Catchup #1 - Formacion

It’s been one of those long breaks again – my apologies. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my flat in Le Pecq – a suburb to the west of Paris. So as you might have guessed, a lot has happened since I blogged back in August when I began my (failed) attempt to live-blog the IFES Formacion conference. So I thought over the next few days I’ll explain the highlights of what’s happened and how I’ve come to be living in Paris.

So first, the failed formacion live-blog. That last post came in a rare spot of free time alone between breakfast and the morning session in what was a packed but wonderful conference. As I explained it was for training CU leaders from all over Europe as well as from Eurasia and this year’s guest region, the Middle East.

As I said it was a packed programme. The mornings were focussed on Mark’s Gospel, either hearing it being taught (and memorising it) with Andrew Page, or learning how to use it to introduce friends and colleagues to Jesus. The afternoons were focussed on applying the gospel to various aspects of being part of a Christian Union, that is, a university mission team – through various activities, we thought about how it applies to issues of our identity, team building, engaging with culture and serving the community. You can have a look at some of these activities as well as some of the videos used in some of Andrew’s teaching sessions here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FormacionTV.

I think it’s safe to say that the main thing that people took home was a fresh understanding of the power of the gospel and the simplicity of preaching Christ by opening up the Bible with someone. Here's what one student said he took home from the conference on the Formacion Facebook group:

"I feel much more courageous, encouraged and comfortable telling people (not-yet-believers) around me "Why don't we read Mark's Gospel together". It is good. So far I started it with my younger brother and a friend and it was already quite some time I didn't know how to communicate the Gospel to them.
Before I thought that reading the Bible "just like it is" is somewhat to much for people to take, they won't be able to digest it, it's better for them to have a book or some piece of sophisticated philosophy or whatever. It is a devilish lie in most cases. I think it was a big part of the altogether formacion teaching, that the word of God is powerful itself. "Mark is on your side" is a remarkable sentence."

It was also a great privilege to meet up with the young men in my community group, first of all to listen to them and learn about their situations and to try to guide their thinking in applying the gospel and to see them realise how all-encompassing the gospel is.

You can read more about the conference from Huw at the ProGnosis by clicking here. Here’s a video with various participants and community group leaders sharing their reflections on the last evening of the conference (in my group’s meeting room):



After getting home to Cardiff on the Sunday (August 9th), I had one day to rest. Then on the Tuesday I went to Paris for a couple of days to look around and sign for this flat but I'll explain why I'm here later...