Pascal and I went for a long walk this morning - it's our second last day of official holidays. So our thoughts and conversation turned to the next school year which starts 5th September.
Given that activities need to get off the ground pretty quickly if they are to have a chance to get established, we discussed in what direction we wanted to encourage our 2 churches to head. The St Fons church has a good dynamic leadership and is already fairly clear about the vision of their church. The Lamastre church is different and needs to have a period of reflexion leading to some practical outcome. We think we should ask three questions to get started :
1) What is "church"? This seems pretty basic, but it needs to be defined and stated out aloud.
2) What is a Church Council and why did the church members vote me onto it ?
3) What do I think our church should 'look like' in 5 or 10 years time ?
Just as an example of what we could be discussing in our church is : in what way could we impact our local community and what are our opportunities for mission and evangelisation ?
Lamastre is inundated with tourists over summer, even more so since the Global Financial Crisis as people stopped travelling overseas for their holidays. What if we planned a regular summer mission (like you Aussies do Beach Mission! - Christians do a very limited amount of them on French beaches) and had church members distributing tracts or something leading up to a Christian Music concert ? We actually organise one every summer in partnership with the Reformed Church, but there is no before- and after-work done.
Let's look at our local situation. Traditionally, summer is a time of long holidays and resourcing ready for an increasingly busy professional and private life. Yet we discovered on coming here, that it's actually a very busy time for those who cultivate ! All the farmers are hard at work harvesting their fruit and vegies; people work long hours in their vegie gardens and benefit from the results. If you don't want waste you have to preserve or freeze your products. So asking church members to invest in a summer campaign could be too much. On the other hand, we could work hard on mission over summer and then let ourselves sink back into a less energetic routine over the winter months. However, Christmas is a big thing in our church as well and we have added a number of regular efforts which require extra people and energy.
In fact the Evangelist Eugène Rard, supported by the mission "SEMER" (which means SOW), has been following the caravan for 4 years in a bright yellow car with an open Bible on its roof. He takes a team of young French and foreign Christians with him and links up to local churches all the way around where the Tour stops each night. He explains : "The churches are often shy and don't dare show themselves [when the Tour comes through their town] or they don't know what to do. Most of them make the most of our team's presence to be more audacious. The evening events are often really pleasant and encouraging. On the other hand, although the church members willingly lodge the team, the financial support [coming from the churches] is very low."
I know it's another year away, but you could pray for French churches to be bold in planning events which reach those who come into their 'firing line' !!
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