Category: Ministry

Baptismal service

On Sunday afternoon, we had the great joy to witness the baptisms of Pierre and Joseph.

Pierre is in his late 50s, early 60s. He wasn’t brought up in the faith, and came to “religion” in adulthood. He was a dedicated Roman Catholic for many years and knows the Roman catholic system from experience. But he never had peace and kept looking. After a long journey, he has finally found true peace in Christ. He’s been coming to our church for over a year now, and I’ve met him a few times to study the Scriptures together. His wife came to the service, with two of their 7 children.

Joseph is our Pastor’s son. He was brought up in the faith, and accepted most things about God as true. But his testimony highlighted that in spite of this he was rebellious against God. But God eventually saved him.

There were between 30 and 40 people, folks from the church, but also a few unbelievers. The gospel was preached. After the service, people hanged around, chatting away. There was a happy atmosphere. We thank God for the privilege of witnessing these baptism and taking part in the service.

Newsletter frustrations

As a missionary, we regularly send newsletters to provide fuel for people’s prayer and remind our supporters of our existence. Email is a great help. It is fast an cheap. But it seems that many people either don’t receive them or just don’t read their mails. At least, when we used to send proper letters, there were good chances were that peopIe opened them.

I use Mailchimp for convenience, and thanks to it’s tools, I know exactly who has opened our newsletters. Last week, I sent a newsletter to 280 people. Three messages bounced back, 132 were opened and presumably read, and 145 remain unopened. That’s 51.8%. I suspect that some have changed address and haven’t told us. Most don’t bother checking their spam filter from time to time. The rest probably delete it without opening. I’d love to know. I could send a separate email to the 145 people who haven’t opened the latest newsletter to know. But I won’t. Still, I am grateful to the 132 who have read it.

Rant finished.

How do you measure up the success of an evangelistic event?

Last night, we had the second part of our six part series “Passerelles vers Dieu”. We would have loved to have a crowd of unbelievers. But we were five, and everyone was from the church. Was the evening a success? Yes, it was.

We watched the video and discussed the themes. We thought about our contemporaries, the meaning of life… It was helpful to see how each one perceived the world we lived in. It ended up more like an “experience meeting”, in the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist tradition where people discussed their own experience of life and the world, and we tried to apply a biblical worldview to it.

There were no unbelievers, and that was a bit disappointing. But it was still a great evening. We talked a bout serious life issues, and I hope this was helpful to everyone.