France (and parts of Belgium, and Switzerland)
Map of French-Speaking Countries showing Lampstands
(click on or hover over the map to view map labels)
The gospel reached France during the time of the Roman Empire. Lyon was a major center of Roman power in the region, and several Christians from Asia Minor arrived in the second century. In A.D. 157 Irenaeus, who had been in Smyrna and under the teaching of Polycarp, was sent to Lyon. The spread of the gospel resulted in persecution by the Roman Empire, and the amphitheater in Lyon was the site of many martyrdoms. Christianity became rooted in France under Constantine the Great while it was part of the Roman Empire and has remained a strongly Catholic country through the centuries.
In the twelfth century, however, some French believers rose up against the corruption they saw in the Catholic Church. Led by Peter Waldo from Lyon, they were called the Waldensians, and they practiced lay preaching, voluntary poverty, and strictly adhered to the Bible. Waldo also commissioned the very first translation of the New Testament into the vernacular (Arpitan, a Franco-Provençal language). Persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, the Waldensians fled to the mountainous regions of northern Italy and centuries later joined with the Reformed-Calvinist branch during the Reformation.
France played an important role in the Reformation. John Calvin was born in France, but soon after he published his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which set forth reformist ideas, he was forced to flee and went to Geneva, Switzerland. He continued to experience persecution and exile wherever he went, but he made a major impact in Europe, reaching even Scotland.
Brother Nee said regarding him, “In 1536 John Calvin was raised up by God. He was one of the greatest vessels of God in that age. After he was raised up, he faced persecution everywhere, first in Switzerland and then in Germany. Wherever he went, he was met with persecution and exile. Finally, in Scotland he had a fresh beginning and established the Scottish Presbyterian Church” (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 11, p. 846).
Calvin recovered the truth of predestination, seeing that salvation was not initiated by man but by God and that predestination is eternal and unchangeable. Calvin’s writings inspired believers in France, who became known as the Huguenots. The Huguenots were consistently persecuted by the French state and by the eighteenth century were almost wiped out. However, the French Revolution in 1789 established freedom of religion and the principle of laïcité, a strict separation and non-involvement of church and state.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Lord raised up the “mystics,” a group of believers in the Catholic Church. Regarding them, Brother Nee said that “there was the recovery of the inner life. Madame Guyon, Father Fenelon, and others brought in a recovery of the spiritual condition. These ones are now generally called the mystics. They practiced denying their self, joining themselves with God to oppose their self, giving no excuse to the self, and not asking God to spare His hand on them” (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, Vol. 57: The Resumption of Watchman Nee’s Ministry, p. 53).
In the late twentieth century, the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee began to be distributed and sold in France after a gift was given to set up ministry bookstores in Europe. In 1996 a bookstore was opened in central Paris, and the publication of The Stream magazine in the French language began. A family was sent to Paris that same year. In 1997 an agreement was signed by the largest Christian book distributor in France for four thousand French language copies of The Overcoming Life by Watchman Nee. Over twenty-five Watchman Nee titles have since been published and are being sold in most of the Christian bookstores in the French-speaking world.
After the migration of several families to Paris in 1997 a Lord’s Day meeting began in one of the saints’ homes with around ten adults and six children. In 2000 the church in Paris held their first Lord’s table meeting. In 2006 the saints began to preach the gospel together on the street by the Metro station by distributing the Rhema cards and introducing the Recovery Version of the Gospel of John to those passing by. They sensed the stubbornness of the people’s hearts and sought prayer through the Body. After five years the Lord answered the prayers by opening the door to the gospel and truth in 2012. In the same year, the church in Paris followed in the flow from the Bible distribution in the UK during the Olympic games. The saints were surprised by people’s openness in France toward the Bible, the Word of God. Since then, more and more young native French people have become remaining fruit, gradually though slowly. In addition the visits of trainees from FTTA and FTTT have helped strengthen the gospel spirit in France.
The church in Paris is also laboring to build up little by little the church life in the God-ordained way—gospel preaching, shepherding the new ones in the homes, the group meetings, and the Lord’s Day prophesying meeting. Presently, there are around twelve group meetings that meet on a weekly basis. Also, the saints enjoy blending with the churches in the francophone world. The saints in the church in Paris are beneficiaries of the ministry of Christ. Recently more and more saints have been joining the semi-annual trainings on the crystallization-study of the Bible, and around thirty to forty saints join the video-training in Paris.
Today the church in Paris meets in two districts, one in the center of Paris and the other in the suburb of Nanterre. The church life has continued to spread in France through the distribution of the ministry, migration of saints from abroad, and students studying at French campuses.
