Reaching rural France.

Bordeaux is a big city. But not far out of Bordeaux it gets rural very quickly. And much of France is really sparsely populated. These few and far between people need the gospel too.

Our colleagues, Emmanuel and Maria Hartiel, are working hard in small-town north Brittany. And in this month's magazine of our church's denomination we read of PerPy (Perspective Pyrenees), another initiative to reach rural areas. Here's some excerpts from their information:

In France, towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants and villages (excluding the suburbs of large towns) correspond to about 25% of the country’s population, but only 5% of the evangelical churches, which are all rather small, and probably only 2% of the country’s evangelical Christians (so perhaps only one person in 1,500 is an evangelical Christian in these areas). It seems quite likely to us that the situation will be similar in other European countries with a low population density, Spain for instance. We are well aware that missions and church groupings do not have sufficient resources to assign pastors or missionaries to these areas; but as our Lord’s command (Matthew 28:19) does not tell us that we only have to make disciples in the larger towns, it is reasonable to conclude that we ought to be preaching the Gospel in rural areas and small country towns too….. We hence reach the conclusion that this work should be done by “ordinary” Christians, supervised at a regional level by pastors or missionaries.

Stuart and Jeanne Beaumont are working in fellowship with "our church" in La Bastide to establish groups in the French Pyrenees, south of the main Perpignan - Biarritz road. They say their objectives are to:

Share the love of God and His glorious Gospel message in the areas where there is currently no Biblical Christian witness.

Plant « house groups » in the targeted areas.

Get experience in order to be able to apply the same principles to other areas where there is little or no Biblical Christian witness, in any country where the population distribution makes this approach appropriate.

Share the Gospel message in the winter sports and summer resorts.


If you'd like to know more or get in touch with them you could post a comment to this with your email address and I will reject the comment but email Stuart and ask him to contact you.

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