May 16, 2024 Show with Joel Favre on “A Reformed Witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in France”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 16th day of May 2024.

Before I introduce my guest and topic for the day, I do have a reminder for you.

If you're a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free biannual pastor's luncheon, the next one being held on Thursday, June the 6th, 11 a .m.

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I am honored with the privilege of having as my keynote speaker Dr. Joel Beeke, who is currently the

Chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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In fact, Dr. Joel Beeke has a connection with my guest today, and I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today.

His name is Joel Favre. He is pastor of a Reformed Baptist congregation in Grenoble, France, and today we are going to be addressing a

Reformed witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in France, the land from which

Reformer John Calvin fled. And it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Radio, Pastor Joel Favre.

Well, thank you. I'm delighted to be with you. It's a great honor to be on your show. Thanks. And I'm especially grateful since you had to stay up later perhaps than normal because of the hour, the time difference there in France.

Yeah, that's right. But first of all, if you could please explain or describe this

Reformed Baptist congregation there in Grenoble, France. Yes, I'm a pastor of this church who's been here for about 25 years now.

It's been planted in the late 1990s. And at the start, the beginning of the church was a plant by an

American missionary, actually, who came from Atlanta, near Atlanta in the south of the

United States. And he came here at the end of the 1990s to plant this church because there was a small group of French people who had left some evangelical churches here in Grenoble because they had discovered the doctrines of grace and they had discovered expository preaching and they wanted to have a church where the

Bible would be expounded faithfully and where the doctrines of grace would be preached.

And so while there were a couple of families who left those evangelical churches in Grenoble, at the start, they just met in a house here near where I live right now.

And they met for a couple of years just on their own, a few families together in a home, trying to discover together the doctrines of grace.

And they, at some point, realized that there was this American missionary not very far from here in a town called

Chalon -sur -Saône. And well, they reached out to him and asked him if he would consider coming here to Grenoble to plant this church.

And he did. He came. And so they planted the church officially. I think it was in 1999.

And this missionary stayed for about 12 years, I think. Then the church has been without a pastor, but with three elders for about six years.

And then I came. And so I've been here for about seven years now. And this church is quite a small church.

I mean, for France, it's a normal size, but we're about 50 to 60 people on a Sunday. And so we have the 1689

Confession of Faith as our Confession of Faith here in the church. And the members, people who become members have to sign that Confession of Faith.

And so that's what we teach. We teach the Bible, but we are based on this

Confession of Faith. And we've seen God's faithfulness over the years for us.

Praise God. By the way, I don't know if you're aware of this. I know that you recently preached at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle.

And I had the honor and privilege to hear you preach a very powerful message.

But it may or may not surprise you. I don't know how much you are aware of American churches.

But Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, for confessionally Reformed Baptist churches, is a mega church.

In other words, most Reformed Baptist churches that I'm aware of in the United States are about the same size as the church where you pastor.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's why I guess that's why I was saying we're small in the sense of compared to the church in Carlisle.

But I'm sure, yeah, other churches in the States would be in a similar size as us.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was indeed a wonderful sermon. And I want to let everybody know that they can hear that sermon for free by going to the

Web site of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle. And that Web site is gracebaptistcarlisle .org.

Carlisle is spelt C -A -R -L -I -S -L -E. And you can click on sermons and look for Joel Favre, which is his last name is spelt

F -A -V as in victory, R -E. And you'll be able to hear that sermon for yourself.

And I was quite blessed by it. And look forward to future opportunities to hear you preach,

God willing. I hope you return to the States often and preach for us.

Well, thanks. I hope so. It was a great blessing to be there to see the church. And it's been you know, it's there's been a connection with this church in Carlisle for many years.

This church in Carlisle and our church in Grenoble, because actually they've been supporting that missionary.

I was talking about who planted the church. So his name is David Vaughn. Yes. And he's been financially supported by the church in Carlisle.

So it was great for me to be back there and to be able to see, well, to tell people where the church is at.

And to explain how God has been faithful and faithfully used the support they gave to that church to, well, to reach people here.

And so, yeah, it was very encouraging for me as well to be there. And if anybody listening is in France, especially if you are in or near Grenoble, France, whether you live there or are vacationing there, or maybe you have family, friends and loved ones in or near Grenoble, France, you're looking for a biblically solid church.

The website is erb -grenoble .fr for France.

erb -grenoble .fr. And God willing, we will repeat that website later on in the show.

Well, we have a tradition here, Pastor Joel. Whenever we have a first -time guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and the providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And I would love to hear your story.

Well, yeah, sure. So I was born in France, but then raised in Switzerland, in Lausanne.

And I grew up in a Christian home. So my dad was a pastor. He still is a pastor.

He's just retired, actually, but he's been a pastor his whole life. And he was a pastor of a

Reformed Baptist church in Lausanne. And so I grew up in this Christian home.

I've been taught the Bible from a young age, and my parents gave me a great example of what it means to follow

Jesus. So I'm very grateful for that. But I guess when

I – well, this may be one of the things we'll talk about later, but being a

Christian in France, even in Switzerland, is quite tough in a sense.

It's a very, very small minority. And so I guess when I arrived at the age of, you know, 14, 15, 16,

I began to drift a bit away from church.

