God Can Always Shout Louder…

not very remarkable?
Isn’t it amazing how Christmas seems to begin earlier each year… whether for the shop assistant setting out Christmas cards and decorations in September, or the parents whose children respond to the omnipresent publicity for that must-have toy. And in the middle of it all the greatest gift of all is so easily forgotten. As Christmas comes around again, we find ourselves asking what will it be for us this year? Not so much the presents we will receive, nor the food we will eat, but ‘how will we experience it?’

The baby Jesus was called ‘Immanuel’, ‘God with us’. This is a striking reminder of the fact that God often works in ways which are not very remarkable until we turn aside and see God at work. Many people would not have even known about Jesus being born, and even if they did they didn’t know that there was anything special about this baby. There are other times when God acts in a way which really announces that he is at work – like for the shepherds who were going about their normal routine, when an angel came and told them what God was about to do and suddenly there was a musical performance to beat any other …courtesy of a massed choir of angels.

lives changed
Back in the summer there was something of that feeling of celebration as three of our teenagers stepped forward with many others committing their lives to Jesus at Soul Survivor – to the sound of 11,000 people singing.

Less dramatic, but just as real, have been the people who have taken steps forward in their spiritual journey in our Alpha courses. Some have crossed the line of faith for the first time. Others have found that God is helping them to understand things more, as the Bible comes alive to them. It really warms our hearts to see people experiencing God’s answers to prayer for the first time, particularly those who are receiving healing and the knowledge and experience of God’s love and gifting for them. One of the most exciting things is to see that some groups really want to make sure that they continue meeting together in this kind of way – which we hope will lead to new home groups.

“God loves you” is phrase which is alien to many people, no more profound than “ice cream is cold” or “Mongolia is far away”. Vanessa and I have both recently come to know a man who seemed somewhat dour. Recently he told Tim about how he suffered abuse at the hands of priests who were teachers in his school. Yet he still says that he wants to know more about God, and this despite his experiences of the actions of God’s representatives which have not helped him to get to know God’s love.

‘Torrents de Vie’ (‘Living Waters’) has been a great chance for both Tim & Vanessa to get to know God more deeply. Along with many others on the course, we have been hearing great Biblical teaching about God’s love and healing power. And in a context of worship we have greatly benefitted from the prayer ministry that is a part of this course. We are very grateful to the leaders who give so much time, energy and prayer to see others receive God in their places of brokenness.

family life
Samuel has started in a new school, which seems to be suiting him very well. He’s enjoying the mixture of French and English – and his French is coming on in leaps and bounds
[no more hiding things from him by speaking French …and he’ll probably be correcting our French before long]. The French education definitely extends to the palate as well, and we hear of new foods that he has been trying. …including salad, which he said he likes (though we are not sure how much he actually ate). We’d quite like to sample the four-course meals he has ourselves!

looking ahead
“God can always shout louder”. This is the advice of one Christian leader on the subject of guidance. The way he sees it is that we should concentrate on doing what we know that we are called to do, and that God will find a way of getting our attention to lead us on to the next thing.

Life in Paris and at St Mark’s is good, and our thinking was to keep focused on the present and then, in January, to begin to think about what will do next. Tim has been asked to explore the possibility of a job in a church in America, and we are both very excited about this possibility. We also feel that there is much to learn in this job, which may well be for us to carry back to ministry in Europe. Tim will be there on interview 15 -19 Dec….we’ll see

welcome back …rentrée

welcome back…
Rentrée is a particularly French phenomenon. The word has a sense of meaning ‘re-entry’ as if you have been free floating in space and are now coming back to earth rapidly under the force of gravity!!! Then again, it can just mean ‘return’ or even ‘comeback’!

September and October in France see a dramatic change of pace from the leisurely months of July and August. And this also means that getting things arranged for September is either done in May or June, or it is a last-minute dash. And this year for us it has been a bit of both.

Tomorrow sees the Rentrée barbecue at St Mark’s, a great chance for a party. And loads of people are coming …should be fun!
family life
Samuel has started in a new school, which seems to be suiting him very well. He’s enjoying the mixture of French and English – and his French is coming on in leaps and bounds
[no more hiding things from him by speaking French …and he’ll probably be correcting our French before long]. The French education definitely extends to the palate as well, and we of new foods that he has been trying. …including salad, which he said he likes (though we are not sure how much he actually ate).

