If Your Church is Closed . . . Be the Church by Dr Peter Roennfeldt was translated into French this week, as Ton Église est Fermée? Sois l’Église!.
The translation was released two weeks after the original eBook—a guide for pastors seeking to lead and grow their churches amid the closure of church buildings in response to COVID-19—was launched on April 3.
“We have begun to disseminate it to our pastors,” reports Pastor Samuel Dinsenmeyer, director of Mission and Evangelism for the South France Conference, who has overseen the translation project. “Thank you for this document that is so useful in these circumstances.” [pullquote]
According to Pastor Dinsemeyer, this book fits with the strategy that the Adventist Church in France and Belgium is implementing to promote church-planting and household churches using translations of Dr Roennfeldt’s books. Following Jesus and If You Can Eat . . . You Can Make Disciples have already been translated into French and the Church’s publishing house in France is also seeking rights to publish Following the Spirit and Following the Apostles’ Vision.
Dr Roennfeldt has been invited to speak at the South France Conference camp-meeting in August this year, although this now seems likely to take place via Zoom.
“In the early 2000s, when I first started working with the South France Conference, we were focusing on planting community and attractional-type churches,” he explains. “But society was rapidly changing and we have been compelled to return to Jesus’ and the apostles’ vision of church. So now we are fostering churches that really reflect New Testament churches—‘households of faith’, we call them. I think this approach will appeal to believers in South France and prove effective for the mission of God and His church.”
A condensed edition of If Your Church is Closed has also been adapted in the past week for distribution to Adventist pastors and leaders in developing countries in Asia, the Middle East and northern Africa. The new French edition has also been made available to French-speaking regions in Africa and the South Pacific’s own French-speaking territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
If Your Church is Closed . . . Be the Church is available for free download from www.following-jesus.com.
