CHURH PLANTING IN PARIS, FRANCE

Dear intercessor heroes, friends, families and adventurers of the LORD, 

Hallelujah! We have arrived en France (in France). Incredible! This letter comes to you out of a train between Cabourg and Paris, where we have just spent a weekend as a family with friends at the sea near the English Channel. The first five weeks in France are behind us and we are off! Five weeks filled with new and follow-up contacts, evangelism, cultural experiences, new friends, the attempt to open a bank account, Sebastian‘s new job start as a teacher, and a nomadic lifestyle. We are expecting to finally get our own flat. Our family Unger herd lived in different flats on a weekly basis as the owners were on holiday. This was the best opportunity to get to know French culture from the inside. ☺) 

These first weeks were, and still are, characterized by an exciting mixture of more blessings than we could ever expect and great challenges of faith at the same time. The challenge: until the day before yesterday, we believed that we would surely get an apartment in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (10 km/6 miles west of Paris). However, the owners decided to commission a real-estate agency to organize the hiring. Therefore, we had to give the required evidence that real estate agencies require in this area – pay a yearly rent as a security, a French sponsor who earns three times our monthly rent, etc. Like most foreigners and expatriates, we could not provide these securities. Consequently, we were out again. At this point, we had looked for apartments for half a year. Previously, we had seen about 25 apartments. We would receive several rejections because we could not provide the necessary financial securities. Despite this situation, we have peace of mind over the apartment issue.

 God had spoken with us several times before we moved. He assured us that if we would wait before Him quietly, He would do His work (Psalm 37:3 onwards – it pays to read!). The challenge is great, but so is the blessing. Thanks to this situation, we have gotten to know many more people than we had ever dreamed of, including understanding more about their culture. What is more, the local people can see our willingness to invest ourselves in God and how we accept our lack of security. This is also, what we want to challenge people to do afterwards. We also know that this challenge is important to train our own faith and to let our trust in Jesus grow. In the course of our ‘relocations’, we lived together with a family, the Chapuis. Meanwhile, we are supporting this family as mentors (‘on approbation‘): Jonathan and Amélie Chapuis have built up a house church network of their own in Paris. We pray together and consult one another, in the hope that we will work together in future. The network here needs exactly what we have to give them – long-term vision, organization, team building, teaching, personal training in faith, and training of future leaders. The blessing of the last few weeks was as follows: without any extreme effort, we met many, many people and had lots of follow-up contacts with people from exactly this network; common prayer times; evangelism among friends, in the streets, at work; the favor that God gives us with people is hard to put in words and undeserved. God has made it quite clear that this is our place. Even if none of these relationships develops further, it would already be confirmation enough for us about whether or not we are in the right place. 

For your prayers, we have two closely related requests ☺: 

1) Give God glory for His blessings on us; and, 

2) Pray that we may grow strong in faith. 

Here is a ‘brief’ account of the most important events. The latest report Of how we prepared to move, of encounters in the Cévennes mountains and a farewell to Germany The culmination of our temporary German period was the Hope Germany Festival 2012, “Our Church”. It was good to share our vision for France with all the delegates present in personal conversations and on stage. In many of our dialogues, we looked back on our respective friendships. We cried goodbye tears together and celebrated what God has done. To all our former mentees and friends: we are deeply touched to see the fruit of our work for Jesus in your lives! It pays to live just because we see that God is using you – in Nuremberg, Munich, Plauen, Zwickau, Dresden, East Thuringia and Chemnitz!



The situation was extra special for another reason. Just before the Festival, I (Sebastian) had started my last trip to France before we moved. The reason was that we were looking for a new apartment again, and additionally, I received an invitation from a local house church network from Paris to go to a camp in the Cévennes Mountains with them (as I reported in my last prayer letter). My search for an apartment took longer than expected. Therefore, I was forced to go directly from Paris to the Festival. The advantage was that Espen Tydal, and Jonathan and Amélie Chapuis, founders of the house church network in Paris, could be with us at the Festival in Grünheide. Therefore, they had the opportunity to meet and know Marcus Rose (founder of Hope Germany), Pastor Simon Eng from Malaysia (the international head of our entire church movement) and many of the delegates personally. What an encouragement for the three of them! Thank you for all your testimonies, questions, explanations, and intercession for them! Maybe God is tying together a covenant for collaboration? After all that we have witnessed with them together, it would almost be strange if it did not turn out like that.

