MARSEILLE, FRANCE

marseille, france

Our family of five has grown with the church here in Marseille, the second largest city in France, for the last 25 years. Our children, Nathan, Aurelia and Lucas were born and raised here. We live in a working class and high crime area whose population includes about 35% Muslims and in an aggressively secular culture that has made France’s reputation as a missionary cemetery. It wouldn’t be hard to find an easier place to share the Gospel.

However, we believe this is exactly where God has called us. Where else could we better share the Gospel with our increasing spiritually ignorant society, train the younger generations to stand up for Christ despite the costs, and hope for the great things God can and will do in this country?

The church’s steady growth here in Marseille testifies to the power of His grace over the enemy’s best efforts ; the Christians On Mission one-year internship is a formidable tool to equip our churches and young people ; and the Bonnefoi Bible camp creates the best opportunities to reach out to the children and families.

We are grateful for your prayers, encouragement, and support that enable us to work together to bring France back to Christ.

 Philippe, Dolores, Nathan, Aurelia and Lucas Dauner 2023

The Marseille Church of Christ started 21 years ago. France is a difficult and unique mission field. In order to build a viable church in a country where whole generations are missing from the Christian landscape, the Marseille church invested in two other essential ministries from the start: A Bible camp to share Christ with the next generation, and a one-year internship designed to equip young  people in their thinking and their mission capacities in a post-Christian European context. French is an official language in many places, and since Arabic is almost a second language in Marseille, France is the door to the Mediterranean world. The local missionaries strive to become autonomous and even a mission-sending church, yet, they are still dependent on outside support in order to function. They must continue receiving a U.S. supported working fund, making Littleton’s support so important. Variations in that working fund will greatly impact their outreach capacities. In spite of COVID -19 their work over the past year has truly been a huge success with numerous baptisms and even some weddings where young people are marrying into the church. 

Marseille, France is blessed with a growing neighborhood church led by two Dauner generations.  Teaching in their year-long, full-time intensive discipleship program, Christians on Mission (CEM), as well as teaching in local catholic parishes which are no longer served by resident priests are two of Max’s primary focuses.  In addition to her full time public school teaching position, Prisca guides CEM outings, is a Bible camp counselor, teaches Bible to children twice a week, acts as principle teacher for the “Club Cool” children’s outreach, and is a world class English translator.  Both Max & Prisca are integral to the Marseille chorus which is a successful community outreach.

With a Master’s of Divinity degree, Philippe has served as the Fuveau Chapelle full-time pulpit minister since 2005.  French born and raised, Philippe effectively connects with the Marseille community.  Dolores is the churchsecretary and director of their annual two week summer camp held at the Bonnefoi Mountain Retreat Center serving children throughout Europe.  Philippe and Dolores serve a key role inmentoring Marseille youth and are active in the one-year Christians on Mission internship they both attended as students are also discovering the joys of sharing the gospel with other parents at the kindergarten across the street from church.

Marseille, France is blessed with a growing neighborhood church led by two Dauner generations.  Teaching in their year-long, full-time intensive discipleship program, Christians on Mission (CEM), as well as teaching in local catholic parishes which are no longer served by resident priests are two of Max’s primary focuses.  In addition to her full time public school teaching position, Prisca guides CEM outings, is a Bible camp counselor, teaches Bible to children twice a week, acts as principle teacher for the “Club Cool” children’s outreach, and is a world class English translator.  Both Max & Prisca are integral to the Marseille chorus which is a successful community outreach.

With a Master’s of Divinity degree, Philippe has served as the Fuveau Chapelle full-time pulpit minister since 2005.  French born and raised, Philippe effectively connects with the Marseille community.  Dolores is the churchsecretary and director of their annual two week summer camp held at the Bonnefoi Mountain Retreat Center serving children throughout Europe.  Philippe and Dolores serve a key role inmentoring Marseille youth and are active in the one-year Christians on Mission internship they both attended as students are also discovering the joys of sharing the gospel with other parents at the kindergarten across the street from church.

