Fernando Plou grew up in Zaragoza and is a missionary in Spain. In 2012 he was invited by the president of the national committee of Taller de Predicación to attend Langham Preaching training, and he has since completed the three-year expository Preaching training, as well as the Training of Trainers course. He is now the National Coordinator of Taller de Predicación; the Preaching Training ministry in Spain.
He shares about his introduction to Langham: “A friend from my youth and a well-known leader in our country invited me to take part in a training course on expository preaching run by Langham. That was the beginning of Taller de Predicación, the expository preaching movement which, thirteen years later, continues to serve by promoting training within the churches of our country”.
The training transformed his preaching as well as how he reads the Bible. He explains, “Some might consider it an exaggeration, but I must say that the training I received, and the work I’ve done with Taller de Predicación, has completely transformed not only the way I preach, but more importantly, the way I read God’s Word… I also apply it daily in preparing my own devotional, which is shared online with a group of 250 people from Monday to Friday”.
The training has not only impacted Fernando, but also pastors at his church that have now completed the training too. He shares: “Although I initially received the training from Langham, we later brought the training program into our own regions of the country. In our particular case, we also trained and organised a group of preachers within our church. This has allowed us to see significant improvements in the sermons, not only in terms of faithfulness to the original text, but also in their relevance and in the coherence of sermon series on entire books of the Bible”.
A challenge in Spain is equipping and training pastors and ministry workers to teach from the Word. Fernando shares: “Our main challenge has been, and continues to be, getting church leaders to understand the importance of receiving training themselves, as well as training others on their teams. Although we’ve managed to train around a thousand people over the past ten years, we are still far from reaching the numbers we hope for”.
Fernando has a vision of seeing even more leaders be trained and more churches to read the Bible faithfully. He shares: “We want leadership training to continue expanding nationwide. We also hope to see preacher clubs multiplying across the country, as a tool to help churches grow in their relationship with God through the expository study of the Word of the Lord”.
In addition to Preaching Training, Fernando is also involved with publishing books that are culturally relevant and in the local language, Spanish. He shares his hope: “We want our publishing department to grow. So far, we have published one book per year, and we see this as one of our greatest areas of potential. We believe we can be a blessing to the entire Spanish-speaking Langham community, and we are praying that the Lord will open doors for us in this area”.
Fernando is having an incredible impact in his country. Please join us as we thank God for him and his ministry, and pray for greater resources for Taller de Predicación to reach more people with training. Pray also for their increased ability to publish more literature.
Prayer Points
- Thank God for Johannes and his role as a pastor and trainer of pastors in Eswatini.
- Pray that God will continue to raise up church leaders in Southern Africa to teach the Bible faithfully and relevantly, and for more leaders to participate in Langham training.