les Davey de France

So the first night I just went along and watched and listened. There were about 40 people there and the discussion time was good. Last night I gave a brief couple of minutes about "Qu'y a-t-il après la mort?" and participated a bit in the discussion, then was the main speaker for "Dieu, si tu existes, prouve-le!". There were about 35 folk there and again the discussion was excellent. Tonight I share the speaking with my colleague Michaël Razzano.

«  L’existentialisme pense qu’il est très gênant que Dieu n’existe pas, car avec lui disparaît toute possibilité de trouver des valeurs dans un ciel intelligible ; il ne peut plus y avoir de valeur de bien a priori puisqu’il n’y a pas de conscience infinie et parfaite pour le penser . » Existentialism thinks that it's very annoying that God does not exist because with him dissapears all possibility of finding your values in an intelligible heaven ; there can no longer be any a priori "good" since there is no infinite and perfect conscience to think it so. Find it in a bigger context here .

This evening, tomorrow evening and Wednesday evening the joint forces of the GBUs, FAC asso and Agapé are putting on a series of evening discussions called Dialog Veritas, where sudents have been surveyed for the question they would like to ask God, the top five have been selected and these will then be presented and discussed. Two speakers are booked for each evening. Late morning the phone rang. Would I consider replacing one of the speakers, who is ill. I said "No" for this evening, and I'll get back to you for Tuesday and Wednesday. After reflection I said I could do Tuesday (topics "God, if you exist, prove it!" and "What is there after death?") but no to Wednesday ("Why all the suffering?"). Thanks for praying !

Well the weekend went OK. It started with a church council from 10:30 to 16:00. For lunch I got nice sandwiches and a chocolate goo pud from Aldi for under 2 euros. The council had a good outcome - we're working on the progress of the church and on the call of the pastor. Then preaching for the Chinese. They've twigged now that for small groups I don't see the point of standing on a podium speaking into a microphone, so we sat round the tables at the back and I spoke from Acts 4, obeying God rather than man. As some of our Chinese folk belong to house-churches in China the discussion afterwards was very real. Pat joined me at the church after the council and we were together for the Chinese meeting because she's supposed to begin Christianity Explored with one of the Chinese girls, but the girl wasn't there. Oh well. Home by 10:30 and off to bed. Sunday morning I was in Blaye and we were dropping the kids off and picking up Sally at Cenon. The service went...

So off went Catrin like the proverbial little lamb through the icy North wind to catch the 7am bus to school. 'The teachers have been crafty and scheduled the Bac blanc (mock exams) for today, so maybe that'll work...', she said. Then at 7:40 an email from the school. Once more the entry to the school was surrounded by a gang of kids wielding flour, eggs, etc. Safety and the good functioning of the school could not be guaranteed and so the school would be closed. Text messages and phones calls caught our girl too late. A gang of three "Terminale" students had followed her pelting her with flour, eggs and ketchup. She made her mucky way home and got showered and changed. It's the Pere Cent, one hundred days before the BAC exams, when the final year lycée students run amok, cheeky chumps, pelting the other students with mucky things. "Last year they had ballons filled with urine", said Catrin, philosphically thinking that she had escaped ligh...

First the insurance office for a list of three things. Must not forget them.. Then I have meetings with different chaps at 11am, 2pm, 4pm and 6pm. I hope also to see the new Philippe Starck bike at the town hall and to get some cloves, some raisins, some coffee pods and some white chocolate. Crackerjack !

So yesterday. Yes. Yesterday. The church here is ploughing full-steam ahead with the process of calling a pastor (with me pushing hard behind !). That involves two documents. 1. Projet d'église . 2. Cahier de charges pastoral (These would roughly translate into a church profile and a job description.)   Over the course of some weeks it has dawned on me that these documents would not materialise without significant investment from my part. So yesterday morning was " Cahier de Charges " morning. I had two examples to guide me. One beautiful one from a church I know and one much more humbly presented one from a church I know of, but don't know personally. OK. So off I went. Cut. Paste. Rewrite. Take the outline. Write your own blurbs. Etc. Etc. Etc. The trouble with writing in French is that you can't just write in English with French words. It needs to find a way more French to say the stuff. And projects are boys, churches are girls, the church is s...