8 years old! All I can say is: praise the Lord!

FYI: There will be an ELM update coming out soon, so you will be able to read that too, if you wish.

Some pictures: the outside of the Bugambilias church (Cristo Redentor) and Christian School.