Equipping Pastors in France

When we think of France, many of us picture a dream vacation — strolling along the Seine, savoring croissants in quaint cafés, marveling at the Gothic architecture of Notre-Dame Cathedral, or losing an afternoon in the Louvre. Or perhaps it’s the countryside that draws us: rolling fields of sunflowers, ancient castles, and windswept coastlines.

But beneath all that beauty lies a spiritual reality most visitors never consider.

Beneath the surface of this cultural magnificence is a nation of spiritual seekers. Secularism has dominated France for generations, and evangelicals represent just 1.6 percent of the population. Yet God is moving in remarkable ways. The evangelical community has grown from just 50,000 believers in the 1950s to more than 745,000 today, with 35 new churches planted every year. This incredible growth brings with it both celebration and an urgent challenge.

France Desperately Needs Pastors

The National Council of Evangelicals of France estimates that 1,000 new pastors need to be trained over the next decade just to replace those who are retiring. Currently, seminaries in France are only training about 30–40 people for ministry each year. They have the capacity to train more — but as Scripture reminds us, the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.

This stark shortage means many churches are forced to operate with undertrained leadership. The once-traditional path of young seminary graduates has given way to older career-changers studying theology online while working secular jobs, eventually pursuing bi-vocational ministry. Meanwhile, burnout and lack of resources cause experienced pastors to abandon ministry — not due to moral failure, but utter exhaustion. This is how many pastors end up leading congregations without the proper theological foundation that they — and their people — desperately need.

The Financial Reality

Financial pressures make this training crisis worse. Because most evangelical churches are quite small, the average pastor’s salary is under $30,000 a year — well below the national average. When a pastor earns an average of $2,500 per month, purchasing quality theological resources becomes nearly impossible.

Books That Meet Pastors Where They Are

This is why Global Christian Book Fund has partnered with BLF Éditions to provide 800 pastors in France with a personal 12-book set — carefully chosen to educate, encourage, inspire, and empower them for the challenges they face every day.

These aren’t generic titles pulled from a shelf. Each book was selected by our local partner to speak directly to the realities French evangelical pastors live with:

• Gospel People by Michael Reeves helps pastors explain what “evangelical” actually means in a culture that has absorbed the political use of the term rather than the biblical one.
• Evangelical Pharisees warns against the pride and legalism that can quietly destroy churches — especially dangerous when pastors feel insecure about their limited training and compensate with rigid rule-making instead of gospel grace.
• God Shines Forth by Reeves and Hames tackles the intimidation factor that too often kills evangelism, showing that mission flows naturally from delighting in God’s glory rather than from guilt or cultural pressure.
• Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp addresses the elephant in the room: pastors are burning out and walking away from ministry — not because of sin, but because of exhaustion and unhealthy church cultures.
• Authority by Jonathan Leeman gives these pastors a biblical framework for leadership when they feel underqualified and overwhelmed.

These five titles are part of a 12-book set that will be placed in the hands of 800 pastors throughout the year.

How You Can Help

Just $50 provides a pastor in France — or in another country where CIO works — with this essential set of resources for a lifetime of ministry. The biblical encouragement and practical wisdom in these books could mean the difference between a pastor who thrives and one who becomes another burnout statistic.

These pastors have answered a difficult calling in a challenging place. They deserve to be equipped for it.