I was still going there most of the time, but, you know, basically because I wanted to keep up appearances, but I was really far, far, far from the

Lord. And in God's providence, at some point,

I was really near the place where I was going to, you know, quit the church and say to my parents, it wasn't for me.

And when we actually had two young men from the

United States who came to our place, they were doing a trip in Europe.

And they came from a Reformed Baptist church in the south of – from Georgia, actually, from Macon in Georgia.

And they found us on some website. I guess they found the Reformed Baptist church I was.

So my dad was a pastor there, and they asked if they could stay for a while, and they did.

And my parents asked them if I could stay during that summer by them.

So in Macon, Georgia, if I could spend a few months there to practice my English and, you know, learn the language and so on.

And so I did. So I went. I was 17 years old. I went to Georgia, Macon, Georgia for a summer.

And, you know, it's strange sometimes what God uses in His providence to draw someone to Him.

But I think I was in a great family. The people there were just great. I had a blessed time with them.

They were great, you know, men and great men and women of God, the parents of that family.

But I think that the whole atmosphere of, you know, what you call the

Bible Belt in the south of the United States, where there's so many cultural Christians, people who say they're

Christians, but it's just traditions. I think it just brought me to realize what

I was living. I found, if you will, that there was a lot of hypocrisy in the people

I met over that summer. I'm not speaking about the family where I was. They were great Christian again.

But, you know, most people living in that area, they would call themselves Christians, but they were not, obviously not.

And this whole hypocrisy, I think it helped me to see my own hypocrisy, you know, going to church, being the good pastor's kids, and keeping up appearances when actually my heart was very far from the

Lord. And I think God used that to break me, in a sense.

I think I never doubted that God was there. I had never doubted the gospel.

I knew it was true. But I just didn't want God to be Lord of my life.

And I think he used that in a way as a kind of, you know, a mirror to my soul to show me how dark and sinful

I was. And so that's really what God used. Actually, what

I tend to say also with regard to my testimony is that my dad was a pastor, and I always felt the sense that God was calling me to the ministry, even before I was converted.

I had this sense, I don't know why, that if I was to—well, if God was to convert me,

I would then go into full -time pastoral ministry. And I just didn't want to. Not because I had such a bad experience with my dad, not at all.

I don't know. I just didn't want to follow that path. And I think that was also part of my journey.

I think during that summer there in Georgia, I think there was a struggle, and God finally broke me and led me to the point where I just said,

Well, you know what, I don't know what you're going to do with me, Lord, but this is your life.

It's not my life. It's yours. Just do whatever you want. And that summer when

I came back home, it was just clear for me that a great change had happened.

It's not, you know, this kind of extraordinary conversion. I wasn't a bad kid before, and suddenly everything changed.

I had this anger inside of me, and when

I came back, I remember the first meal I took with my family just after I came back, and there was a sense of peace and just a thankfulness to be there.

And I think that's the point where I realized, well, something happened that summer.

And, yeah, it's really the way God, in his providence, how he worked to bring me to him.

Amen. And I know that Reformed Baptists, one of the differences we have with our

Presbyterian brethren is that we do not require formal training, seminary training, for the pastoral ministry because the

Bible doesn't require it. But I was just curious if you did pursue seminary training or any other kind of formal training to further prepare yourself for the pastoral ministry.

Yeah, sure. So, as I said, I had this sense of being called to ministry even before my conversion.

I got converted, and then quite quickly I talked with the elders in my church about this sense that I was called for the ministry, and they were very wise.

They just said, well, that's great. It's good. And what we encourage you to do is just to stay in the church, get involved.

They gave me opportunities to preach, to teach Bible studies, and teach youth groups and things like this.

And they also advised me to learn a job, you know, a secular job.

So I worked for four years as a bookseller in Switzerland.

And then when the time came for my training, I met someone

I knew for quite a long time, but maybe his name will mean something to you. His name is

Stuart Olliott. He's a British pastor who worked in Switzerland for quite a long time.

So Stuart was teaching at the Bible Institute in London, and when he learned

I wanted to study theology, he just encouraged me to come to London to that seminary. So the seminary

I went to was the London Seminary. It's a seminary that was founded by Martin Lloyd -Jones.

Oh, wow. Martin Lloyd -Jones founded that seminary in London to train preachers and pastors.

So I spent two years there, mainly learning to preach. Actually, it's not really a theological training in the sense that their aim is really to equip people to be able to preach

God's words. So it's mainly homiletics? Yeah, it's mainly homiletics.

So we did, obviously, theology, but it's mainly, you know, pastoral theology and homiletics.

So I did two years in London, and then since I wanted to be a pastor in France, I thought it would be good to study theology in France as well.

So I went to Aix -en -Provence. It's in the south of France, near Marseille, to the

John Calvin Institute, and I studied three years there. I did a THM there.

Now, since you spent so much of your life in Switzerland, even though you were born in France, can you tell us any differences that you've noticed between the religious climate of Switzerland and France?

And, of course, that even may depend upon the region and so forth.

Here in the United States, there is radical differences in the religious climate right here in one nation, depending upon where you go, northeast, northwest, midwest, south, etc.

As you were mentioning before, the Bible Belt is sadly saturated with nominalism, and the southern

Reformed pastors in the United States will be the first to tell you that.

In fact, I had an encounter years ago with a

Presbyterian pastor from Mississippi who was an elderly man at the time.