2021

The Marseille Church of Christ started 20 years ago. France is a difficult and unique mission field. In order to build a viable church in a country where whole generations are missing from the Christian landscape, the Marseille church invested in two other essential ministries from the start: A Bible camp to share Christ with the next generation, and a one-year internship designed to equip young people in their thinking and their mission capacities in a post-Christian European context. French is an official language in many places, and since Arabic is almost a second language in Marseille, France is the door to the Mediterranean world. They strive to become autonomous and even a mission-sending church, yet, they are still dependent on outside support in order to function. They have to resort to receiving a U.S. supported working fund, making Littleton’s support so important. Variations in that working fund will greatly impact their outreach capacities. In a newsletter this year, they reported: France was hit pretty hard with COVID-19 and everything halted for a while. The crisis initiated for the Marseille church a great leap forward in areas we had not really developed in the past, notably in terms of internet presence as we had our first live retransmission of Sunday services. The fun part of this was having many people of our neighborhood, or, the world be part of the experience. “Attendance” was at a record high! We’ve learned how to have prayer meetings by Zoom, teach the CEM students online, continue our children ministries and in general try and stay in contact virtually. This new situation proved to be quite a radical change for us, and has taught us new ways to serve the community. One new thing we’ve tried is opening up our CEM classes to the public. Several extra people attend (and you may too if you speak French! —contact me and I’ll send you the Zoom ID). By being reduced, our scope of action expands! Silence and prayer, sometimes seen as “passive,” means of action, have the exact same effect. That’s because time spent with the Lord of the Universe will never be unproductive if we are serious about it. He states in another writing, “Please believe it would be our pleasure to see the local church(es) take over these expenses over time. We thank you that you make our dream of investing in the spiritual future of France possible today! We would love to be useful to you as much as you have been to the work here, and would be really glad to have you bring a team for a short-term/discovery summer mission, with a youth group for example. I understand such a mission might be under consideration in Littleton and would do wonders to communicate our work. ”

With our love and prayers,

Philippe Dauner

November 2020

A campfire for Jesus

Here’s a story that is rare enough that it deserves my sharing it with you. You often read in these newsletters about the particular atheistic/post-christian worldview of the majority of French people.F rank, just proved us open hearts still exist. He is a fifty-year old neighbor that just showed up in church one day to pray with us, sharing how close he was to despair. "I’ve only one more possible solution for my life, and that’s God. So I’m giving Him a fair chance, and have taken off a couple of weeks to search for Him. If He doesn’t answer, I have nowhere else to go." He decided to come to church, and our CEM daily prayer time, and took a week-long camping trip to find time with God and ask him all the questions he had.

There are ups and downs, but during the past two months we have seen his life radically change as he is more and more convinced God listens to him and loves him. As of today, I have no idea what his final decision will be, and you are invited to pray with me for him. I did want to share his story, though, because he has had an unexpected impact on our church. He decided to take the men’s group with him for a bivouac and invite us to pray with him and share our life and faith story around a campfire. This got us all sharing about our difficulties, past and present, and our hopes in Jesus, which surely help him, but also the younger generation of men in various stages of life and faith experiences.

There were many great things done with and for Jesus these past weeks, easter concerts (with 120 visitors!), Bible seminars (I taught a 6 hour seminar on the book of Exodus in Geneva, Switzerland), and a two week mission for CEM in Albania and the refuge camps in Greece (with Hellenic ministries, in Athens). Yet meeting someone off the street, who has been our neighbor for 15 years, and whose sincere search for God made our paths cross, is one of the great unexpected joys of our ministries.

I can’t say I camp outside much. But I did appreciate how doing so with my brothers brought us closer to God, and therefore closer to each other. I won’t surprise you if I tell you a second trip is already planned.

April 2018