In her novel “Middlemarch,” George Eliot closes with the reflection of her narrator, Dorothea Brooke, who observes that, “… for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

This beautiful sentiment reminds us of the way God has chosen to accomplish His redemptive purposes in the world. Though He can and does work through prominent people and sensational moments, by and large, God uses the faithful obedience of common Christians living routine lives to build His Church and advance His kingdom.

This is certainly true of Lyon Gerland Reformed Evangelical Church in Lyon, France. Through the steady ministry of MTW national partners Alexandre and Suzanne Sarran and the commitment of their church members, God has grown a fragile congregation into a flourishing community of believers.

The birth, death, and resurrection of Lyon Gerland Church

Born to a French father and a Scottish mother, Alex grew up in Lyon attending an English-speaking Anglican church for British and American expats. During his undergrad studies, he began looking for a French-speaking church and got connected with MTW missionaries who had just arrived in Lyon to plant a church and start an American Christian school. He joined the church plant’s core group and attended the church’s first worship service where he met his future wife, Suzanne, who was the daughter of the MTW team leader and the founding pastor.

“I was always very involved in my parents’ ministry. It was kind of always a family thing and so it was something that had always been in the back of my mind that I probably want to marry a pastor and be in ministry,” says Suzanne. 

She got her wish. As Alex helped the church plant with outreach, teaching, and youth group, God began to tug him toward pastoral ministry. He and Suzanne married in 2001 and Alex began a distance seminary program at Faculté Jean Calvin in Aix-en-Provence.

Three years later everything blew up.

Unhappy that the school the MTW team ran was Christian, one of France’s biggest corporations successfully lobbied the government to close the institution. This caused the MTW missionaries to leave unexpectedly and Alex and Suzanne suddenly found themselves taking over the leadership of the church.

“The core group was left with me as the least unqualified person to lead the church as a seminary student. So I was asked to basically take over the pastoral role as I was studying,” says Alex.

Only three French families remained. The Sarrans said that for the next six years they did life-support. People constantly drifted in and out and many times there were only five or six people in attendance on Sunday mornings.

“Every year we’d wonder, ‘Should we continue? What are we doing?’” says Alex.

In 2010, people began to come and stay, many of whom were non-Christians. The congregation grew to 25 members. “We had a number of conversions that were sudden, unplanned, and unexpected. Not that we did anything in particular to seek more conversions. And maybe that’s one of the lessons we learned was that we didn’t have any kind of program or well-thought-out strategy. We had just become an “ordinary means of grace” church: teaching the Bible, administering the sacraments, Bible studies, prayer meetings, and seeking out simple opportunities to reach the community with the gospel. And that’s how people became Christians,” says Alex.

And this would be the theme of Lyon Gerland Church for the next 15 years. As Alex and Suzanne steadily welcomed, discipled, pastored, and loved the people at Lyon Gerland Church, they created a healthy church culture centered on God’s Word and Christian relationships. God used their constancy to continue multiplying the conversions and the church’s membership. By the beginning of 2019, they had 60 members and had outgrown their meeting space in the basement of a Catholic Church.

In July 2019, the director of a local theater offered to let them use the theater space, which could seat 150 people. This was providential timing because the church grew again during the COVID-19 pandemic. During lockdown, many people began watching their services online and were eager to come when they started meeting for in-person services again. To maintain social distancing, they had to limit the number of people allowed through the door.

“There were non-Christians or new people coming and we’d tell our members, ‘Okay, you stay home this Sunday so that the new people can come,’” says Suzanne.

“Going from eight people to having to tell people that they can’t come because there’s not room was just mind-blowing,” says Alex.

Today, the church’s average attendance is anywhere from 120 to 130 people with new faces showing up every week. Through the steady leadership of the Sarrans, God has not only blessed a local congregation but has also established a distinct gospel witness in a country that has all but forgotten Jesus’ name.  

The spiritual crisis in France leads an MTW missionary to service

A few years ago, Suzanne was driving her and her neighbor’s kids to judo when one of the neighbor kids spotted a children’s Bible in the back seat.

“What’s that?” asked the child.

“That’s a Bible,” said Suzanne.

“What’s the Bible?”

“It’s a book that talks about Jesus,” said Suzanne.

“Who’s Jesus?” asked the child.

