We’ve just got back from a sunny fortnight in France, first visiting John, Nom and Reuben Bilson in Creteil for a few days and then going onto spend time with family near the Alps.
The Bilsons are great! We were there to check that they are OK as they seek to plant a church on the outskirts of Paris, but they looked after us really well. With the help of a friend of a friend, they treated us to a day at Eurodisney. I don’t think that the snails I bought for them for lunch the next day were really an adequate response. Please do pray for them as they seek to establish foundational values with their team and to share the message of salvation with the people around them.
Our 10 days in Annecy were wonderful. Annecy is probably the best place in the world that your brother might choose to live in! You can cool down from the almost constant sunshine by swimming in the crystal clear lake with a backdrop of mountains over 2000m, which you can either climb or drive most of the way up. There is also a medieval quarter with pretty canals and a wide choice of creperies! Parfait!
We also visited their church (www.egliseannecy.com), which is thriving. We had the privilege of meeting their pastors (Lee and Ann Cowles from South Africa) and discovered that Andy Leisewitz and Sharize Lategan (ex-members of OCC) have both been there to bless them, and that Ann’s brother-in-law was a member of OCC when he studied PPE at Oxford Uni.
(I used to be a bit depressed when I discovered connections like this, because it made me wonder whether the whole body of Christ actually only consists of about 1000 people who just talk to each other – but then a few years ago I read a book about how the “small world” phenomenon is a mathematically predictable consequence of globalisation. Anyway…)
Whilst I was away, I had a few thoughts about ‘the scattered church’, which I think I will post on my blog over the next week or so, under the following titles:
1. The critical importance of the scattered church
2. Is the scattered church the same as ‘the kingdom of God’?
3. What is the scattered church meant to do?
4. In the light of that, what is the gathered church meant to do?
Here are a few pics from our time in France…
