FUENGIROLA, Spain – It’s a rather ordinary place, this cozy beachside bar & grill – as nondescript as the Galilee beach where Jesus found his first disciples.

The owners greet neighbors by first names and a kiss. Mothers park baby strollers at Formica tables topped with burgers and beer, olive oil and grilled swordfish. Old men shout at a telly lit with the day’s fútbol match.

But like a historic Bethlehem stable, The Bulldog café has proved a perfectly familiar setting to host the grandly unfamiliar in southern Spain – a public Bible study.

Sidewalk passersby pause to curiously stare at a group huddled over Bibles at a window-front table. “You don’t see that here, so people stop and look,” says Avant missionary Amy Dauber. “And you can see the [customers] sitting at other tables and listening in, too.”

Floyd and Amy Dauber are part of Avant’s Team Spain, a Short-Cycle Church Planting team that landed on the Mediterranean coast in August 2005. “Short-Cycle” teams are prayerfully opportunistic, always on the lookout for unreached nationals as they fast-track the development of new churches. Within months, the nine-member Team Spain had started multiple fellowships in towns along the costa del sol (“sun coast”), and many are sharing their newfound faith with others.

On a chilly Wednesday evening last month, a Christian couple attending a Fuengirola church invited the Daubers to present the gospel to 10 friends gathered at the café. Beneath the cartoon Bulldog marquee, six of them encountered the “Hound of Heaven” and committed their lives to Christ.

“They paid so much attention, in spite of people coming in and out and bumping into them – one chair was practically in the doorway,” Floyd recalled. “But they were really concentrating on what was being said. This is the Lord’s doing – we’re not the sort of dramatic people who overwhelm you.”

The group now meets for Bible study on Tuesday nights at The Bulldog. One recent evening, an eavesdropping customer asked if she could buy a Bible and start attending the study. Another enthusiastic couple, on their own initiative, is eager to start a similar group at their electronics shop in Málaga, about 30 minutes away.
The Bulldog owners – Alex and Johanna – were married just days before the group’s first meeting, where Johanna became a believer. Alex’s mother, a Christian visiting from Venezuela for the wedding, helped to organize the gathering – she had been praying to discover a community of believers. And the Daubers gave Johanna’s mother a Bible before she returned to Colombia, where Johanna says her hard-working family was always too busy for spiritual things.

“Before I was always very sad, but now I’m very peaceful,” Johanna says. “I’m really happy to have this study in our café. My family likes this, too. My friends are a little embarrassed to join in immediately, but later they ask us questions.” The Daubers have started discipling the young newlyweds at home. Other Team Spain members are making a point of stopping by The Bulldog, and the Daubers are encouraging their fledgling Fuengirola church to build relationships there as well.

Every day is different in the life of a Short-Cycle team, in which missionaries creatively pool their unique abilities into strategic church-planting efforts. Small-group fellowships of new believers are groomed simultaneously as a network of separate church plants – all while team members are adapting to a culture, making friends and empowering nationals as leaders-in-training.

“Using Short-Cycle philosophy isn't easy for some of us who’ve been doing traditional missions for a while,” said Team Spain leader Sam Dick. “It stretches us and keeps us looking for new ideas.  It’s full of uncertainty, but mostly it drives us to seek ideas and wisdom from God.”

Avant has Short-Cycle teams in Spain and Poland, and is organizing teams for France, Italy, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.