A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIGHT

Creative Outreach And The Church In France

Imagine a world where someone books time in their diary for four hours of prayer – and then decides that it wasn’t enough. As strange as it sounds, that’s the situation Pastor Marie-Laure Fenet found herself in when her church in Sartrouville, France, opened a creative prayer space to the public earlier this year.

Maybe you’re reading this and feel you’re in the same category as I was: ‘I’ll have to see it to believe it’. I’m spending the weekend with John and Sue Wilson, BMS World Mission pastors who have dedicated the past 38 years to church-planting in France. And when they tell me that we’ll be visiting a creative prayer space for two hours, I find myself wondering how we’ll fill the time.

That’s before we arrive and I see how wrong I was. The church is in the outskirts, beyond the Paris of the postcards and out into the suburbs. This is the France of the everyday, where kids bounce on trampolines in the front garden and young men in tracksuits gather outside the ‘Tabac’ for a cigarette. But when we step inside the church, it’s like walking into Paris’ loveliest art exhibition.

I’m taken around by MarieThérèse, who has been a member here for the past 41 years. She lovingly explains how each space works – from the banquet table that allows visitors to meditate on Psalm 23, to the room with a cross that enables them to contemplate Jesus’ death and then take home a little nail with a tag saying ‘forgiven’. Each space is beautiful, warm and inviting. I can easily see how four hours could slip by here.

The creativity of the prayer space at Sartrouville is born of a Church that has historically been hidden behind closed doors. And I mean that quite literally: thanks to a legal ruling from the end of the 19th century, John and Sue’s church in the centre of Paris had to be built as a rabbit warren of rooms leading to a vast inner sanctuary, completely invisible from the street. But instead of retreating back into itself, John and Sue’s fellowship has doubled down on their outreach. And whether through the outreach meal the church runs for the lonely, undocumented or those experiencing homelessness, the lodgings they provide for young women who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to study or work in Paris, or the welcome extended to people on the move, it’s clear that the French attitude to mission is making a real difference, especially when it comes to connecting with people who would otherwise be on the edges of society.

“We see some people come for one hour, and they want more time after that, because they realise they need to really sit through the Bible texts and listen to God,” say Marie-Laure and Marjolaine, Marie-Laure’s pastoral apprentice.

In fact, people born abroad or in Overseas France make up the majority of John and Sue’s congregation – but integrating into Parisian culture isn’t always easy. I chat to Glorya, a young church member who has been living in the women’s hostel while she completes her Master’s degree. Raised in Portugal for the first fifteen years of her life, Glorya shares that it was initially a huge struggle to find her place in Paris. “My French was so bad! So I know how hard it is to learn a different language and how hard it is to move,” Glorya laughs. Glorya was used to the expression of faith she grew up with in Portugal, where big Christian holidays, iconography and even Christian turns of phrase were celebrated. “I don’t want to say that French culture doesn’t like Christians… but it does take issue with people’s expression of faith. Even saying ‘God bless you’ – people look at you strangely. But I was raised that way in Portugal. Even now, I always say ‘blessings!’ to people. It’s not easy, for sure.”

The one thing that kept Glorya rooted during her teenage years was John and Sue’s church. “That was the first step towards us being included,” she says. Living in the women’s hostel has allowed Glorya to thrive in her studies, and also pursue a successful and growing career as a gospel singer. Now, her French is so good that people can’t tell she ever lived abroad.

The main thing I’m struck by as I travel home from France is the immense dedication and love of the people welcoming newcomers like Glorya – but also how much it is rooted in unity. The outreach meal was a collaboration between volunteers at John and

Sue’s church and a church down the road. The prayer space was built not by artists, but by the church’s teenagers who poured so much of their time into the art. Churches across France are working together to welcome in refugees and migrants, to give them the refuge they might not otherwise have received. Ordinary people, coming together, to be used by an extraordinary God.

People like Marie-Thérèse, the lady who welcomes me to the prayer space and who answers so many of my questions. She tells me that the building the church uses was once an old factory. “It used to produce electricity,” Marie-Thérèse says. “Now we’re creating a different kind of light.” •