The atmosphere is like a pop concert in the Montparnasse area of Paris. Hundreds of young people sing catchy songs, waving their arms in the air, while a group plays booming music on stage. This isn't a pop gig. The Australian-born Pentecostal church ‘Hillsong’ planted a Paris church in 2005 and its congregation’s grown from a few dozen people to around 900 at each of its two weekend services conducted in French and English. On a recent Sunday, the 1,000-seat Théâtre Bobino (where the church holds its main services) was nearly full. This youthful, enthusiastic, multi-ethnic crowd is in sharp contrast to the diminishing French Catholic churches and represents the rise of the evangelical movement as a whole in a country that is officially secular. Census figures report 600,000 French members of evangelical churches, with 460,000 regularly practicing their faith - a ten-fold increase from 1950.
Pray: God will reproduce His message of truth and life to the youth of Paris across all of France. (Ro.10:14)