La Pastorale Nationale

On Sunday the Fédération Protestante de France at Bordeaux held it's annual Réformation Service at the Caudéran Baptist Church. A while ago it was decided that each year the service would be hosted and organised by a particular church, and so this year it was at Caudéran.

The service was filled with lively music, led by a choir, accompanied by a varied group of musicians amongst whom were some professionals - notably the excellent saxophonist. There was a short message on the wise and foolish bridesmaids (groomsmaids ?).

Afterwards we left quickly to eat and await Jean-Baptiste from La Rochelle. We were due to drive to the Cévennes in his car, me driving, to the national pastors' conference. Dik had already left on the train, so Harriette and I waited.

Phone call. Jean-Baptiste's car had broken down.

Some deliberation.

Jean-Baptiste would get a lift to Bordeaux and Harriette would drive us in her car.

Following some spirited driving and without getting lost (it was our second time there after all) we arrived at about midnight.

The main speaker was a chap called Matthias Radloff from the Emmaüs Bible School in Switzerland and I found out that he knew Chris Pegington and Jean Ellis from GBM.

He spoke from 1 Timothy and his basic interpretive framework for the book was "Anything which promotes faith and love is to be encouraged. Anything which creates a hindrance for the spread of the gospel is to be avoided." It was aninteresting approach, but it doesn't solve every problem and we even felt that it creates some problems.

The conference centre is really nice, hidden away in the hills up amongst the chestnut forests. Of course, as always, it's the conversations that make the conference really.