Non-existent emergent church

The subtitle of one of my current summer reading books says, "Living our faith well and communicating it to our contemporaries."

http://www.nakedpastor.com/2010/01/27/cartoon-faiths-shadow/

The book's actual title is: "Serving the French: the challenge of the emergent Church." I was initially stymied as to why David Brown wrote the book because he refers to the “quasi-absence in France of churches issuing from the emergent stream at the time of the writing of these lines.”

So why write 256 pages about a non-issue?

Brown is a three-time church planter in France and currently General Secretary for InterVarisity France. I have found him to be one of France's foremost ecclesiologists and missiologists, so picked up the book. And without disappointment. It is an excellent pretext for detailing the French context and factors pertaining to evangelism and church planting in Voltaire’s country.

Brown, born in England naturalized French, has a keen eye for that which is culturally significant for the gospel. Here are a few snippets to enrich your understanding of french people and factors pertaining to evangelism, disciple maturation and church planting :

"the French culture resists change…"

"According to the "Lausanne Institute for Management Developpement (IMD) in 2004, France was classed in last place (60th) for "the flexibility and adaptability of people facing new challenges” and 59th in “openness to foreign ideas.”

“the general suspicion toward others” (136)

“exaltation of roots… the attachment to the French language” (139)

“the mentality… considers that Catholicism is the ‘normative’ religion” and “the wide-spread idea that Christian equals Catholic” (169)

“the word ‘cult’ is never very far from the mind” and even “the Church only provokes reactions of mistrust in France” (172)

“the [Christian] mission and colonialism developed almost hand in hand, albeit in a complex way” (173)

“one concludes that the colonialist period was catastrophic on almost every level” (175).

These are formidable contextual factors that must be considered when evangelizing and church planting in France.

Voltaire’s country is militantly secular yet rooted in Catholic culture.

Here evangelicalism is at best viewed as a sectarian strain of Christianity, and often as a cult imported by foreign missionaries guilty of malfeasance due to their lack of mastery of the celestial language.

Even the term “missionary” is as offensive as a four-letter-word in the mouth of the French due to its inextricable association with abusive colonialism.

I’ve just about concluded the book… more later.