Two languages, one church, one message

When Jonathan Swirsky and his team planted Grace Bridge Church in Northeast Houston, they knew it was only a matter of time before it became a multilingual work. 

“At our first prayer meeting, we prayed God would bring us some bilingual church members so we might start with a Bible study or something like that,” said Swirsky, Grace Bridge’s planting pastor. “It ended up happening a lot faster than we thought it would.”

One of Grace Bridge’s partners, United City Church in Humble, was able to supply a Spanish-speaking pastor, Serguey Romero, who had been trained as a planter in the Champion Forest Baptist Church pipeline. Swirsky was assessed and trained through Send Network SBTC, the church planting ministry partnership between the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the North America Mission Board. Funds given through the Reach Texas State Missions Offering are used each year to support SBTC church planters.

“[This kind of support] has really put us in a place where we have a lot of tools that we need to succeed,” Swirsky said.

Grace Bridge launched this past February, aiming to reach the incredibly growing and diverse population in the Colony Ridge-North Huffman area. Colony Ridge is predominantly Hispanic, while North Huffman is experiencing the kind of growth that is mirrored on a larger scale in Houston, with many people moving in from out of state. 

The church meets together for nearly everything: for worship, to observe the Lord’s Supper, for baptisms. Only when the preaching begins does the congregation separate into groups to hear God’s Word preached in either English or Spanish. 

“To be honest, it’s a little bit of an experiment for us,” Swirsky said, “but it makes sense in our context and it’s something we’re hoping God uses in a big way.”