He's most likely in heaven now, but during our phone conversation, he said in his very deep

Mississippi -grizzled accent, Where are you from? And I said,

I'm from New York. He goes, Well, New York, you got it easy. You've just got to get people saved.

We got to get them lost, then get them saved. So, just from your own experience, where you lived in Switzerland and where you would eventually move to France, tell us about some of the cultural differences, especially in light of Christianity.

Going back to the 17th century, the

Catholics in France persecuted the

Protestants, the Huguenots, who had to flee France, and many of them went to Switzerland.

And so, the big difference is still felt today that actually, Switzerland is still, at least in some regions, a very

Protestant country. And so, you would have a mixture in Switzerland of regions that are more

Catholics and others that are more Protestants. So, it's quite normal in Switzerland to be

Protestant, Evangelicals. People would kind of know what you're talking about when you speak about that, when you say that you're

Protestant. And so, there's been also, because there's never been this, you know, there hasn't been something like the

French Revolution in Switzerland. So, religion has never been kicked out of the public square.

So, in Switzerland, more generally, religion still are part of the, you know, public life.

You talk, you hear people on TV talk about religion, about faith, that's still part of the culture in some sense.

Whereas in France, you know, it's faith. France is one of the most secular nations on the planet.

So, since the French Revolution 200 years ago, Christian faith has really been carefully kept out of the public square.

The use of religious language and symbols was even outlawed in public life in the years after the

French Revolution. It still is the case in many ways. And having faith or being spiritual, being

Christian or Protestant is often seen as odd or as a form of ignorance or superstition in France, which is not the case in Switzerland.

So, yeah, there are quite big differences. I mean, if you think about more ethics or ethical issues,

Switzerland would be more like, you know, Protestant countries like the Netherlands or Scandinavia, where they would be very much at the forefront of progressive ethical issues.

So, like, you know, abortion or euthanasia, they would be really pushing that very, very much further than France and countries like France or Italy or Spain who are more

Catholic. They would be more conservative on these issues. So, not everything is better in Switzerland in that regard.

Not at all. But it's, you know, religion is still in Switzerland. It's very much part of the public square.

You can talk about your faith, whereas in France it's really kept out of the public square. So that's a big difference.

But having said that, from what you just explained, in Switzerland, even though religion is a common thing to be discussed in the public square, it seems that the dominance of what is called

Christianity is apostate, leftist, mainline so -called

Christianity. Yes, very much so. Yeah, sure. So it's very, you know, the official church, what we call the reformed

Swiss church, the state church in this sense, is very, very liberal and very leftist.

So, yeah, of course, it's not strong Christianity, but it's more part of still the tradition.

People would more easily consider themselves Christians and so forth, even if it's just, you know, traditions.

Yeah. Now, if you are having a typical conversation, it might be just a lighthearted greeting with a neighbor and you're having a little conversation about the weather and all that kind of thing.

If you start to get more in -depth about your beliefs and if you were to mention a historic figure, especially in Switzerland, even though he's originally from France, if you were to mention

John Calvin, would most people, even evangelicals that may exist there, would they even know who you're talking about?

Well, probably not, at least not in my generation. Maybe people from an older generation maybe know

Calvin, but they would know him more as a, you know, a political figure because of what he did in Geneva.

So people would maybe know his name, but more as this kind of, you know, quite grim political figure who, you know, had a strong grip on Geneva for such a long time.

And so people would know him like this, but not as a theologian, a Christian, and they would have no idea what he preached, what he taught.

And maybe, I think, in my generation, people would have just no idea who he is. Okay, well, we're going to go to our first commercial break.

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Go to royaldiadem .com, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with Pastor Joel Favre.

He is a Reformed Baptist pastor in Grenoble, France.

And we do have a listener, David, in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania.

And David is also on the staff with Christian Businessmen's Connection in South Central Pennsylvania.

And he asks, was the church that you are affiliated with ever affiliated with the

Federation of Baptist Churches of France? And are you aware of Raymond Collet?

No, I'm not. It's a name that doesn't ring any bell. And we have not been affiliated to the

Federation of Baptist Churches in France. So, no, the name doesn't ring any bell.

I'm sorry. His next question is, can you explain the difference between these two churches, the

Baptist Church of Grenoble - and I'm never going to be able to pronounce this correctly, so I'll just spell it -

E -C -H -I -R -O -L -L -E -S, and the

Reformed Baptist Congregation where you pastor? Well, yeah, that's a good question.

So, actually, the Baptist Church you mentioned is just on the other side of the city here.

I knew the pastor who has been there for, they had a pastor who left just last year who had been there for about 10 years.

He was a good friend of mine, Paul Fona. So, the big difference would be that, well, people in that Baptist Church would not have a

Calvinistic understanding of salvation. They would have a more Arminian understanding of salvation.

They would tend to have more, you know, kind of worship style of service on Sunday, not traditional like we would have with hymns.

And they would be more open to charismatics, you know, gifts, and also to women in pastoral ministry.

So, for example, now that this pastor has left, they have a new pastor who came in, and that's a woman.

So, they're very open to pastoral ministry for women. So, it's a church, as I said, the previous pastor was a great friend of mine.

So, we have contact with the church, but it's not a church we would necessarily partner with for these reasons.

