The History of cibc Church
The church was the vision of Rev Don Spence who was a South African Methodist minister living in Calahonda. It was initially established as a hotel ministry with Rev Spence holding church services in a hotel on the coast for people on holiday. He was then encouraged by some of the local attendees to actually hold a service at a venue other than an hotel. However the small group of believers were continually being asked to move location so Rev Spence decided that the only way to secure the church’s future was firstly to establish it by getting legal status. During the period between 2001-2003 the church was formally registered with the Ministry of Justice, the Spanish Baptist Union, The Federation of Evangelical church in Spain and the International Baptist Convention based in Germany.
Now the church had secured the legal status necessary to operate as an independent church in Spain the church still needed a permanent home. The landlord of the building the church was renting at that time offered Rev Spence the opportunity to buy a plot of land for €125,000. The church members then set about trying to raise the necessary money to purchase the land. However after two years of jumble sales, and various otherfund raising activity the members had raised €30,000, a long way short of the necessary amount needed. The owner of the plot spoke to Rev Spence and said that he had received another offer for the land and the members had 2 weeks to raise the remaining €95,000 or he would sell the plot to the other interested party.
During those 2 weeks the members prayed and even stood on the plot and prayed for the Lord’s intervention. About a week later Rev Spence received a phone call at his home from someone that had known him when he lived in South Africa. The man, Mr Michael Cobb asked Rev Spence what was happening in his life and he told him about his desire to provide a permanent home for the church and that we had an opportunity to buy a plot of land but couldn’t raise the remainder of the money. Michael asked how much was needed and when he was told, Michael said that the outstanding €95.000 would be in the church account by the end of that week, and it was.
The plot was legally purchased in July 2003. Then the hard work started. A team was put together to establish the exact requirements for a church building and once this had been done, an architect was appointed. The church made an application to build the church with Mijas town hall in February 2005, and after several adjustments to the plan it was eventually approved.
Mr Terry Webb, the church Treasurer at that time was given the role of project manager and it was his job to go out to tender with 3 building companies to get estimates for the approved plans. After much discussion and negotiations an English speaking builder was appointed in March 2007 with a cost estimate to build the church of €600,000. This price was reached but removing three items from the original plan, the porch, the surrounding fence and putting tarmac on the car park. The porch and fencing were added at a later date after the building was occupied. The cost of construction was made up by another generous gift from Mr Cobb of €300,000 and two mortgages, one from the Spanish Baptist Union and the other from The International Baptist Convention. Building work commenced later that year and progressed steadily. Rev Spence retired during the building of the church and returned to South Africa.
One Friday in 2009 Terry Webb went to the site to check on progress to find that the tradesmen were packing up their tools and preparing to leave the site. At this stage the building was just a shell without any internal fitments. Terry discovered that the boss of the building company had fled Spain to travel to Brazil and leaving the tradesmen not having been paid for their past week’s work. Fortunately as Terry had managed the finances correctly we were not cheated out of any money. Terry then negotiated a deal with the foreman of the site to continue the work with the same tradesmen until the building was completed in February 2010. Terry managed the overall final construction.
We then had to wait almost 2 years for the legal Occupation License from the Mijas Town Hall, which we received in April 2012. Our first service was held shortly after that and an inauguration service was held in the summer of that year which was attended by Rev Spence. Michael Cobb had left Spain at this point to live in Australia and never saw the completed building.