From quaint restaurants, bustling cafés, to deafening discotecas, Sevilla’s vibrant street life is part of what makes the city so unique and welcoming. Not only does the city offer many uniquely Spanish social activities, such as going out for tapas at one of the countless alleyway restaurants with amigos, but the city also offers a wide variety of local churches from many various denominations to choose from.
As a study abroad student from Wheaton College, Illinois, attending chapel three times a week and a local church on Sundays with my classmates became one of my favorite weekly activities during my three years there, and was more influential in the development of my faith than I’d ever expected. Coming to Sevilla, one of my biggest goals was to find a local church to attend and build community at, and I’ve been blessed to have found MásVida Iglesia.
MásVida Iglesia is a Christian church plant in Sevilla, but the network of Más Vida churches is much larger than just Spain. In fact, MásVida Sevilla is the first church plant in all of Europe. Most of the church’s branches are in Latin America, with one in Dallas, Texas, and the headquarters in Mexico. The church targets a younger audience, with most of the people at the services I attended seeming to be young professionals or students residing in Sevilla.
Both of these factors have made my time at MásVida very enjoyable. Being a student from Texas, I was thrilled to hear worship and a sermon given in Latin American Spanish! The first week I was there, there was a service that was streamed in from the head pastor in Mexico city, and on my second visit the senior pastor of the branch here gave the sermon in-person instead, and I’ve loved the blend of Latin American Spanish and Sevillian Spanish.
In addition, many of the people I met at the church were from Latin America. I met several people from Mexico, several from Venezuela, and a couple from Honduras, which gave me a very welcome taste of home. Living in Texas, most of my high school Spanish teachers were from Mexico, so it was so refreshing to get to speak with people who spoke with the same accent and with the same rules of conversation as me.
While Sevilla has many churches that have a more traditional worship style and include hymns, MásVida has a more contemporary worship band that plays contemporary worship covers and adaptations of traditional hymns. Personally, I appreciate this style of worship because it reminds me of my home church in Texas, so this too has been a very welcome taste of home. There is something very singular about worshiping in a language that isn’t your first, and it’s grown my faith enormously to be able to worship, pray, commune, and listen to a sermon in Spanish.
One of the most amazing things about studying abroad, especially in a city as international as Sevilla, is having the opportunity to meet people from all around the world. Attending a church that attracts an international audience has helped me make connections with people who I may not have an opportunity to interact with otherwise in my classes and daily life in Sevilla.
While I came to Sevilla to study Spanish, I’ve found that studying Spanish has actually been a tool I’ve used to discover the rich culture of Spain. Studying Spanish has enabled me to make connections with people from all over the world and explore places I never thought I’d see. My biggest advice to study abroad students is to be bold in talking to new people when traveling!
Attending a local church here provides a safe environment to meet new people and make unexpected connections around the world, and these relationships can be some of the most rewarding. Talking to new people about your faith in another language is daunting, but so rewarding. It’s helped me see the truth in one of my favorite verses, Matthew 18:19-20, which says “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
~Abby Lawson; Spring 2025