Well, if you had a close friendship with the former pastor, even though they're not Calvinistic, I'm assuming they're not vehemently anti -Calvinistic.

No, and especially him. I think he especially was actually quite close to a

Calvinistic understanding of salvation. But the church in general would not be, and they would not have a, they would have a, well, you know, not very clear confession of faith, and most people would have an

Armenian understanding of salvation. Now, is that common for non -Reformed

Baptist churches in France to be non -cessationist or charismatic in their understanding of the sign gifts, and also egalitarian, where they are ordaining women?

Yes, very much so. So, not every church would, there's been some, there are some

Baptist churches from a Brethren background who would be more conservative on these issues, but most

Evangelical churches, non -Reformed Evangelical churches would be non -cessationist and open to women in pastoral ministry.

So, yeah, that would be very much the case in many churches in France, yeah. Now, do you have any experience having interaction with independent fundamentalist

Baptists in the United States? Many of them, not all, but many of them would be

King James only. I'm not sure how that would be possible in France, since you're not speaking the

English language, and I mean, you speak it fluently, but it's not the common language. But do you have any of those ultra -separatist

Baptists that are very often vehemently anti -Calvinist, even sometimes to the point of calling it the doctrine of demons?

Well, no, I don't think we have the same thing as you have in the U .S.

There's obviously, you know, that's one of the strange things in France that, well,

John Calvin comes from France, he was a French man, and yet he's often not very much considered in France because, yeah, still, people would see

Calvinism as, well, they would not say a doctrine of demons, but they would not be very, how should

I say that? They would have a quite low view of Calvinism.

So that would be true. That would be very, very much the case. So, you know, evangelical churches in general in France would tend to, or at least tended to, there's a change actually over the last, there's been a change over the last, you know, 15 to 20 years.

But evangelical churches tended to look at reformed churches as, yeah, having bad doctrine and would assume we have a kind of hyper -Calvinistic understanding.

And so that was the case. But nothing, I think, like what you have in the

U .S., really. Okay. Well, thank you, David. Keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Iron Radio.

We have Simone in Watermill, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, what kind of cults give

Christianity the greatest problem in your area of France? I don't think we have—well, there's obviously cults like anywhere else.

So the Jehovah's Witnesses would be the most prominent. You would find them at, you know, at the corner of streets around here in Grenoble.

But I don't think there would be much of a problem. I think most—well, the only problem they would cause is that some

French people would assume we're just the same. You know, evangelicals, they have no idea what evangelicals are.

Yeah, that's even true here. Okay, yeah. When churches may have a door -to -door campaign knocking on doors, they will very often just immediately think you're

Jehovah's Witnesses. Yeah, so that would be the same, really. People would assume we're the same.

But yeah, otherwise, it's not very much the main problem we have here in France. I think the two main, you know, cults in this sense of religion that's a challenge to us as evangelicals is the

Catholic religion and Islam. So because Roman Catholicism has been quite prominent in France, so people would tend—well, again, there's a change with the new generation.

But, you know, the older generation, they still have some remnants of Catholic upbringing.

And usually these are, you know, bad memories for them. They have all sorts of bad experiences with the

Catholic Church. And they assume if you speak about Jesus, they assume that you're just bringing the same message.

And so it's tough to bring people with this

Catholic background and Catholic traditions to understand what the gospel is and that it's very different from what they heard when they were young.

So that's one challenge. And yeah, obviously, Islam is a big challenge as well.

Islam has grown tremendously in France since the 1950s.

There are now over 8 million people from Muslim culture in France.

And maybe it's the result of immigration from North Africa from former

French colonies who came to meet employment needs in France. But the problem is that, well, because they're very prominent in France, they're taking much space in the public square, while the

French government has to pass a lot of new laws, which are mainly against Islam.

But churches like ours, so evangelical churches, they have to comply to those laws as well.

So because of that, we've had quite tough situations in the last years, mainly because of laws passed against Islam.

But we're just part of the whole package in a sense. Now, how has that created problems, the laws against Islam?

Well, just one example. So two years ago, they passed a new law against what they call separatism.

And because of this new law, churches had to be way more open about their budgets and their finances.

And especially you cannot receive now money from abroad, or at least not more than like 10 ,000.

You can get maybe 10 ,000 euros a year, and you don't have to report that in any way. But as soon as you receive a large sum of money, you have to be very transparent with that.

And they're going to cause many troubles, because obviously the main reason was money coming from Saudi Arabia or Qatar to found terrorism in France.

But that led to lots of problems for missionaries, Christian missionaries in France who received their salary from abroad and for whom it was quite tough.

So that's one example. Another example would be homeschooling. So there's a lot of Quran schools in France, and the

French government is very much against that. So they outlawed homeschooling, actually.

So you can still do it, but you have to apply, you have to make a special request to be able to teach your kids at home.

And it's very, very hard to be allowed to do it. So many families we know tried to get permission to do homeschooling, and they just didn't get it.

And that's all laws that have been passed in the last years, mainly because of Islam.

Now, is it common or rare to have friendly interaction with local

Muslims, even if you are being so bold as to bring up the differences of your religions and be openly evangelistic towards them?

Well, I would say usually, sometimes even easier to have a conversation with Muslim in France than with French people.