We owe a thousand thanks to you, our parents (!) and a helpful church (Ronny, Christian, the Peter family, Polli, Robin, Daniel, Klaus, Frank, and so on). They have done lots of ‘social work’ for us. They are our heroes! Through them, we could empty our apartment, paint the rooms, and meet many of the most important people in our lives. Our ‘nomadic phase’ started with two weeks at Gabi and Andreas’ house before we moved. (Gabi is my mother-in-law – bisou !) We had moved six times before, and we are still on the move.



The first weeks: contacts, language, evangelism, and almost a home to stay

You cannot imagine the way our friends from the house church network welcomed us here! When we arrived at Brendan’s and Lydiane’s place – house church leaders I got to know during my last trip – we saw a table covered with guest gifts and money, next to enthusiastic Lydiane. Amazing! Our hosts spent a week overnight at their parents-in-law’s place just for us. From that time, we moved from apartment to apartment on a weekly basis. All these people were looking for tenants to look after their apartments while they were on holiday. And each time they would welcome us cheerfully. All who belong to this local network would receive us with great pleasure – as if they had been waiting for us to come to help develop the network. In this way, we have lived in two different boroughs of Paris. We had the chance to know the network and smelt the air of the different spheres of the city.

At the same time, we followed up our contacts with non-believers and started to make new contacts and completed our organisational tasks (open a bank account, job interviews, discover the city, register a telephone connection, etc.). As we did so, many contacts just developed – apart from situations that we sought deliberately (bewusst gesuchten Situationen). For example, the neighbors in our first ‘refuge‘ just invited us to their birthday party in the first week. Afterwards we exchanged phone numbers with the hosts. Maybe a next meeting will come soon. We are currently sowing seeds everywhere that we find people, watching where God opens doors for the Good News. To find this out, we speak of our vision, give testimonies, explain the Good News, ask spiritual questions and build relationships.


As regards with language, we are incredibly grateful that we could meanwhile manage all we need to do in French. I am particularly grateful that my one-to-one conversations with Éric in Québec, Canada, via Skype is now completely in French, as are all important conversations locally. What a feeling! God is so good. We have often prayed that God may bless our language learning. With three children, there is not much time left to get down to learning with ease and a course book. This must somehow come along the way (in the métro, before going to bed…). The fatigue from speaking the foreign language has befallen us already. We cannot avoid this fatigue. But meanwhile, we are making headway. Thanks to the many contacts of our children with the three Chapuis children, Laura-Sophie and Lenya speak French well enough to communicate in the foreign language. Corin mumbles his first words, too. ☺



A week ago, it looked as if we could move into an apartment Saint-Germain-en-Laye on August 1. The private owners are practising Catholics who understood our purpose and classified our family as reliable (very important in France!). After they had commissioned a real estate office to manage the rental in future, the usual routine of mistrust started because we could not provide the financial securities. Therefore, we were out at once. This is an almost everday occurrence for us! To find an apartment in our situation means, we need a miracle. And the miracle will happen! To show God that we are serious, we intensified our prayer meetings via Skype on a weekly basis. Now it is time to pray and fast again. Last Wednesday (on prayer day) we got the rejection for the flat that we had been promised to get. At the same time, we received an email with an offer to rent an apartment that is completely furnished, just half a minute away from the suburban train (RER) in Saint-Germain, in the middle of the town centre. As we reserve the option to move together with Chapuis (or other people) in the same house to Paris city in the future, an apartment with furniture could be the ideal stopgap solution until our children have learned French at the Lycée International in Saint-Germain well enough to attend a purely French school. In the meantime, we have resumed our application activities for apartments. At the same time, we decided not to look for apartments feverishly anymore but really to wait for what God is doing. Until then, we had been very proactive. Now is the time to trust and let God do it.

Written by Sebastian  Unger