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Home News Latest News Spiritual Bread in Ecouen
Spiritual Bread in Ecouen PDF Print E-mail
Written by Russ Speiser   
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 13:51
Church planting challenges in Ecouen, France.


This past sunday we had a meeting with the leaders of the Ecouen church plant which meets inbread.jpg the Ecouen Center, a large building with about 20 rooms that once belonged to Greater Europe Mission and is now owned by another Christian organization. Church planting in France is difficult and slow, and our experience with the group at Ecouen is no exception.

In the meeting (see picture below) were Sony and Carol, Joseph and Josephine, and Marj and myself. Joseph was relating how one day several years ago he was standing in line at the local bakery to buy bread. Buying baguettes fresh from the bakery is a french tradition and that day there were about 20 people trying to buy their bread before the bakery closed for lunch. Joseph was suddenly struck with the idea that all these people wanted to buy bread, but that in the whole town of Ecouen there was no place where they could get "spiritual bread". At the time, about eight years ago, we were using the Ecouen center as a base for summer evangelistic outreaches and people from Ecouen were encouraged to come on Sundays. This was the start of a small group meeting at the center.

After spending several years working with the church at Eaubonne, another Greater Europe Mission church plant, I felt it best to move to a different work and leave the church music and worship in the hands of the people I had trained there. So in the year 2000, Marjorie and I teamed up with Joseph and started working with the group at Ecouen, leading, training in worship and sharing preaching responsibilities.

The group grew very slowly, and over the last five years or so our attendance has been around 30 to 40. This isn't too bad in a country where the average church size is only about 50 or 60, but we haven't seen solid growth, and in the last two years the numbers have been way down, with an average of about 10-15.

So the meeting we had on Sunday was to try and decide what to do. The options were to continue as we are, to try to make changes, or to stop and concentrate our efforts elsewhere.

meetingch.jpgThese are not easy decisions because there is really no quantifiable way of determining the best action. What we decided to do was to continue praying, asking God to specifically direct our actions and then to discuss what we felt God was saying to each of us in our next meeting. The town of Ecouen has about 30,000 people and there is no evangelistic church here now, although there is one in our town of Villiers-le-Bel which is about 10kms away. On the other hand, Operation World says there are still THOUSANDS of villages of this size in France that have no evangelical witness, so it could be that God is directing us to something new.

An added complication is that the new owners of the center may or may not wish to partner with us in this church planting effort. Although we have their permission to meet there for the next year, they can at any time change their minds and ask us to leave. The group that purchased the center is an evangelical christian group that is usually focused on their own ministries, and not known for partnering.

At the end of the meeting, during which we all shared our dissatisfactions, disappointments and worries about what had happened, I shared several stories about other mission works that I had known or been involved with that had "failed" in an earthly sense, but where God did wonderful things. The point I wanted to make is that the final responsibility for the Church in Ecouen (or anywhere else, for that matter) lies not with us, but with God. He is the author and perfecter of our faith, and He has promised to build His Church.

Thanks for praying for us and the group at Ecouen and that many more people in France will find the bread of life.

Russ
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 March 2007 11:47