So French people, secular people would be very, very close. They don't want, they just don't want, if you bring up religion or faith, they're just going to, you know, close the conversation and leave it at that.

Whereas Muslim people would be at least very interested to, you know, just to talk about faith. They understand what faith is.

They understand, well, in some ways, the difficulty to be a religious person in France.

Yeah, I think we would get more understanding from Muslim people than from French secular people.

Interesting. And would this primarily be, as far as your Muslim neighbors, primarily be immigrants, or do you have native

French men and French women who have converted to Islam or even been raised in it?

No, it's usually people who came, maybe people from immigration from North Africa.

But, you know, now it's the second or third, sometimes the fourth generation already.

So it's people who were born and raised in France, but they have really close ties to North Africa and they struggle to identify and to assimilate to the

French culture. But, no, I'm not saying there's not at all, but there's very few French people who actually got converted to Islam.

Well, when we come back from our middle break, I want to delve more deeply into the

Roman Catholic culture of France. Once again, folks, if you have a question, please submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Please be patient with us, folks, because the middle break in Iron Trip and Zion Radio is always a bit longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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Before I return to my discussion with Pastor Joel Favre, who is a reformed

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I have an extensive list spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I've helped many people in our audience all over the planet

Earth find churches, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live. And that may be you, too, if you're without a solid church home.

Send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Pastor Joel Favre.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And our friend Dave in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, just had another thing to add.

He says, Chris, I understand that Pastor Joel, I understand what Pastor Joel was saying about speaking with Muslims in France.

When we lived in a Paris suburb, my wife especially had great fellowship with our

Muslim neighbor's wife across the street, sharing meals in Christ with her and her children.

The husband worked long hours, so I never had much opportunity with him. So thank you for that added bit of information,

Dave, in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania. Going back to what I said before the break, I wanted to delve more into the dominant religion that is, for lack of a better term, a rival of Bible -believing

Christianity in France, and that is, as you said, Roman Catholicism. How much of the

Roman Catholicism that you have encountered in France is genuine

Roman Catholicism and not what we discussed earlier about what does exist in the

Bible Belt of America, where it's just nominal? Yeah. Well, that's a good question, good point.

I think there's two things. One is it's interesting historically to go back to remember what the importance of France in the

Catholic world. France is nicknamed or was nicknamed the eldest daughter of the

Church. That is, the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church because it was seen as a country of great importance in the

Catholic world going back centuries. And there's still something of that.

There's still some pride in some French people that they have towards their

Catholic heritage. Obviously, since the French Revolution in 1789, there's been a great blow that has been dealt towards the

Catholic Church. At that time, at the French Revolution, the revolutionary authorities suppressed the

Church. They abolished the Catholic monarchy. They nationalized Church property.

They exiled thousands of priests and killed many more. And since then, while the

Catholic Church has lost its influence in France, very much so. So people would still identify as Catholics and some would have a strong pride,

I guess, linked to that because of this past I just described. But for most of them, it's mainly superstition or tradition.

Today, the proportion of Roman Catholics who really attend Mass, who regularly go to Church, who attend

Mass is down to 6 -7 % of the population.

So less than 4 million people, something like that. Actually, if you look at the current rate of decline of Roman Catholicism in France, there will be no

French priests left in the Catholic Church in less than 30 years. So there's a massive decline in France.

And by contrast, actually, evangelicals have seen a significant growth from the 1950s to the present day.

Hallelujah. Yeah, that's really great. So there was just 50 ,000 evangelicals just after World War II, and now we are close to 1 million today.

And so there's been a massive growth and so, you know, an inverted tendency or a reversed trend in a sense.

So Roman Catholicism is really very much in decline in France and evangelicals are growing.

Daniel Lichty, who's Vice President of the French National Evangelical Council, says that since the 1970s, a new evangelical church has opened in France every 10 days.

So I cannot be entirely sure that's right, but it must be close to the real number.

And the number of churches has increased from 500 to more than 2 ,000 over the last 40 to 50 years.

So there's a big growth in number among evangelicals. Now, you mentioned superstition as being a major element of the

Roman Catholic community. That is expressed in different ways depending upon the ethnic and national origin of the

Roman Catholics that you are evangelizing. For instance, there are certain countries, even comparatively here in the

United States, although it obviously varies, but there is much more of a reserved expression of Roman Catholicism here, whereas in South and Central America, you have the real flamboyant idolatry that you see in public festivals and parades with the, of course, they would not call it worshipping idols, but they certainly are worshipping these idols no matter what they say to describe it.

I don't know how much of that is a factor in Italy anymore, but that used to be strong there as well.

So what would be the flavor, if you will, of Roman Catholicism predominantly in France?

Well, yeah, it would not be as flamboyant, as you said, as in Latin America.

It's way more private and reserved or quiet than in Latin America or Italy, in France.

But there is a superstition in the sense also of, you know, a mixture of traditions from the

Roman Catholic Church and mixed with the occult practices.

That's something quite strange actually in France because while it's a nation that considers itself enlightened and, you know, where in France people are, you know, spiritual people would be looked down upon as ignorant or superstitious.

But actually, strangely enough, for a nation that considers itself enlightened, there's been a rise of the occult in France, I believe because of secularism, because, you know, religion has been so much put out of the public square.

It has left a void and the void has been filled with occult practices.