The interaction highlights a global trend that is particularly prevalent in European countries: Older generations are at best apathetic, at worst hostile, to the Church and have removed their family from Christianity’s influence. Today in countries like France, adult generations are plagued with widespread ignorance about the gospel, while the younger generations are growing up knowing absolutely nothing about it. According to Alex, approximately 1% of the French population claim to be evangelical Christians but church attendance is much less than that.

France lacks Bible-believing Christians, and it was this absence that compelled MTW missionary Joshua Jacobs to serve in France. In high school, Joshua met a French seminary professor working on his Ph.D. at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia who explained the spiritual crisis in France and the urgent need for pastors, missionaries, evangelists, and church planters. Joshua never forgot that conversation, especially when he befriended several French non-Christians later in high school and college.  

“The Lord placed in my life some French people whose ignorance of the gospel was a very clear calling on my life,” Josh says.

After college, he began taking steps to become a missionary in France. He got his M.Div. from Westminster and landed in France as an MTW missionary in 2018. He questioned his call almost immediately after stepping off the plane.

“I remember where I was right after I got off the plane. I had my three suitcases and a backpack and I was panicking, thinking to myself, ‘Is this all a big mistake?’” says Josh. “But I’ve prayed through that a lot since I’ve arrived in France and … when I ask myself, ‘What are the needs?’ I feel all the more called to serve here and do what I can.”

Josh works as the assistant pastor at Lyon Gerland and helps with preaching, liturgy, pastoral visits, evangelism, and discipleship for the adult men. His wife, Charline, oversees the church’s communication, especially the monthly newsletter, and volunteers in the youth group.

Two stories that illustrate how God is building Lyon Gerland Church

One of the wonderful aspects of Lyon Gerland Church’s story is that as God was shaping the church into a powerful testimony of His grace for the city, He was also transforming individual lives by calling them to faith in His Son.

During the years the church was meeting in the Catholic church basement, a young new believer began attending. She was dating a non-Christian and broke up with him because he was not a believer. Her ex-boyfriend became angry at Christians in general and at Lyon Gerland Church in particular. He decided to check out the people who took his girlfriend away from him.

“He would come and stand in the back during the service, his arms crossed, and just frown the whole time. And as a big, tall guy he was kind of intimidating,” says Alex.

One Sunday, Alex asked him if he’d like to study the Bible together. For six months, they met every Thursday during lunch, got a sandwich, and discussed a passage of Scripture.

One Thursday he said, “Alex, I think I am a Christian.”

“Why do you say that?” Alex asked.

“Because I find myself defending the faith to my mom, who is pretty hostile.”

He put his faith in Christ, joined the church, and married his former girlfriend. Alex officiated their wedding and baptized their three children. He is now the church’s webmaster and manages their YouTube channel.

“They’re both very committed members of the church and that is very encouraging. I keep thinking back to that story and just how the Word of God is really powerful in and of itself,” says Alex.

These are the stories that make up Lyon Gerland Church. God is using its ministry to create disciples that go into their communities as His representatives.

Recently, Charline and Josh had the privilege of witnessing this dynamic firsthand. They invited a non-Christian friend and her boyfriend over for dinner, along with a couple from their church. Josh has known the unbelieving friend for 15 years and she was one of the people who gave him a burden for gospel ministry in France when he was in college. At one point the couple from church asked Josh and Charline’s friends what they believe about God. A loving, respectful conversation about Christianity followed.

“I was so encouraged by God’s providence that our friend who recently became a Christian, having grown up in a very secular home, was asking my friend that I met 15 years ago if she believes,” says Josh. 

Lyon Gerland Church is not just gathering believers but is sending them back out into their city as gospel witnesses. These stories are a glimpse of how God has multiplied the church in Lyon through ordinary believers.

The unhistoric acts God uses to change the world

The story of Lyon Gerland Church isn’t dramatic or thrilling. It is really about a church faithfully serving in simple ways for 20 years. But it is also the tender story of God’s grace at work through people who, as George Eliot puts it, “live faithfully a hidden life.” It’s a story of a pastor and his wife who committed themselves to shepherding a dying congregation. It’s a story of a young high schooler whose compassion for his unbelieving French friends compelled him to serve as a missionary. It’s a story about God’s people willing to talk to others about Jesus as they carpool to judo, meet an angry man for a sandwich, and invite their friends to dinner. These are the unhistoric acts that God uses to change the world as He uses His people to change sinners’ eternal destinies and build His kingdom that will have no end.