The Mountainview story began in March 2002 when a team from Christian Associates located to the NW of Madrid. Mountainview rapidly gained a reputation as church with challenging biblical preaching, inspiring contemporary worship, excellent programmes for children and youth, a welcoming and friendly community and ministries caring for the poor and disadvantaged in our region.

In under a decade Mountainview has seen significant growth among internationals and internationally-minded Spaniards. Through the ministry of Mountainview lives across Spain and from around world have been transformed by Jesus Christ. In its short history Mountainview has multiplied into 2 churches and developed a broader vision for church-planting and renewal in Madrid and across Iberia. Mountainview started developing a sister congregation in Spanish in 2010 and a new church-plant called Fusión was launched in September of 2010, with several more planned for the not too distant future.

Please continue to read on for a more details of our exciting history…

For the first 4 years, under the leadership of Troy Cady, Mountainview developed around small groups, with a monthly service in the suburbs called “Frontier” that on the whole attracted families and a monthly service in the city called “Oasis” that on the whole attracted younger professionals and international students.

In January 2006, recognising that Mountainview had developed two “hubs”, Oasis Church in the city centre was birthed, under the leadership of Troy and Heather Cady, and Mountainview returned to an early church-planting phase, under the leadership of Richard and Riekje Wallace.

Richard and Riekje strongly believed that highly-mobile international families would benefit from a more traditional approach to church that included weekly services. Following several months of preparation weekly services were launched in a large classroom in Colegio Balder, in the Las Rozas area of Madrid.

The church grew quickly with people attracted by the strong biblical teaching, contemporary worship, friendly community and programmes for families like our quality kid’s ministry. Around this time we decided to position ourselves as an international church with a Spanish flavour. We started to use more Spanish songs in our worship and occasionally read the bible texts in Spanish. We also promoted a strong mission focus at Mountainview, allocating more than 20% of our resources for mission and regularly sending teams to bless mission projects in Spain, Portugal and N Africa.

In April of 2008 Mountainview was legally constituted and our first elder team was installed. Through a prayerful process the elders recognised that God was calling Richard and Riekje to serve long-term at Mountainview and a plan to incrementally take on their support was put into place. Mountainview also hired Leah Bredehoft as a part-time administrator in September of 2008.

By the end of 2008 Mountainview was regularly attracting over 130 people and outgrowing the large classroom we were using. Pat Blanchfield, a businessman attending Mountainview with experience in corporate real estate, led a steering committee to assess Mountainview’s longer-term facility requirements. The conclusion was that the space requirements of Mountainview were best met by continuing to rent from the school.

In early 2009 we met with Colegio Balder and were shown a very large room with a horrendous echo that the school rarely used. Sergio Marabert an architect at Mountainview looked at the room and within a week produced a visionary idea for the room that was attractive to both the school and the church. The school allowed us to remodel the room and agreed to lower our rental costs with the understanding that they would “buy back” the investments we were making over a 5 year time frame.

The work was completed during the summer of 2009 and Mountainview moved to the new room on September 20th 2009. Mountainview was also gaining quite a reputation as a church with excellent music and so concurrently we made a significant upgrade to our sound system.

Also in 2009, Mountainview leadership agreed to a greater passion for outreach through an expanded vision to plant a network of churches in the Madrid metropolis and have greater involvement in church-planting and renewal throughout the Iberian Region. To read an extended essay on this vision please click on: Dream Great Dreams. As a first step towards realising our great dream we held our first Spanish gathering on December 13, 2009 with over 100 people in attendance.

When we moved to the larger room we were more than tripling our space and we thought that it would take 5 years to feel full – it took less than 5 weeks! It also turned out to be a lot more than a physical move. It became a transition point for the church, pushing us from being a small “kitchen” church into the new and challenging territory that is affectionately called the “200 barrier”. Some old timers mourned the loss of the “family” feel. It became difficult to know everybody. A greater level of professionalism was demanded from those at the front. Systems, like communication, needed to become more formalised in order to continue growing.

We decided to make 2010 a year of consolidation. We wanted to ensure that the numerical growth we were experiencing was more than balanced by a deepening Christ focus and personal commitment to discipleship. A greater depth and power to our sermons was notable. Flowing out of our growth in faith the music team began to write and record worship songs. We also saw more Spanish speakers starting to attend Mountainview and we needed to offer translation.

In September of 2010 we launched a church-planting group with the intention of developing leadership depth, passion and skill for church-planting. On October 24th 2010 a small team from Mountainview was commissioned to plant Fusión, a Spanish language church in the centre of Madrid, targeting students and young professionals.

Currently we are planning to start monthly Spanish services in January 2011 and looking for a Spanish speaking pastor that can begin developing this work. We are also starting to look at the idea of monthly gatherings in English, for people living on the NE side of Madrid.

The story of our desire for the Gospel to bless our city continues…will you join us and help us make a difference for Christ in Madrid and across Iberia?