So actually in France today, we say there are 15 ,000 more occult professionals than Christian workers.

And so the Catholic, you know, outlook in France would be very much like, you know, old traditions from the

Catholic Church, so people still going to Mass from time to time, maybe twice a year for Christmas and Easter, and then baptizing their kids and getting married at church, but then mixed with a lot of occult practices.

So that would be what I meant by superstitions as well. Okay, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I know that Reformed Baptists are very rarely ecumenical with Roman Catholics, and I'm not suggesting that you should be, but have you had the opportunity to have cordial interaction with local

Roman Catholic clergy? Yeah, a couple of times.

Well, we, I had to change to, actually the reason I met some of, you know, clergy from the

Roman Catholic Church is that actually our church is currently renting a building.

So we don't have our own building, we're renting a place, and it's actually an old

Catholic building that's used to be a place where priests would come to get their theological training.

So it has changed now. It's mainly a building where they rent, you know, facilities and rooms for students.

And so they rent this conference room for us on Sundays. But it's still run by the

Catholic Church. And so through this meeting place that we rent for Sundays, I've, you know, got the chance to have friendly exchange with clergy.

And it's always very, you know, we can have good discussions and talk about, you know, our differences and it remains a very cultured culture.

So, yeah. Okay. We have

Charlene in Toronto, Canada, who says, what are the most typical kinds of rejections that you would receive when evangelizing local

French natives? Well, I think the two main answers we would get is, you know, people saying things like, well,

I'm not religious. So, you know, you would start speaking about Jesus and people would say, well, thank you very much.

But, you know, I'm not into religion. That's not my thing. And the other thing would be very much the hypocrisy thing.

So people saying, well, there's too many hypocrites in the church. So I'm not interested in what you have to say to me.

And that's mainly because of the, you know, Catholic background. As I was saying before, people who, they're still, you know, in the older generation, people who have actually gone to Catholic schools and have been to Catholicisms and things like this.

And for many of them, it's, you know, this idea that, well, I heard it all, it's all hypocrisy.

I've seen all the, you know, sexual scandals in the Catholic Church, for example, and it's all hypocrisy.

I'm not interested in it. So those would be the two main big things I think we get when we speak about Jesus.

You know, it's, well, I'm not religious. I'm not into that. So don't speak to me. Thank you. And, well, there's too many hypocrites in the church.

Now, how do you respond to those kinds of rejections? I have, for quite a number of years, when someone will bring that up, because it comes up a lot here, too,

Christianity is full of hypocrites. And I will very often say to someone who makes such a charge something like, so you're rejecting

Jesus because of Judas? And are secular humanists and atheists free from hypocrisy?

And, you know, where did you get the idea that Christianity declares itself to be an organization filled with perfect people without sin?

That's why we needed Jesus Christ to die for our sin. How would you respond to such accusations?

Yeah, well, all the things you said, but also just to try to point them to Jesus and show them that, well,

Jesus was the person who was the most against, you know, fake religiosity and even point them to the passages where he speaks to Pharisees and just points their hypocrisy and calls them out for their hypocrisy.

And just trying to show to the people that if they don't like religion, you know, fake religion, if they hate hypocrisy, well, they're in good company with Jesus.

Jesus is the, you know, he's the one who coined the phrase hypocrisy, hypocrites. You know, that's, so that's what

I try to show the people, that they are right to be against this fake religiosity that they've seen in the

Catholic Church, that they are very much right and actually Jesus would be outraged like they are.

But he's very much for sinners, sinners who come to him with all sorts of flaws and sins.

And he's not for, he's not looking for perfect people. He's looking for people who are just honest, who are honest about their failures.

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania says, Are most of the people that populate evangelical churches, including your own in France, just evangelicals from other churches who moved to your area, or are they actually converts out of Roman Catholicism or atheism?

Well, I would say a bit of both. In my church, actually my church is quite, the church

I'm serving is actually quite special in the sense that we have almost only

French people, you know, real French people. What I'm saying that is, the reason

I'm saying that is, one of the reasons for the growth of evangelicals in France is that there's been a lot of immigration, people from, you know, black

Africa coming to France or from islands, many islands.

And so these people would come and have usually an evangelical background.

And so that's one of the reasons for the growth of evangelicalism in France. But the church

I'm serving is actually mainly French people. And I would say that half of them are people who got converted at a later stage in life, coming from, you know, a theistic, secular background or Catholic backgrounds.

And well, half of them, half of the church would be people who grew up in Christian homes and just moved into the region.

So a bit of both. But, yeah. Care to relate to our listeners any actual stories of encounters with native

French folk as you proclaim the gospel? Can you repeat the question, sir?

If you could explain, share anecdotes, stories of actual encounters for the gospel of Jesus Christ that you and members of your church have had with native

French men and French women. Sure. Well, one thing that we do very much is

Christianity Explore course. Because, well,

I guess it's the same in the States, but maybe even more so here in France. It takes so much time and efforts and friendship before people start to be interested in the gospel.

So what we tend to do is, you know, having people invite their friends, and we do a

Christianity Explore course over the course of a year, usually. And what

I realized during those Christianity Explore courses is that with many

French people, I felt, you know, a bit like Jesus must have felt with the

Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus is speaking about, you know, the water of life.

