Lyon Aquarium, Networking

We spent this morning and early afternoon at the Aquarium de Grand Lyon. We all enjoyed the colorful fish, sharks, and other creatures. When we started our tour, both kids were yelling "Fish!" It's amazing the variety of colors and shapes that God created who live in water.

We ended up hosting for supper David and Virginia Hemmerle and their children Sarah and Jean-Pierre. They are with the Evangelical Free Church agency and work in Marseille. Our connection is Howard Lawler, who was my pastor in Essex Fells, NJ before moving to Trexlerton, Pennsylvania. The Hemmerles have been in France for 2 1/2 years now.

They asked a question about ministry among students and young professionals. As I tried to answer it, I started to realize that, while there are different attempts that I know of in Paris to touch these groups, there is none that can really say that it is "successful." Part of the reason is that these groups generally are "post-modern," so that some of the modernistic methods fairly successful in the past probably won't work now. There are a number of groups very different theologically who are trying cell group approaches. If these are successful, it can be hard to see on the outside how well they are doing. Some groups are thinking more emergent church forms, but I'm not aware of any in Paris that are doing super well yet. Hopefully, it will become obvious in a year or two that God is powerfully working through one or many more of these efforts. Perhaps that is something that I'll need to check out more during this coming year.