The denomination’s President, Patrice Niveaux, provides an overview
In the last issue of France Mission Perspectives, I shared a little about Perspectives’ structure and summarised our six core values. Just to remind you, these are:
1. We want to live a passion for Christ
2. We want to serve our neighbours
3. We want to train disciples of Jesus Christ, who in turn train others
4. We want to try to multiply ourselves
5. We want to value a diversity of ministries
6. We want to develop a culture of generosity
These are values that we want to help foster in all of our churches, whether they’ve been part of Perspectives for years or are new projects. Church-planting is very much part of our DNA (as underlined by core value 4 above). We’re therefore very encouraged by the various church plants that are starting in different parts of France. Some of these will be familiar to British supporters (especially the new church plants in Brittany: Fougères, led by Élise & Michaël Duchemann and Greg & Nicole Saldi, and Grâces, led by Julien Masson). Others – such as the church plants in Montaigu-Vendée and Montastruc-la-Conseillère – you might not have heard about before.
There are several existing churches that have applied to join Perspectives because they share our outlook and values. We also support many students who are committed to training for the ministry, like Christian & Kathryn Panès whose story follows this article. We want to welcome them in different internships and be an inspiration for many to serve the Lord with joy.
One of the challenges, of course, is trying to share our biblical culture and values across all the different churches in our family. How do we facilitate all this? How do we “set it to music”? We believe that some training materials that are currently being developed and rolled out will prove to be an important tool in helping us answer these questions. If you receive France Mission’s appeal letters, you will probably have already heard about this training plan for all volunteers and bi-vocationals who want to serve in our churches. This training is intended to be:
CONSISTENT with our DNA to equip each member in their spiritual gift.
PRACTICAL with real know-how, in addition to providing theological and theoretical content.
COLLECTIVE by leaving room for collective intelligence, around exchanges of experiences and reflections.
INCARNATED by setting up à la carte training in the heart of the church. Each volunteer will be able to train at their own pace, according to their needs, while remaining in a commitment anchored in the local church.
12 themes will be addressed over a four-year period: missional living; preaching; leading groups; biblical interpretation; cultural relevance; mentoring; leadership; holiness/spirituality; conflict management; discipleship; church vision; workplace witness. Because of the à la carte approach, volunteers will only need to access the sessions relevant to their ministry.
In addition to the 90 or so churches in the Perspectives family, the training resources (text and video) are also being made available on the site of the FEF Network and are freely available for any churches to use (there are a further 398 churches in this grouping). As explained in a previous article in this series, the FEF Network represents “classic evangelical” denominations within the broader CNEF (National Council of French Evangelicals).
We are extremely grateful to France Mission supporters, both for your prayers and your gifts in relation to this project. Paul Cooke tells me that, at the end of February, just over £8,000 had been raised. Thank you so much for your wonderful generosity!
As it says in Proverbs 29.18 (KJV): “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” May God continue to do His work all over the world and in France.