Both Vanessa and Tim are waiting to hear whether we will get places on the ‘Torrents de Vie’ (Living Waters) course. Vanessa benefited a lot from the shorter ‘Torrents d’Espoir’ Course, which was a great chance to get to know God more deeply. We know a few people who have found it very helpful, and it is now taking place in quite a few churches worldwide, though originally started by Andrew Comiskey in the U.S.
alpha
The greater Paris area (Ile de France) sees its first coordinated invitation to the Alpha course. St Mark’s is joining with a hundred other churches in this exciting venture. Because of the wide area in which St Mark’s people live, we are offering several different courses at different times and in different places. Among these, we are hosting Alpha in our home and our guests include several people who have become friends over the last three and a half years we have lived here. Tim is also involved in Alpha in Chevry, with people from the congregation of our church which meets there. There is a lot of excitement and anticipation as we start Alpha next week.

making life work
Our summer holidays seem a long time ago now, highlights included ‘New Wine’ for all of us and ‘Soul Survivor’ for Tim. These great big events were both a reminder of the wider church as well as the great celebrations that the Bible tells us about in heaven as one person comes to know Jesus as their friend …and 100,000 become Christ followers worldwide on average every day! And the party goes on as lives are restored and people are healed – Jesus is not a lame party!

We had a great time with people from St Mark’s who were there with us, as well as many other friends. We came back with a challenge to “ruthlessly pursuing the presence of God” (all the more challenging with the busyness of Rentrée) – that’s where is all springs from and that’s what we find really makes life work.

cyberlife
http://www.stmarksversailles.org is trying to be more and more an online community, learning from others and learning together. Quite a few of the new people coming to St Mark’s have come because of looking at our website. Lots of people have been involved in making it a place where people can get to know about our community (including having better directions to the church building!) And having talks online means everyone can listen to teaching if they are away, or busy with kid’s church or youth activities. In fact virtual community often really helps the real community thrive as well.

comprendre?
Maybe it was being back in England this summer, maybe simply being an Englishman now back in France…

There are so many real life stories of how English-speakers love living in France, but just don’t get it. And English-speaking Christians find that as well. It may be trying to understand what you need to do when for a child at school, or just the fact that everything seems to stop in July and August, or the impact of the ideas of ‘liberté, egalité, fraternité’, or Descartes’ thought system, or ‘of course I can park my car anywhere I want to’ (let alone what my dog might do where you will step out in your new shoes) ….

I imagine that there are things about the English-speaking world which seem strange to the French. Any thoughts? Do you understand?

looking ahead
We are all pleased that we will be staying at St Mark’s for another year (till June 2008), the bishop now having given his permission.

Oct 2, 3 – Christians keen to see the church grow will be gathering in Paris for a conference with Bill Hybels and Gilbert Bilezikian. Gilbert Bilezikian is the theologian behind Willow Creek Church, he is Armenian with French roots. Bill Hybels is the senior pastor of Willow Creek Church, Chicago. This is a church that many are keen to learn from – particularly in being better church leaders, and in our churches being places where people who have little or no church experience feel welcomed as they search for meaning. The title of the conference is ‘How can we ensure enduring growth in our local churches?’ Sounds good to us.

The Intelligent Dustbin ..(2) MS Access Database

The Intelligent Dustbin ..Organising Life and Thoughts
A few years ago, I joined the crowd that believes that there is a better way to organise life than backs of envelopes, ring binders, and all sorts of other paper.
It’s been a bit of a journey, the search for the ‘intelligent dustbin’ which will make anything you throw in it immediately accessible and useful..

Second Stop – MS Access Database
I had seen some amazing MS Access databases that handle vast amounts of information, and that can be searched in all sorts of ways …multidimensional …etc, etc

So I hooked up with someone who could help me learn how do do it and gave it a go..

Result: A huge amount of work trying to learn Access, a partially working database, and the realisation that MS Access really only works when you have an MS Access expert to hand..

The Intelligent Dustbin (1) Computer Filing System

The Intelligent Dustbin ..Organising Life and Thoughts…
A few years ago, I joined the crowd that believes that there is a better way to organise life than backs of envelopes, ring binders, and all sorts of other paper.

It’s been a bit of a journey, the search for the ‘intelligent dustbin’ which will make anything you throw in it immediately accessible and useful..

First stop – A Computer Filing System

I first followed the advice of various people who had gone before me and basically copied the structure of their paper filing system, creating thousands of folder, sub-folders …in short a hierarchy of organisation to accomodate everything from the worthy thoughts of Winston Churchill to nerd jokes I had received by e-mail [I'm a preacher, so you never know what might come in useful...]

Result? A lot of work in setting it up, a lot of work in keeping it going, a lot of disk space needed for all those MS Word files, but I could find things most of the time

Let’s party!

let’s party
People in France do enjoy their leisure time, particularly if food is involved. With this warm summer weather we are having at the moment, people are having picnics in parks, barbecues and garden parties. Very often as Christians we have social events with church people, other social events with work people, other events with family and yet others with neighbours, and then there are our friends …. Why not have a party for people from all the relational worlds we live in? Why not, indeed? Let’s party….