He's speaking about spiritual matter. And she understands just about that he's speaking about the water in the well, which is she just thinks into, you know, material categories.

And many times this has been the frustration for me during those courses to speak about spiritual things.

And people in France are so secular that they're just understanding everything you say as, you know, things about, you know, material life.

And so that has been a big frustration. But we actually had a Christianity Explore course this year with three women who, none of them come from a

Christian background. They just had no idea whatsoever what the Bible talks about.

And it's been just, you know, such an amazing time.

I remember especially talking to them about the cross and trying to explain to them the difference between what we tend to believe we have to do with God, that is to pay our debts ourselves and to kind of, you know, pay for our sins, as it were.

And that's what Jesus offers is a substitution where he pays for ourselves. And I was showing them this story of Barabbas and Jesus and this exchange, you know, where Barabbas is set free because Jesus takes his place in some ways.

And I was trying to show them in what sense that is a great picture of the gospel, what

Jesus did for each person that puts his faith in him. And I was just amazed to see these women just,

I think, understanding the good news of the gospel.

I'm not sure any one of them is yet converted in this sense. But this was such an intense moment when they realized, well,

I am the person, I'm the one, you know, on death row. I'm Barabbas here in the story.

And this is what Jesus has done for the human race.

He's come to take our place. And I think they were just so moved. And that was a big moment for me this year, just to realize, well, these women,

I think they understood what it meant on the spiritual level. They're not yet converted, as far as I can tell.

But, yeah, that was a very moving moment for me. Yeah, in fact, one of the most powerful sermons

I ever heard was where a pastor used the very analogy that you gave of Barabbas.

And that was preached years ago by William Hughes, who originally from the

United Kingdom was pastoring at the time in Florida. And he was a guest speaker at Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey, and presented that message.

And I was blown out of my socks by that excellent analogy.

And we have Jean, or Jean, J -E -A -N, from Loma Linda, California, who wants to know how much of an issue in your area is

Seventh -day Adventism. Not much, to be honest.

So we have Seventh -day Adventists, but they're a very, very small minority, so we don't have much contact with them.

It's not a big issue, really, yeah. Well, thanks, Jean. Keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion, and spreading the word in Loma Linda, California, and beyond.

Let's see. We have Bobby in Searcy, Arkansas, who wants to know, are you at all involved with the

Huguenot Fellowship? Not directly. As I mentioned before,

I did my theological training, at least part of it, at the John Calvin Institute. And the

Institute there in Aix -en -Provence has been supported by the

Huguenot Fellowship. And because of that, I've had some links with the

Fellowship, but not more than that, and not since my time at the

Institute. Now, are there churches that exist today that are direct descendants, as far as passing on the baton over the centuries, going back to the

Huguenots, the original Huguenots? Or is it just that there are churches like yours that continue the legacy theologically?

Are there Huguenot churches that actually have an older heritage?

Well, there's a region in the south of France, in the Seine, so the region where the

Huguenots would really hide during those religious wars.

They would hide in the Seine. So in that region, there's still quite... If you look at a map of France, where all the

Protestant churches are, you'd see that in that region there's more, way more

Protestant churches there. And that's still kind of a small remnant of those

Huguenots. But most of them would today not be liberal, but they would be more attached to their

Huguenot heritage, in the sense of the historical story, but not very much attached to the theological heritage.

And so it would be mainly churches like ours who would be attached to more of this theological heritage, actually.

Now, how were the Huguenots unique in their expression of the

Reformed faith? Well, I think the great thing about what the

Huguenots passed on to us, at least for Reformed people today in France, is this idea that while you don't know what the future holds, and there might be a tougher time coming, and that might be really the case in the coming years, that there will be a tougher time for Christians here.

But they give us a great example of just being faithful till the end, and finding all sorts of ways to keep on preaching the gospel and spreading the good news, even though they had to hide, they had to flee in the mountains, and be away from the big centers of influence in the country.

Despite all of that, they had a great, great testimony. And so I think it's mainly an example for us, maybe for the coming years, as probably, well, there's a chance persecution will grow in France and in Western Europe in general.

So, yeah, I see them mainly as a big example for us today. Now, were they

Paedo -Baptists? Were they Credo -Baptists? I'm not extremely familiar with the

Huguenots. Well, yeah, most of them would have been Paedo -Baptists, but it was a mixture of both.

But, yeah, mainly it would be Paedo -Baptists. And, well, there was lots of, you know, different trends.

And there's a quite charismatic wing to the

Huguenots also. So there's been, yeah, also some excesses at that time.

So they're not examples in all ways, but in everything. But, yeah, still,

I think they've shown great courage in the face of persecution and great faithfulness to the

Gospel. And as far as your Reformed Baptist congregation there in Grenoble, France, do you have more connection and fellowship with conservative, truly

Reformed Presbyterian congregations or Reformed Baptists? I don't know which is numerically greater.

Yeah, well, that's a big difference, I think, compared to the States. There are very, very few

Presbyterian churches in France, actually. So most churches would be

Baptists. And among Reformed, in the Reformed traditions, it would be also mainly

Reformed Baptists. There are Presbyterian churches. There's one, for example, in Lyon, which is the next big city here from—it's one hour away from Grenoble.

