Because of your generosity, we launched a two-year church-planter training curriculum in January 2022. Thirty people are attending the training, and by the end of it, we hope to see five to seven churches planted. Your gifts subsidize 12 of the 30 trainees. Over the next year, this team of 12 will work with our local IMB team to plant a church in the city’s largest neighborhood. This opportunity provides these future church planters hands-on experience that they will carry into the future.
Coffee Bike
One strategy that is opening doors for the local team is a “coffee bike.” This bike, run by national believers, offers free coffee to residents in our targeted neighborhood. As locals order and drink coffee, they talk with members of our church planting team and often jump right into questions about God and the church. One of the national believers testifies that six months ago she struggled to share her faith with non-believers, but now she shows up nearly every time we set up the bike so she can invite people to church, present the gospel and pray with people there on the street. These local Christians are growing in confidence, and the local community is embracing a new church not-yet-begun.
Church Beginnings
In addition to the coffee bike, we are in the process of creating some tools for “Discovery Bible Study” and evangelism groups; both are essential for church planters. Also, we are developing training modules for small group leaders who feel led to facilitate missional groups focused on reaching their local communities.

Last, we have begun working with some church planters leading out in local cross-cultural ministry to immigrant communities. Using the languages of these immigrants, these national believers are developing tools and networks to better support the immigrants.

2020 and 2021 have been tough and refining years for us, the missionaries behind the France Church-Planter Training Center. When the COVID-19 pandemic descended on the world, we were on a stateside assignment in the U.S. We were only a month away from a trip to the French Embassy to request our return visas when international immigration and travel came to a standstill. Since that time, our family has remained in exile, despite dozens of letters and phone calls to French administrators. At this point, we hope and even expect to be back in France before the end of the school year, where our local partners are ready and willing to dive into numerous plans for development.

Despite the uncertainty, we did not simply pause ministry to await a brighter day, though we were away from the country, and our local partners spent much of the past year in strict lockdowns that prohibited in-person meetings. We chose to pivot and work where God opened new doors. Pressing on, we made progress toward opening the regional, in-person church planter training center, though hands-on opportunities had to move to a holding pattern. We experimented with digital discipleship and training with local partners on the ground, communicating through WhatsApp daily and joining Zoom meetings for small-group leaders and church planters. We also sponsored some young French pastors-in-training by purchasing theology books for their educational needs. More than 500 people used a digital Bible-reading discipleship plan in French in its first month after we released it. And we launched a project to write, record and distribute video-based Jesus stories for evangelism, discipleship and small-group discussion in church-planting.

As we return to France in the coming months, we hope to gather again with re-energized local partners and continue developing an ecosystem of church planting and church-planter training. We believe the time is still right, and the possibilities still exist. We have the opportunity to rent office space that has been sitting empty and transform it into a center for training and multimedia resource production. The space would also be ideal for local community outreach. We plan to strengthen and further advance a growing network of church planters in our region to have a national impact on the country and the French-speaking world.

Thank you for not growing weary in your prayers and financial support of our work during the long days of waiting during 2020 and 2021. We need your support now more than ever! We ask you to continue to go boldly to God’s throne of grace, interceding for the people of France and for our work to plant churches among the thousands who have yet to know Christ personally.

The current generation of prospective church planters continues to rise up with eagerness! We have produced resources for evangelism and discipleship, seen churches planted and trained new leaders. We now hope to further inspire and prepare leaders to plant churches across France through a localized training program that identifies, equips, and sends.

We have an exciting new opportunity to host a nationally recognized regional church-planting training center over the next two-to-five years. Additional office space and meeting rooms are desperately needed for both trainers and interns arriving to work in the city. Your gifts will provide the seed money to set up a physical training center in a three-phase process : (1) Open the facility to the local community for outreach and early prayer gatherings, (2) Plant a local church that meets at the center and focuses on multiplication and sending, (3) House a regional/national, permanent church-planting training center. We are working closely with local partners which will enable us to welcome interns and students into various local church plants for hands-on experience paired with theological education and practical training, thus the need to rent and equip a space which can double as a church-plant and training center.

Throughout each phase, we will continue to host (and offer scholarships to) interns working alongside experienced church planters, while multiplying disciples locally and providing resources to young leaders throughout the country.

God is at work among all the peoples of France! One student began as a lay-leader in a church plant. He joined the church plant early in its formation and quickly jumped into helping facilitate home groups, formulating questions and sometimes leading the discussion. In time, he joined the preaching rotation after learning and practicing. Now receiving a scholarship for theological education, he came to us through a church-plant partner in central France. But his real passion is evangelism to metal-heads and he helps to lead a French ministry that makes resources for those in the world of heavy metal music. Every year, he attends the annual Hellfest festival in France to share the gospel with attendees. He hopes to further his theological education in order to better serve the local church plant (potentially leading out as it seeks to plant more churches) and evangelism needs of the metal ministry.

Recently, in central France, we had the opportunity to help train two church planters and two interns both in-person and via skype/zoom calls. Your gifts to this project also enabled one of our IMB team members to speak at a pastors’ school, training a group of more than 30 pastors on evangelism, and church-planting practices that are producing fruit in France.

In eastern France, working with a national partner, our team members have produced video training materials for lay leaders of reproducible small groups. Evangelism tools such as the 3 Circles in French were also developed and have been taught to groups across the country. Lay leaders who have been trained in cell group leadership and evangelism in a church in eastern France (along with coaching) have seen three people come to faith in the past year. These new believers have joined a new Bible group that, we pray, will become a new church plant.

Finally, two lay leaders in a church in central France will be receiving scholarships to pursue seminary education before stepping into pastoral roles for second and third generation church plants. “Third generation church plant” means that a church plant planted a new church that, in turn, planted a new church, and so on. These men will potentially pastor the newest of the church plants.

Thank you for your generous support of church planting training in France and, now, a new church planting training center. God is doing a remarkable work in this nation and we value your partnership that blesses the work and encourages us as we pour our lives into sharing the gospel and raising up new disciples who will take the message of salvation through Jesus throughout France and to the ends of the earth!