Bournagain

We had a super day on Saturday. I haven’t written about this yet as I’m always a bit reluctant to blog about events before they happen. Saturday was the launch of a new inter-church youth event we have been preparing for several months now called LinkUp. It was an idea that we had been tossing around for years, but for various reasons the time just didn’t seem right until now. Throughout 2007 we became increasingly aware of a desire amongst teens and twenty-somethings in the churches in Nantes for more reality in their walk with God (the vertical relationship) and in their friendship with other Christians across denominational boundaries, and with unbelieving friends (the horizontal relationship). So out of this need grew the vision for “LinkUp”, which is just a catchy phrase for the first and second greatest commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.

We had a GREAT time! The programme combined games, food and “hang out” time with creative worship and learning on the theme “Droit au coeur” (straight to the heart) where we looked at what it actually means to love God with all your heart. We were determined to make it as interactive and “communal” as possible, so most of the learning time happened in small groups led by a core group of young adults who were willing to be big brother or sister for the teens. We also wanted to try something different with the worship, and to get beyond just singing. The result was a series of “worship stations” where people could express themselves through art, psalm-writing, mime, dance, or just being quiet. Of course, we sang as well … I made a real effort to shake the dust out of our usual repertoire and introduced some new songs. I’m trying to keep to a minimum 50 % of songs originally written in French, rather than translations. It is true that I am at a time in my life where I don’t connect with God through music nearly as well as I used to, but my memory of the powerful effect that sung worship had on me as a teenager is a good motivator.

Some reactions: “We have all been on a little cloud since yesterday!” “God was really at the centre of this event.” “Can’t wait till the next LinkUp!” And then there was the young lady for whom everything fell into place when she realised God was speaking to her through the Parable of the Sower (our theme text for the learning time), and she handed over the ownership of her life to Jesus, a huge encouragement to the friends who had invited her along. When we counted up the number of participants who registered for the event, we realised that there were 77 of us, from 7 different churches! This does not account for all the churches in Nantes, but it is a good beginning.

The next LinkUp: March 8th.

One thing about living on the other side of the world to a large number of friends and family members is that you tend to live in two parrallel universes which never intersect. This is why we so enjoy receiving NZ visitors in France. But until this weekend we had never had anyone from France visit us in New Zealand.

François is a young friend from Nantes, an engineering student who, instead of fulfilling his foreign work placement requirement somewhere sensible like England, he came all the way to NZ where he ended up working in a pulp and paper mill in the exotic (ahem!) little town of Tokoroa. If you read French you can find out here about his NZ adventure.

It was an ideal weekend as we had a dinner to get together with old friends, and gave a presentation in church on Sunday morning, part of which was an interview with François about his life in Nantes and what it’s like being a full-on Christian in such a secular educational environment. François is very active in Agape Campus – a student Christian movement in Nantes. It was great hearing his impressions of our homeland – seeing it through French eyes.

Welcome to our blog for those who have just linked in from our newsletter which went out today. Hope you enjoy your visit.

We just had our new neighbours over for “goûter” – it’s the same kind of idea as afternoon tea, and it’s a pretty common way of inviting people for the first time, especially if they have children. They’ve moved into the house next door which had been empty for 30 years! Good thing they have time off work to get some work done on it. They have two children, including a boy a bit older than Isaac, and they seem to get on well.

Like so many people we have met in Nantes, they have fled the rat race of Paris for a change of lifestyle out in the provinces. What a life they had – 3 hours in the car each day, on top of an up-to-10 hour day. Interesting jobs, well paid, but at the cost of seeing their son for about half an hour a day for the first six years of his life. They have very bravely taken the plunge into a change of geography, in the hope that it will lead to a change of lifestyle.

It made us think of our major change of geography 7 years ago when we came here. And we have changed, but in hindsight it was nothing to do with geography. Just changing the externals of life doesn’t necessarily change who we are inside. I can move wherever I like in the world, but my priorities, my patterns of relating, my blind spots, they way I define myself, all come with me. Real change is “from the inside out”, and often involves the painful giving up of things in my life which take the place of God.

Nice family – hope we can get to know them better. We miss our friends from across the road who have moved to Bordeaux – another example of someone desperately seeking change but not really knowing where to look for it. We are still in touch – had a visit from them during the November school holidays.

Fridays bring a bit of a change in our daily routine, as Heather has started some volunteer work, which means Dad gets to spend a morning teaching the children (we’re home-educating for anyone who didn’t know).

For ages Heather had noticed how many “SDF”s we have in our community (“SDF” is an acronym for “no fixed abode” in French), but we’d always struggled to find a practical way of getting involved with these people. That is, until we discovered the Maison bleue – “the Blue House”. We’ve found churches here to be fairly unengaged when it comes to working with the down and outs. It’s partly to do with the Church and State thing – since 1905 the institutional Church has been pushed to the periphery of social action as the State has taken more responsibility. It has got more and more complicated for religious organisations to be involved in this kind of thing, and I guess Christians have just put it in the too hard basket.

But there are a surprising number of secular people with a social conscience who are out there trying to make a difference, and we met some of them this last August at a Forum for clubs and associations in our town of Rezé. Heather has started volunteering there with a friend, Sarah, every Friday morning. The Maison bleue is like a little haven for homeless and street people, or people who have simply fallen on hard times. It’s open every morning. Breakfast is served, there are places to sit and chat, play cards, take a shower, and a group of volunteers who are there just to serve and offer a listening ear.

“We mustn’t ever expect these people to change” is something Heather has heard more than once from the other workers. Sure, the “clients” are angry, they are unwashed, they are lacking even the most basic social graces. Some of them even get quite violent: the Maison was closed for a week a while back after the violent outbursts of one of the patrons. But the goal is not to change these people, but just to be there for them.

How often do we see needs in our communities, but feel paralysed into inaction because it just seems too difficult to do anything about it? This paralysis blinds us to the fact that there are things already going on. We don’t necessarily need to be the people who start these projects; sure, if we aren’t the initiators then we can’t put a nice plaque on the door to show that the project is owned and run by this or that church or ministry. But are people really interested in what we do on Sunday mornings?

In a world without God, “we can’t expect change” is a very tragic, but very inevitable statement. But what happens when Holy Spirit-filled, Kingdom-oriented, Jesus-loving people step out of their religious buildings and come into places where real life is happening, where people are struggling with the hard realities of existence, longing for change, but seeing only impossibility?

Disciples know that change is possible, because they’ve seen it in their own lives.

It’s early days yet, but we’re very interested to see what might develop here.