Editor's note: When you say, "France," the word immediately conjures images of romantic, rain-drenched strolls through the sparkling City of Lights; of fresh-baked breads and pastries enjoyed at relaxing outdoor cafés; of idyllic rolling countrysides or soaring Gothic architecture.

There's another side to France. A France that has the one of the highest suicide rates in Western Europe. A France in which 3.5 percent of people rely on anti-depressants to get through a day. A France with a 10-percent unemployment rate. A France in which half of those who identify themselves as Catholic admit they don't believe in God. A France in which many people battle loneliness and isolation.

It is to this place of vast spiritual need that Dave and Betsy Scott have followed God to join what He is doing. Listen to their heart for the people of France.

Dave and I grew up in the Nazarene Church.  We both attended Nazarene churches from birth; both chose to attend Eastern Nazarene College; and both were involved in Nazarene ministries at a church attached to our college. From a young age, we each felt a call to missions. 

At first, it was an inner awakening resulting from involvement with short-term missions trips.  In college, we felt the call more strongly to live abroad and pursue missions, but weren’t sure about the specifics. We only knew that after our first year of marriage, Dave felt called to seminary. After much prayer, we both felt led to study at Fuller Theological Seminary. 

We approached our studies each quarter by asking God what He wanted to show and teach us. This is how God directed our studies: Dave became passionate about studying what the church looks like in “post-Christian” cultures where a whole new generation is growing up with little to no knowledge of who God is. In these cultures, the people think church, or what they now perceive as religion, is a thing of the distant past.

Dave began studying about how the Gospel can be conveyed to a generation who are not interested in God and are unwilling to step inside the walls of a church.

In studying theology and pastoral counseling, I became interested in helping people heal from abuse, including spiritual abuse.  I want to help people understand God lovingly created them in His image, and to help them shed years of shame by letting God bring wholeness to those broken places.

In our last year of seminary, we prayed about where God was leading us. We sensed our call was to be in a post-Christian culture where we could open a coffee shop that would become a place where people would build relationships with each other and God; a place where discipleship could happen in a community context and where people who may never visit a church could find a safe place to discuss God.

Waiting
After seminary we moved to Ohio and began a one-year period of waiting and seeking the Lord’s leading. At the end of this time we met Nazarene missionaries to France, David and Carolita Fraley, who were touring churches to talk about France and their 30-year ministry there. We were captivated by their story and instantly had a heart for the French. 

We learned of how relational ministries, combined with great theological discussion and training, were the foundation for what later grew into Nazarene churches in France.  We learned how the French people generally accept the Gospel first with their heads and then their hearts, and that the Protestant Church in France represents only 3 percent of the total population. 

We learned of the dark spiritual culture that covers France, and listened to the stories of the many hurting people in France who have found a peace and a love in Christ they had not known before (and it is a blessing to see some of those people on a weekly basis at what is now Montpellier Church of the Nazarene).

David Fraley told us they had been praying that a couple like us would go to Montpellier,  to do the exact ministry we had been praying about.  Two days later we met and prayed with them about Montpellier and soon after sent a missions application to the Nazarene Church.

We waited some more.

A month later we attended a mission emphasis weekend in Yuba City, California, where we first met Didier and Shannon, pastor and wife of the Montpellier Church of the Nazarene.  It was here we first heard about Didier’s dream. His dream started in a place he knew was France. It was covered in darkness with only a few, small rays of light breaking through the dark clouds.  The country embraced the darkness and shunned the light.  But soon the people began to turn their backs on the darkness and embrace the light, one ray at a time.  God impressed on Didier that God had not given up on France.  At the end of the dream God said to Didier, “Whom shall I send?” 

It was us. 

For four months now, we’ve lived in the city of Montpellier. We are in the first part of a full year of intense language study, and we attend Montpellier Church of the Nazarene.  We are connecting churches in America with the church community in Montpellier, helping the ministries develop in Montpellier Church by supporting its leadership, and beginning the coffee shop ministry that will eventually flow out of Montpellier Nazarene. 

Glimmers of Light
We want people to understand that in many ways France is not the paradise that CNN has reported it to be. The work in France is long, hard and takes time. 

Daily we pass large, beautiful, empty churches.  How can the church grow in this culture?  How will people ever embrace the Gospel when they are so repelled by the idea of church and God? 

Darkness permeates this culture where many people are lonely, isolated and clinging to a hopeless sense of independence. They don’t know how to love each other, who God is and, more importantly, who God wants to be in their lives.

Didier is passionate about theological training because he believes this is what the French people need: to hear someone articulate why they believe what they believe in a way the French can understand.

We think their questions and fears can be met with love, listening and walking alongside people who yearn for more.  For us, ministry begins with building relationships.  As we love others, they receive Christ’s love through us.  That is why we are so passionate about starting a coffee shop ministry out of the Montpellier Church of the Nazarene.  While many would not walk into the church building, they will walk through the door of a coffee shop. God can use each interaction of each day to touch their lives with His love. We want to be a part of that.

Just recently we were thrilled when a retired woman in the church said God has called her to evangelism in the form of a coffee shop. We met to discuss preliminary plans and to pray together.  We hope to begin the coffee shop and community-center type activities this fall, first in the church and then later in a separate café location.

So, here we are, serving in France with the Nazarene Church.  We’re super passionate about being Christ to everybody we meet, and that means in the grocery store, at our university, at the bakery, at the park – everywhere.  We’re excited we’ve been called to be the Light in France and to connect this community in Montpellier to churches in America.  We are extremely excited about what God has done and what God will continue to do in France. 

-- Dave and Betsy Scott are Mission Corps missionaries to France.