The church in Lyon began with a few Chinese-speaking students and has been strengthened by the migration of several families. In 2003 three Chinese-speaking students, who heard the gospel and received salvation in other French cities and who were being shepherded by the church in Paris, started the Lord’s table in Lyon. The next year the number of saints grew to seven. The students continued to be shepherded by saints from the church in Paris and saints from Geneva, Switzerland. In 2005, during the Paris international conference, the students met a Colombian sister and her children who had immigrated to Lyon the previous year. They started to meet together and French became their common language. Over the next two years, the gospel was actively preached at several Lyon campuses; many Chinese-speaking students were saved and brought into the church life. In March 2007, one of the co-workers came to Lyon to give a conference. The following year, after seeing the needs of the saints in Lyon, one couple from Malaysia, who graduated from FTTT in 2001 and had been serving full-time in Russia and Malaysia, moved to Lyon as students. Shortly afterward, two families from the US answered the call through the Lord’s Move to Europe (LME) and moved to Lyon. In summer 2009 a couple with four children moved from a city 300 km south of Lyon to strengthen the church in Lyon. From 2009 the church in Lyon has continued to receive the rich supply from the ministry through the French literature translation work and the visiting of full-time trainees from all over the world.
In 1987 some believers living around the city of Dieppe in Normandy came into contact with the writings of Watchman Nee and were profoundly affected by what they read. In 2004 they began to enjoy Brother Lee’s ministry, and in 2005 a group of them attended the April French-speaking conference in Paris and entered into fellowship with the churches in French-speaking Europe. Today they are meeting as the church in Neuville-lès-Dieppe.
The church life began in Bordeaux when siblings from Taiwan, who were burdened for Europe, moved there around twelve years ago. Many saints from their locality had prayed for Europe. Thus, when they started to live in Bordeaux, these siblings had a strong burden to contact students daily, preach the gospel on the street, and lead the saved ones to have a corporate church life. Under the Lord’s mercy and blessing, they gained a large number of Chinese-speaking students. At that time, they endeavored to read the Bible, seek the ministry, distribute Rhema cards, and take every opportunity for blending in the conferences. Years after the siblings left Bordeaux, the ones who were under their shepherding still continued the burden to stand with the church. Some of them found jobs and settled with their families in Bordeaux. Between 2010 and 2012 several FTTT graduates settled and started to study French in Bordeaux. The Lord used them to strengthen His testimony again. A sisters’ house and a brothers’ house were established to encourage a corporate God-man life in Bordeaux. In the years since, the Lord has brought many young students to live together and experience a wonderful corporate Christian life. Some of them remained in France and grew to be pillars in the church life. Under the Lord’s blessing, in the past five years, more and more couples and their children have been added into the church life. By 2016 there were around twenty-five adults and ten children in the church life, composing eight families (five Chinese-speaking families, two English-speaking ones, and one French family) plus one sisters’ house. Recently, in 2017, although some of the saints moved away from Bordeaux, there are still five to six families holding the testimony there.
In the 1980s, before the turmoil, there was a Lord’s table in Strasbourg. Recently, in the late 2000s some saints from abroad moved to Strasbourg to study. A year later a French sister also moved to Strasbourg to study. There were three sisters meeting regularly once a week by the end of 2010. By 2013 more saints had moved to the city, and a more established church life was formed with a prayer meeting, Bible-study group, and the Lord’s Day gathering each week. More saints were added by being recovered, through the gospel, and through migration. The FTTA gospel trip visited Strasbourg for the first time in 2017, and there are regular visits from the saints in Taiwan.
Currently, there are churches in the following cities: Paris (130 saints), Lyon (34 saints), Neuville-lès-Dieppe (25 saints), and Bordeaux (20 saints).
There are also groups of saints gathering in Lille, Montpellier, Strasbourg, and Toulouse. Through the publications of the ministry and regular visitation by the saints, there are groups of believers being raised up in other cities such as Cergy, Mantes-la-Ville, Plaisir, Nemours, Rouen and Aubervilliers.
The Recovery Version of the New Testament in French was published in 2007, and The Holy Word for Morning Revival began to be published in 2009. The standing order for all the new French publications began in 2014, and there are now over one hundred saints registered for the standing order. Today there are more than two hundred saints in France and four cities with a lampstand.
Through the spread of the ministry in the French language, there are now saints meeting in the following French-speaking countries: Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Benin, Togo (the first table meeting in Lome, Togo, was held in August 2017), Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, and Madagascar in Africa.