It is rare for French Christians to be able to worship along with 1000 fellow believers. So the community worship service organized by the Pastors’ Fellowship of Montpellier and held on January 14 in the center-city convention center was a very special event. Fourteen different protestant churches in the greater Montpellier area took part in this Sunday morning service of singing, a sermon, and communion. The 1200+ people who attended were far more numerous than had been expected. We praise the Lord for the cooperation among the various churches that allowed this public testimony. Our mission church at St Martin de Londres was among those that participated. At the end of the service, a young fellow who introduced himself as an atheist came up to ask Bill why Christians put so much emphasis on Jesus Christ. He came, his question showed that he understood the message, and he dared find someone to talk to about his questions! Do pray for him and others like him who had contact with the Gospel during this service, maybe for the first time in their lives.

Thank you for praying for our Christmas program on December 22. Over half of those who attended that evening don’t attend church regularly. Many of them stayed for the meal afterwards so we had a chance to get acquainted. We are thankful for such opportunities to attract people in the hope that they will better understand God’s message of love and reconciliation.

The pre-Christmas distribution of invitations in the new housing tracts led to two people requesting a daily Scripture-text calendar. We would have liked more responses, but pray for these two homes.

Here are some recently published statistics about the French to feed your prayer time:

• To the statement “Religion is very important to me in my daily life,” only 23% of French people responded positively – the lowest rate anywhere in the world. The next lowest positive response rates came from the British and the Japanese (both at 24%) followed by the Germans (26%). 65% of Americans responded positively. The highest percentage of positive responses came from Egyptians, with 96%.

• In 2006 only 51% of the French identified themselves as “Catholic”; of those only half (52%) believe there is a God, and of the 52% believing in God’s existence, only 18% of them say they believe in a God with whom one can have a personal relationship (79% believe in a “force” or “energy” that they call “God,” with another 3% not expressing any opinion.) The percentage of those identifying themselves as Protestant remains stable at 3%.

These statistics surprised us so much that Bill asked a local priest what he thought of them. In the priest’s opinion, these statistics are totally accurate, and he assumes that “they will be even worse next year.

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