France

Last March, the French denomination Perspectives launched its first "church-planting Sunday". This year, the initiative is also being encouraged in the 500 churches of the Réseau FEF (French Evangelical Fraternal Network). On Sunday 1st March, churches across France will focus their services on encouraging French evangelicals to support existing church plants and to seek the Lord's guidance for new projects. Please pray for the ongoing impact of this strategic initiative: around 4,000 churches still need to be planted to meet the French Evangelical Alliance's goal of 1 evangelical church for every 10,000 people.

The Southern Europe countries of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy need our focused prayer. With cultures strongly influenced by their Catholic history, most Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese have no idea of the real facts of the Gospel. Pray for a move of the Holy Spirit which will bring young and old to search for the Truth.

Please continue to pray for my good friend F. and her husband, who has lost the use of his legs. For healing, strength and courage to cope, but most importantly for their salvation (including their two teenagers).

A couple of major evangelical events recently took place in France. The first was La Place (imagine a cross between Spring Harvest and a Christian Resources Exhibition), which brought together over 4,000 evangelicals for a 3-day event near Paris. The second was "La Marche pour Jésus" (March for Jesus) which probably involved around 50,000 participants across various French cities. Please give thanks for these tangible expressions of unity and pray for their ongoing impact in terms of witness and equipping in a country where evangelicals only account for just over 1% of the population.

To try and help address the shortage of gospel workers in France, the Perspectives network of churches has launched a 4-year training programme to help equip volunteers for service within their local churches. The training is being made freely available to all churches within the evangelical FEF Network (nearly 500 in total). Please pray for the ongoing impact of this initiative and, in addition, please ask the Lord to raise up more full-time or bi-vocational workers for the growing evangelical population in France.

Please praise the LORD with Al Massira for wonderful news of precious new So**li Followers in the Body of Christ in Northern Europe! 35 people gathered (Saved and not-yet Saved) to be guided through the Al Massira Introduction session. One young girl gave her life to Christ! 15 So**li Believers are seeking to continue to meet for the whole AM Journey, where they will split into 2 smaller discussion groups. Please pray they will be strengthened, anointed and assured in their faith and given courage to share Christ with others, especially amongst the So**li community. To the glory of God!

Matt & Margaret in France: There is an evident move of the Holy Spirit in Matt and Margaret’s church. Each Sunday they put out more chairs. They ask: ‘Pray for a family who came to church recently, to see what an evangelical church was like. They were thrilled with the welcome, and hardly ever miss a meeting. They now plan to marry. Do pray for them to be kept by His power.’

BMS World Mission’s partner the Federation of French Evangelical Baptist Churches (FEEBF) finished their annual congress yesterday. Pray that as delegates return to their communities, they will be able to carry out their new commitments so that more lives will be reached with the love of Christ. Pray too that in a time of so much uncertainty and darkness across the world, God will use FEEBF to spread his light and hope across France.

Opportunities among Jews: France contains the largest Jewish community in Europe at around 447,000. Pray for Jews, particularly in Paris and Marseilles, to encounter Jesus. Pray that God would provide French-speaking Christians, especially Messianic Jews, to move into predominantly Jewish communities and introduce our Messiah to them.