Have been so busy with end of school year activities and wind up and juggling with all the kids being back home. So scrolling through Facebook, I found this post. It will well and truly keep you busy reading and reflecting on our current generation and its relationship to institutionalised church.
I am very grateful for the way Frank Powell has described the generation and the problem with church life today in many churches. In a nutshell, his description fits our current situation and why we have to do something about it. I'm going to translate it to try and spur on the necessary changes. I'm also part of a team in our Union of churches who are going to accompany the Vitality Pathway (from Grace Covenant Churches in USA) adapted to our French context. It's a bit of the unknown and an exciting move. I just pray our own church will agree to go down that road.

Anyway, here's the link: think of us as you read it and PLEASE PRAY!

http://frankmatthewpowell.com/ten-reasons-church-absent-millennials/

Pascal was ministering at our other church in Lyon, so I invited a whole family over for Easter lunch on Sunday. It is also a host family for a Canadian girl over here for 3 months and they wanted her to experience a typical French luncheon which lasts for at least 3 hours! The family is also a foster family for 3 slightly disabled adults, so it was one big table and lots of conversation. Someone had given us the hind leg of a wild boar as a thank you for services rendered. I made a Simnel cake from a recipe I had in Australia. I love the symbolism of the 11 eggs representing the disciples minus Judas Iscariot.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

"Toute ascension vers un endroit merveilleux se fait par un escalier en spirale." Francis Bacon

"All goings-up towards a wonderful place pass by a spiral staircase." 

When we talk about getting somewhere, reaching goals, putting something into place, there's always that sense of climbing up and reaching for the heights. We often use mountain images, the sky, the heavens...

When we are young we usually think it's a matter of just getting on to it and getting there pretty directly. We older ones now realize that life is really full of spirals!

'Two steps forward; one step back' is the optimistic version.

'One step forward; two steps back' is the pessimistic version!

I think spirals are pretty. And, honestly, when you have heaps of stairs to climb, spirals are less taxing; the steps are often smaller and you can't see the end so you live in perpetual hope of arriving at the top just around the next bend! In France there are millions of spiral staircases. I can speak of the real ones in high fortified towers and gracious castles. Or I could speak of the metaphorical ones, which are hard work and difficult to be motivated for.

France is a difficult country when it comes to achieving anything from education to job creation to changing attitudes and developing productive relationships. It's not impossible, but it takes a lot of energy.

In our church union, we are introducing a new process which we hope will bring maturity and growth to those churches that decide to commit to this pathway. It's called Vitality. We have already talked about spirals and how to encourage them to advance rather that to go backwards. I'll let you know how we get on when the process really gets underway. Please pray for optimism and energy. We are aiming high on this one!

Hello after a rather long silence!

Things have been hotting up since I last wrote and I have a mass of things to process in my head and to share with my husband and my church before I can summarize for you what it is all about.

In the meantime; here is one small reflection which will also give you a taste of things to come (with apologies to those who follow my personal blog, since it is the same article).

I collect quotes.

And bits of paper float around my desk because there is no more room on my notice board.

So I decided to tidy up by sharing these with you! You'll get the French version and I'll try and translate.

"La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l'on pense mais à penser tout ce que l'on dit." Proverbe tchadien.

"Being frank doesn't mean saying what one thinks, but means thinking what one says." Chadian proverb

We just had our church's Annual General Meeting and it was rather a sad affair. We noted that the financial situation renders the possibility of paying a pastor less and less sure. What was even sadder was the heavy atmosphere and the passivity. No one, absolutely no one asked any questions or tried to engage a discussion on the whys and wherefores of our situation.

I made enquiries and discovered that in the past there had been some very violent discussions in the church and now they no longer dared to raise their questions or to state their positions. Our job as pastors is to change this modus operandi. Even if we have to leave in a year's time, we need to work on being open, honest, frank and clear, but in the correct way which honours those who are listening and especially in a way which is God-honouring.