5 Protestants were accepted at the Reformation, and at one stage some estimate that 48% of the French population had embraced the new teaching

6 Evangelical Christians are few, scattered and split up among more than 130 Protestant denominations and nearly 3,000 congregations

a) An impact to be made on the core French population

b) Unity among true believers

c) Revival

d) Vision

7 The unreached sectors of French society are many,

a) The nearly 50 million French people who have no real link with a Christian church

b) The many large cities with few evangelical churches

c) Of the 38,000 communes, around 35,000 have no resident evangelical witness

d) The Basques in the southwest who are virtually without an evangelical witness

e) The Loire Valley, Brittany, Picardy, Limousin, Champagne-Ardennes and Calais which are particularly lacking in evangelical congregations

f) The island of Corsica

8 The unreached minorities:

a) The large Portuguese, Spanish and Italian communities are more receptive than in their native lands

b) The Jewish community, fourth largest in the world and the largest in Europe

c) North Africans are almost entirely Muslim, few ever having heard the gospel

d) The Berbers form a large minority among the North Africans and possibly make up the majority of Algerians

e) Black Africans have come in large numbers as students, refugees and work-seekers from Muslim areas of Francophone Africa

f) The large number of Indo-Chinese refugees of the 1970s and '80s

g) The growing Turkish, Iranian and Afghan communities

9 Islam is now the second religion of France

Peoples

Indigenous 84%; International minorities 16%.

Literacy 99%. Official language French. Regional languages in decline. French is the first language of 120 million people worldwide. All languages 25. Languages with Scriptures 12Bi 3NT 11por.

Economy

Stability and growth leading to a high standard of living. HDI 0.918; 11^th/174. Public debt 42% of GNP. Income/person $26,270 (92% of USA).

Politics

Democratic republic with strong executive presidency.

Religion

Secular state with freedom of religion, but with a long history of severe persecution of dissenters and reformers before the 1789 Revolution.

Churches in France

Missionaries from France

approx. 600 in 56 agencies to 55 countries

Missionaries to France

1,519 in 155 agencies from 40 countries

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Geography

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Area 543,965 sq.km. The largest country in Western Europe.

Population (2000) 59,079,709 +0.36%AGR

Capital Paris 10.7 mill.

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