France and Meetings on the Word and Confessional Lutheranism
France and Meetings on the Word and Confessional Lutheranism
From the Field August 9, 2016
I recently during July had the pleasure of sitting down with a man in France for three days who is interested in confessional Lutheranism. I will not use his name in this report for several reasons. These meetings were with two of our men in Europe that we are in fellowship with and with another man who did the translation work. I had sent 45 Bible study question to him(who I will designate with S.) that he would prepare the answers to be given orally when we met.
He is 40 years old and has a secular job as well as preaching in his Lutheran church. His position allows him to preach and do other work. Work will go forward to train S for the ministry, and the desire is for him to be a pastor/.missionary in fellowship with the CLC. He has had two years at the university which allows him to preach. At this time his congregation has a woman pastor that he does not agree with and he wants to leave the church. We know how Scripture is clear that men are to preach and have authority in the church as well as in the home. As we talked with him over three days, I was impressed by his sincerity and knowledge of the Word.
His university training led to his consecration. While at the university he had classes in – Old Testament, Gospels, Historical studies on the church, Sanctification, Luther, and others like Calvin. He was introduced to the Historical Critical Method of interpreting Scripture that he does not agree with, nor do we. Our view of Scripture is that it interprets itself and we use the Historical Grammatical approach to understand Scripture. He also studied, preaching, Practical Theology and conducting the ministry. His growth in the faith was from being indifferent to then seeing the need of the faith. He investigated churches and decided that he needed to be in the faith. He came back into the church looking at different ones. He found our Pastor Jean Pierre Blanchard through the internet in the website that he has. They have corresponded and this led to our joint meetings. This points up the value of websites on the internet that can be used to reach out
We of course hope and pray during this next year that S. sees the CLC fellowship as the place to find a spiritual home.
It was stressed that in the continued training we should not go too fast and skip things, but slowly and carefully proceed.And it is important to remember that our learning only ends when we see the Teacher face to face.
By next year we would hope to consider a colloquy with CLC men in the USA and ordination following. You should consider that we in effect did a preliminary colloquy. We did 15 questions each day.
The idea of him being a pastor/missionary ordained as such is very important in the French culture. He must be called and ordained as such so that he would not be considered as part of a cult and bring on problems with official churches and gov. There will be enough problems and ostracism as things develop.
There could be an incorporated French eglise(church) to be activated. And work in a larger city would follow. I encourage you to pray for S. and we wait on the gracious Lord to see what will happen.