Christmas in France is very secular and public religious displays are very rare. One of the advantages of living in the country where Christian traditions are still accepted, is that you see manger scenes in shop windows and can have a Christian book stall at the Christmas market. This is the first time I have seen religious themes on the windows of supermarkets though. Worth a photograph.
This was taken at our local supermarket in Lamastre.
Just to remind you of some figures taken from a survey 2011 to establish the big picture of Protestants in France. An estimated 1.7 million, of which 600,000 people regularly attend church and the majority being Evangelical.
The survey revealed a new growing group : non-practising Evangelicals ! An interesting paradox.
There are an estimated 4000 protestant church congregations in France including 2,600 Evangelical communities. When I was on home assignment last year, I mentioned that we would need to create 4000 more Evangelical Churches in France in order to reach the target of 1 Evangelical church per 10,000 people.
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| Tanya on the left in our ladies' group |
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| Ben holding cup cakes representing French flag! |
On a more local level, our church is losing one family (returning to England) and our Ukrainian friend, Tanya , a born evangelist!
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| Nathalie during the morning session of Kids'Club |
The ladies group has just finished discussing Rebecca Pippert's 1980s classic "Out of the Saltshaker", so hopefully ideas are spawning. We have just finished a 3-day Kids' Club with a couple of outside children (ie. not from our church community). Will you pray with us that the Lord will bring 3 new families to our church and that we will be gaining new converts ?
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