Below is a brief excerpt of our February 2012 newsletter. If you do not currently receive our newsletter but would like to, please provide your name and email and I'll add you to the list. Thanks!
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The journey to full-time church planting ministry in France is a long one, at least it feels that way at the moment. While we cannot yet do what we feel God ultimately calling us to, right now what excites us most is the opportunity to sit down with individuals and churches and share the vision God has given us. Every meeting we have reignites our passion for France and our desire to share the Gospel with its people. This past month we have presented our ministry to three churches. Two we have met with in person, Byfield Parish Church in Georgetown, MA and Netcast Church in Beverly, MA, as well as one church remotely via Skype, an Apex House Church in Dayton, Ohio. We have also met with several individuals to invite them to partner with us.
Is raising support (for ministry) ministry? The short answer is yes.
I don't know if I really believed this at first, but I have come to realize that we are in the thick of ministry, right now. Do we have a lot to learn? Well yeah, probably almost everything to learn. Do we mess up and get the wrong perspective sometimes? Yes, at least every other day. But the awesome thing is... God is showing himself faithful, not only by slowly providing the financial and prayer partners we need, but also by refining us (in many, and at times, challenging ways). Christ is teaching us to persevere.
One of the tools that time and time again has brought us both back to the proper perspective is a tiny book called The spirituality of fundraising by Henri Nouwen. It is a great resource for people who raise funds for ministry and for people who give (or don't give) towards ministry.
In the book, Nouwen says:
"Fund-raising as ministry is grounded in prayer and undertaken in gratitude... In prayer we slowly experience a reorientation of all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and others... Gratitude releases us from the bonds of obligation and prepares us to offer ourselves freely and fully for the work of the kingdom."
And this is all we want... to offer ourselves freely and fully for the work of the kingdom, both now in striving to get to the field, and once we get there.
I just wanted to call out an article posted in Le Monde (a top French news source). The article is about a new training center that has opened for Christian church planters in Loches, France. It is one initiative of a fairly young and new organization called CNEF (the National Council of French Evangelicals). CNEF is very exciting because it is a representative body of the 2,000 churches in all of France. One of the goals of the organization is work towards having 1 church for every 10,000 people. Currently, depending on the region of France, there is 1 church for every 30,000–80,000 people. It is an exciting goal and even more exciting that all of the 2,000 churches are united in this vision.
Click here to check out the article. It is in French, but if you use this link and hit "translate" it will do just that. Keep in mind the computer translating tools are not perfect so some of the language may be a bit off, but overall it works.
