Growth of Evangelicals in France

French team reports on state of evangelical churches in France

France has around 60 million inhabitants divided into 36,000 towns and villages. At present there are about 2,000 evangelical churches, which is one church for 30,000 inhabitants.

Between 1970 and the year 2000, a new church started every ten days on average, which is very encouraging.

In western and central France, a large number of departments had no evangelical church (see diagram below). Today, this is no longer the case – each department has at least one church, although the west and the centre are still below the national average.

Since the year 2000, growth has slowed down.

An action plan has been put in place and the evangelicals in France meet regularly to work on concerted objectives and strategies at a national level. Several ‘pilot’ departments have put these in practice in Paris and the North West. The objective being targeted is one church for 10,000 inhabitants, which would triple the number of churches currently in existence.

At the current growth rate, it would take 122 years to reach this figure, but if each existing church committed itself to “reproduce”, i.e. to plant a new church, and to do this every ten years, the objective could be reached in just 16 years.

Horizons is fully committed to this process of seeing more churches planted over the coming years. We believe it is through the presence of born-again believers, functioning as the body of Christ locally, that the Gospel usually becomes visible and understandable. The church-plants need to be multiplied. If they are nearby this allows collaboration and sharing of resources.

Horizons has entered into partnerships with local churches and church federations with the aim of placing people in church-planting teams in pioneer situations. We are currently involved in the south-west, the west and the north of France.

We are looking for people to work with us who could be involved in these or new teams alongside French people and missionaries. If you would like more information, you can write to us at info@horizonsfrance.org or look at our website: www.horizonsfrance.org

Etienne Morgan – Horizons France Coordinator.