Dear EIC Alumni,
Autumn is one of my favorite seasons of the year. There is something nice about feeling the cool, crisp fall air as you step outside. At EIC, this season always brings a flush of new life in the congregation, as new families and young adults are always visiting our church for the first time. This September has been no different. There is once more that great feeling of watching our faithful members greeting the new arrivals and inviting them to be part of our family. It has been a joy seeing this happen again.
Many things have happened since our last newsletter. In July, our youth had another good year at our Euroventure Youth Camp. It was packed this year in Grindelwald, as several new churches in the convention sent their groups. Every single bed in the camp was taken, and God did big things in the life of our youth group. We had one give his life to the Lord and several return with renewed vigor for serving Christ at their schools.
Just before youth camp, we were privileged to host the drama team from Hannibal LaGrange University at our church. This group comes every year to serve at youth camp, and the last two years they arrived early to serve our church. They are skilled and did a lot of handy work around our church building as well as put on a quality children’s day that we called “Construction Zone.” We examined Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount about building our houses’ on the rock while we played games, saw skits, and sang songs. We are most thankful to this great volunteer team that came to help us.
This fall our church is doing a sermon series on the core principles of the Reformation. October 31st is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg. In this series we are looking closely at the doctrines that were so important in this movement that provides historical roots for our church. We are looking at the 5 “solas” of the reformation as well as some other key points such as the priesthood of all believers. These sermons will all eventually be on our website if you want to follow with us in our study of our historical heritage.
We are blessed
by the Lord in the arrival of Katt Smith, our new music intern. Katt is a graduate of my alma mater (the great University of Mobile), where she studied a combination of music, French, and intercultural studies. She is working double duty, coming here with an au pair job while she takes leadership over our music program at the same time. Our music program will be a big job as we now have music at two campuses to manage. She is a gifted musician and has a heart to see Christ glorified in our church, and we are thrilled to have her.
Our Young Adult ministry got off to a booming start this past week. This group meets at Ternes (where our church plant is) on Thursday night. We had 31 present, which was a huge number that will very likely grow in the coming weeks. Investing in the lives of the 18-35 age group has always been a big part of the ministry of our church, and we are excited about the opportunity to invest in this new group (about half of those who came on Thursday were people we had never met!).
Speaking of Ternes, our church plant has also been moving forward. We had almost 40 people present at the service in July, with nearly 30 in September. We are very pleased with the direction of this and are very confident about the prospect of this becoming an every week second campus soon. In fact, we have some exciting news on this front. At the beginning of 2018 we will be welcoming a new family who will be serving with us in a role we will be calling “Church Planting Missionary.” Some college friends of mine, K.J. and Lynn Pugh, who have been serving a church in England, will be transitioning to Paris to help us get the Ternes campus from a once a month service to a fully functioning church. Their presence will allow our staff enough margin to be able to execute every week services at our second location with quality preaching and good leadership development. They intend to stay 12-18 months in order to help us get the new church to a place where it can be self-supporting. At the end of that time we hope to be able to hire a full time pastor for the new location
K.J. and Lynn will be raising support to bring their family to Paris. While some of this work has already been done, they still have some work to do. As they are raising support, we are hoping to use their short-term stay with us to establish long term partnerships with churches. If you or your church would like to connect, please contact us. Partnership can come in the form of informed prayer, volunteer team opportunities, sending workers, or by financial supporting new church starts. Our vision is to reach the Anglophone population of Paris by littering the City of Lights with Communities of Light, bearing witness to Jesus. If that is a vision that you would like to be a part of, please get in touch!
Because He lives,
Parker
Thanksgiving :
Please take time to thank our God for how he is working in our church. Every time a new family moves away from Paris, God supplies us with new people who are able to carry on the ministry. God has put a sweet, cooperative spirit amongst our congregation and it truly is a delight to be part of it.
Our Preaching Series :
Pray for us as we ponder the great ideas that are passed down to us from the Reformation - Faith alone, Grace alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone, to the Glory of God alone.
Ternes Campus Plant :
Our current services at Ternes take place the first Sunday of every month. This week Pastor Justin is preaching there.
The Pugh Family :
K.J., Lynn, Ella and James are getting ready to come to the City of Lights in the early part of 2018. Pray for them as they raise support, mobilize partners, and prepare spiritually for the work that God has prepared for them at EIC. Ask God if you, your small group, or your church might be part of His means to see a new EIC church planted in Paris.
