MADRID — Juan Lázaro had already prepared his Sunday message when back-to-back earthquakes devastated Venezuela. So the elder of the Church of Christ on Teruel Street decided to pivot from the New Testament’s call to evangelize to its affirmation that even life’s blows point to God’s glory.
”I want you to adopt a biblical perspective toward understanding the reason things happen,” Lázaro told the congregation in Spain’s capital, basing his sermon on Romans 8. “Don’t judge by human standards — instead, try to have God’s perspective on what happens in your life, your world, your moment in time.”
The Church of Christ on Teruel Street in Madrid worships on June 28, 2026.
Although the South American nation of Venezuela is some 4,390 miles away from Spain, it feels much closer at Teruel Street, which could be called the mother congregation for Churches of Christ in Spain.
While Spain was once the colonizer of the Americas, in recent decades the human flow across the Atlantic has reversed, with Latin Americans immigrating to the country for greater economic opportunities.
Lázaro said that the Teruel Street congregation has 15 to 20 Venezuelan members, along with immigrants from Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, Argentina, Guatemala and El Salvador. He estimates that 80 percent of the church is from Latin America.
In his sermon, Lázaro urged the congregation to take comfort in Paul’s assurance that the world and its suffering are moving toward redemption.
“What happens is not outside God’s control. God has sovereign control over events, circumstances and people,” he said.
And God is no stranger to suffering.
Juan Lázaro speaks about the Venezuela earthquakes during Sunday service at the Church of Christ on Teruel Street in Madrid.
The God of the Christian faith “is not a God who takes it on himself to explain ‘why’ — why our Venezuelan brothers and sisters have died,” Lázaro said.
Rather, the leader argued, “he is a God who accompanies us with a view toward the pain that has entered human history.” Jesus was a “man of sorrows” who “suffered every kind of brokenness.”
For Venezuelans living in Spain, “distance does not lessen the pain we feel when tragedy strikes our homeland,” said Pedro Andrade, a longtime church planter in Venezuela who recently moved with his wife, Luisa, to Vigo, Spain. The couple works with the growing population of Venezuelans arriving in the port city.
“What makes this situation especially difficult is the feeling of helplessness,” Andrade said. In the past, he and his wife participated directly in disaster response, alongside Churches of Christ across Venezuela. “Today, being so far away, we cannot respond in the same way, and that reality weighs heavily on our hearts.”
Members of Churches of Christ are among the 1,700-plus souls that perished in the quakes. As the Andrades mourn the losses, they find comfort in passages including Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
“Yet even in the midst of loss, we trust that God continues to work according to his purpose,” Pedro Andrade said. “We pray that those who have survived, those who witnessed these events and those whose lives have been spared will reflect on the fragility of life and seek the hope that is found in Christ. … This is a time for the church to demonstrate compassion, generosity and the selfless agape love that reflects the character of our Savior.”
Back in Madrid, Lázaro spoke of the tremendous changes Spain has undergone since Spanish author and evangelist Juan Antonio Monroy, now in his 90s, helped establish the Teruel Street congregation in the 1960s. Protestant Christians at the time felt threatened by Spain’s powerful Catholic Church, with its historic influence on Spanish society. Now 16 Churches of Christ meet in Spain, including five in Madrid, according to a website directory.
A directory on the website of the Church of Christ in Madrid lists 16 congregations in Spain, including five in Madrid. Monroy later became a pioneering evangelist in Cuba, working with the Herald of Truth ministry.
The Teruel Street leader sees today’s immigrant church members as a gift.
”From the perspective of the churches and people of faith, the fact that people from Spanish America have come has enriched Spain from a religious, economic and cultural perspective,” Lázaro said. “The presence of these brothers and sisters … is serving as a great blessing because they come with excitement … and get closely involved in the work of the church.”
Additional reporting: Erik Tryggestad