We have good contacts with that Presbyterian church there. So there are some Presbyterian churches, but it's mainly

Reformed Baptist churches. Okay, we're going to our final break now. If you want to join the conversation before we run out of time, send in your email to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back. Chris Arnson here, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I strongly recommend a church I've been recommending as far back as the 1980s, Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr.

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O hail the power of Jesus' name.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron radio financially.

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe ten minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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And we have, let's see, we have

Derek in Orchard Homes, Montana. And Derek said,

What are the greatest heroes from the past and present that typical Reformed Baptists in France hold to?

Well, obviously, you know, John Calvin would be one of the main heroes of the past here in France.

You mentioned Monod just before, and that's obviously also one of the great writers and pastors that we look up to.

You know, he was not the only one during that time of awakening in Geneva.

So Monod would be one of them, and there would be others at the same time who rediscovered the doctrines of grace and were very instrumental in that awakening in Geneva.

So there would be other people. There's actually in the region here in Grenoble, there's been at the time of this awakening in Geneva, there's a man called

Felix Neff. He was an evangelist in the

Alps, not very far from here, and that would be another big figure for people here.

So those would be some, you know, obviously all the Reformers like Viret, Faret, would be other people we would look up to.

But again, as I mentioned before, you know, most people would not know these names, especially, you know, in the society at large, but even in churches, they would not necessarily know these people.

But I guess in Reformed circles, they would be a bit better known. Yeah, you just mentioned

Viret, or V -Ray as some Americans pronounce it. I was first introduced to Pierre Viret from Zurich Publishing, which is a publishing ministry here in the

United States in Florida, and they have been very generous donating books by Viret to the pastors that attend my biannual

Iron Trip and Zion Radio Free Pastors Lunches. So just to give them a little plug, the website is zurichpublishing .org,

zurichpublishing .org. And they published an excellent biography of Pierre Viret.

Yes, they did. And, well, I want you to summarize in a couple of minutes what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today regarding your ministry in France.

Sure. Well, I guess the main thing I want to share is that there are many reasons to be encouraged of the state of things in France.

Well, the Evangelical Church is small. It's just a bit above 1 % of the population that would consider themselves

Evangelicals. And even among the Evangelicals, while some of them would not be, you know,

Bible -faithful, you know, and Christ -centered believers or churches, but still there's a lot of great encouragement.

So, for example, you know, 40 years ago, one of my teachers at the John Calvin Institute went to the annual convention of Evangelical churches at Nogent near Paris, and he told me that there was about 60 people who attended.

And he went a couple of years ago, and there were up to 2 ,000 people coming.

And the theme was taking the Scripture at its word, so a very clear message there given to 2 ,000 people.

Just another example, last week, the Bible Institute in Geneva organized a meeting of the

French Gospel Coalition, and there was about 1 ,000 people who attended, most of them young people who just, you know, enjoyed listening to, you know, good headline speakers from the

U .S., like Ted Tripp or Paul Tripp, and they enjoyed singing

Townend and Getty in French and things like this. So, there are things like this, which are just another example.

Also, last year, we organized here in Grenoble a conference with Mark Dever and the ministry, the

Nine Marks Ministry, for, you know, pastors who are rediscovering good ecclesiology, you know, and there were 100 pastors there.

And, you know, some of the older pastors like my dad or David Vaughan who have been, you know, working in this

French -speaking Europe, in this setting for a long time, they could not believe their eyes.

They said, well, when we started, there would have been maybe, you know, five, ten pastors, and there's now 100 of them who, you know, who want to teach the doctrines of grace, who understand what good ecclesiology is and preach, you know, expository sermons.

That's very, very encouraging. Also, regarding literature, 50 years ago in the

French -speaking world, there was very little in the way of biblical literature.

You know, with a few exceptions, maybe books like by people like G .I.

Packer or John Studds, but except, you know, a few books like this, it was really hard to find good theological books.

But today, it's very different. It's not difficult to find books in French by Sinclair Ferguson, Paul Washer, John Piper, Arsiz Paul.

And also, there's a new generation of French writers, so very, very encouraging in many ways.

But I guess the challenge, so there's a great encouragement, but the challenge we face,

I think there's still a lot of poor teaching in churches in France, in evangelical churches.

One of the great needs today is that we would have better preachers.

You know, there's a great need for Bible -rooted churches with preaching that brings solid exposition and practical application.

There are good training institutes like the Geneva Bible Institute or the Brussels Bible Institute, but otherwise, the other institute, they do not seem to train preachers.

And models of what expository preaching or biblical ministry is are not very easily found in France.

Too many sermons are homilies or performances, you know, entertainments, short or long.

And so that's one of the big challenges, so the poor teaching. And I guess there's also, in some churches, a suspicion about theology.

People are suspicious about theology, which they would associate with liberalism.

And so they don't delve deep into our theological heritage, like, you know, the writings of John Calvin and people like him.

So these would be big challenges we still face here in France.

Well, we are out of time. I want to make sure our listeners have your website, erb -grenoble .fr.

And don't forget, if you want to hear a couple of sermons in English by my guest,

Pastor Joel Favre, you can go to gracebaptistcarlisle .org,

gracebaptistcarlisle .org, click on sermons, and scroll down to two sermons he preached recently for us at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

And I want to thank you so much for doing such an exquisite job on the show today. I look forward to having you back on the program.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater