Retreat Bonne Nouvelle Church

Greetings from Paris to all our brothers and sisters, in Christ. We hope this letter finds you well in His grace. The following is our report concerning the months of September and October.

Attendance Growth

Since September we are experiencing an evident growth in our services. Many visitors are regularly coming and our attendance, which until August was around 25 people, is frequently above 35. I’ve been meeting regularly with most of our visitors, especially those who are interested in becoming members.

New Members and Baptism

The result is that from October on, we started the most numerous new members’ class so far, with more than 10 people enrolled. Among these, we have at least 4 baptism candidates.  Please pray for them, Myriam, Marthe, Mathieu and Bénedicte; and also for the member candidates, all to be received on December 15.

Special Prayers

We also appreciate your prayers for a couple we have known and have shared the gospel with for about 9 years now. They both studied in Mayra’s university and used to come to our first Bible studies in our home, when we first arrived. They have been attending consistently for the past semester and for the first time were willing to take part on our members’ class. We are seeing encouraging progress as last Sunday we had a great pastoral meeting with them.

Searching for a New Place

This blessing of growth is also pushing us urgently to move locations again. We ask for prayers as we need a bigger room for our services and this is a big challenge inside Paris. Ideally we would love to find a place that we could rent for the whole month and not only for Sundays.

Our Retreat 

In the end of October we did our second retreat as a church celebrating together 502 years of the Protestant Reformation. We cherished our heritage considering the mighty work of God in and through men and women that were determined to reform their lives and the church in the light of the Scriptures. We have also prayed for a new reform in our days. We gathered together to have a very blessed and joyous time of fellowship. It was also a great opportunity to confirm the progress of the elder candidates. Loïc taught us a biographical lesson on Sola Scriptura through Luther, and Nath did the same with Calvin and Sola Fide. I taught three messages: The Reformation of Josiah (2 Kings 22-23), The Authority and Sufficiency of Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:1-4:5), and Justification by Faith in Paul’s Conversion (1 Timothy 1:11-20). It was a very full but glorious week as I also preached another sermon on Sunday.