Father’s Day is another opportunity for a party… so June 17 sees Dadfest ’07: a celebration of men and dads, Guest Family Service, BBQ, music and more. Should be fun – do pray for us as we get it together.
family life
Talking of parties – let’s party for Samuel, who will be 4 at the end of April. The celebrations may have to be put back a bit, because he has chicken pox, but the party will go on… albeit a bit later on. Sam is a real joy, and full of ideas and life – he’s such a gift! We miscarried for the third time in February, so we are quite hesitant about trying for another child as we don’t want to go through miscarriage again. Vanessa hopes to have some medical tests soon to work out why this is happening.

Vanessa has just started the ‘Torrents d’Espoir’ Course at a church in Belleville (‘Living Waters’) – a great chance to get to know God more deeply. We know a few people who have found it very helpful, and it is now taking place in quite a few churches worldwide, though originally started by Andrew Comiskey in the U.S.
the BIG picture
This is the title of our new sermon series, looking at Romans, getting into some big themes of the Bible, facing difficult questions Paul also faced explaining Christian faith in
a world where most people didn’t have the same background understanding. Pray for all of us learning together from Romans, those who have been Jesus followers for a long time as well as those who are asking questions about life, meaning and God.

Questions of life seem to be in the minds of lots of people in France – I was recently contacted by Xavier, a 35 yr old who became a Christian through the Alpha course and is now being invited to run Youth Alpha courses in different places including schools (if you know about French secularism (laicité), you will know that this is quite something. Our own Youth Alpha course is going well, the Youth Alpha weekend is this weekend (27-28 April).

church life
Our new evening service is going well, with more space and time for worship in song, Bible teaching, prayer and prayer ministry. It is an exciting time, also stretching us as a congregation. It has been particularly encouraging to see new worship leaders and musicians coming forward. Best of all, people are growing closer to God in their everyday lives.

The fruit of the Network Course continues to be seen. Network is giving an opportunity for people to explore their spiritual gifts and how they are best a part of the church, the Body of Christ. One man who is very familiar with buildings but has always been reticent to take on overseeing our buildings is now appreciating being asked to take on particular projects – Network helped him and us to understand that this is how he functions best.

‘The Marriage Course’ went well. Couples appreciated the romantic bistro restaurant, in which they were able to explore different aspects of marriage watching video teaching and discussing together (some couples took the opportunity of further counsel). There is an opportunity for renewal of wedding vows in the next few weeks. One additional fruit of this course has been 2 husbands who are now with their wives at church from time to time, as well as a couple who have come back to church.

At then end of May we will have our church weekend ‘Reaching Up and Reaching Out’ with David MacInnes as our speaker. The weekend has been fully booked for a while, in fact one family are even considering staying on a boat nearby in order to be there. We are looking forward to a good time together, and to getting to know God better. On a personal note, it will be great to see David and Clare again – David was rector at St Aldates’s, our church in Oxford. As we have been preparing it was great to catch up with Rachel Johnston– colleague and friend from our time at St Michael’s, Paris. Rachel will be coordinating the children’s activities on the church weekend.

Soon after the church weekend “Becoming a Contagious Christian” is an opportunity to explore what it means to be ourselves in sharing with others the reality of knowing God in our day to day lives. And, guess what? Part of the homework is the invitation to party (!) ….we will be encouraging people to have a party for people from all the relational worlds they live in.

looking ahead
We are all pleased that we will be staying at St Mark’s for another year (till June 2008), the bishop now having given his permission.

The Paris area sees its first Alpha initiative, when people across this area are invited to one of the Alpha parties that will happen on September 26 in many different churches, with Alpha courses following on. At St Mark’s, we are considering the idea of asking of our homegroups to run Alpha courses in homes and other places (using videos) – we are still not decided about this idea – more prayer needed as we discuss. [Several neighbours and friends have been asking deep questions, and we are considering having an Alpha course in our flat].

A week later (Oct 2, 3) church leaders will be gathering in Paris for a conference with Bill Hybels and Gilbert Bilezikian. Gilbert Bilezikian is the theologian behind Willow Creek Church, he is Armenian with French roots. Bill Hybels is the senior pastor of Willow Creek Church, Chicago. This is a church that many are keen to learn from – particularly in being better church leaders, and in our churches being places where people who have little or no church experience feel welcomed as they search for meaning. The proposed title of the conference is ‘How can we ensure enduring growth in our local churches?’

Wishing you all the best

Tim Norman