JOURNEY
CHURCH
AROUND THE WORLD
KEVIN & NOEL
MILLER
Miracle after miracle has taken place for us to begin our dream of planting a church in Toulouse, France. Your prayers and generosity, Journey Church, have been felt all along. God placed a burden on our hearts for France and was kind enough to speak to us about a specific city. After recognizing God’s call to Toulouse, we began to pray that God would send us French pastors to plant the church with. This is where we met Manou and Lauryne Bolomik. They were pastoring in Northern France, and God separately put the city of Toulouse in our hearts. We met each other by working with people seeking refuge, and God aligned our visions of starting a church together.
​We moved to Toulouse in August of 2021. We planned to start the church a year in, but we found that people were genuinely interested in a church here. So, we decided to start with prayer. We realize that any movement birthed out of the necessity of God’s presence must start with prayer. We started by praying in the Bolomik’s apartment and had our two families present. Every Thursday night, we kept praying, and it organically grew. We moved from their apartment to ours and began giving a 5-minute devotional and worship on our TV. When our neighbors complained about how many people were coming into our apartment on a Thursday night, we knew we needed more space.
@eglise.larencontre
We found a co-working space in the city center that was a perfect fit. A few months later, a community was formed. We began to have dozens of people gathering for a prayer night and decided to try out a once-a-month service on a Sunday. It continued to grow. People were coming to church for the very first time. A girl named Marie came to our prayer service and told us it was her first time stepping foot in a church. She said she found us by passing by a service we were having and feeling a peace that she couldn’t describe. She was 28 years old and had never known a Christian before. France has an estimated 3% of its population following Jesus (including Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches). The majority of people are atheists, with a growing population of Muslims as well. Although it seems like we are post-Christian… we believe we are pre-Christian. We continually meet people hungry for an experience with a living God. Marie told us she felt the same peace that night at our prayer night, and we were able to tell her for the first time that it was the Prince of Peace knocking on the door of her heart. She gave her life to Jesus and is currently serving on our media team at our church, Eglise La Rencontre.
Eglise La Rencontre means Encounter Church. We know that the only way to reach a secular culture is by creating an environment where people can encounter Jesus and follow Him in a church community. As we grew, we began seeing more and more people come to Jesus. A guy named Justin gave his heart to Jesus and decided to get baptized. He told us he wanted to invite 40 people to the baptism. We were already close to capacity, averaging 65 people. We certainly did not have the space, but we made it work. We had 176 people show up that Sunday and it changed the trajectory of our little church. Justin is now in Global University classes and is called to be a pastor one day.
We knew we needed a building to hold the amount people worshipping whose lives were being changed every week now. We knocked on every door in the city to find that the prices were too high or they would not accept a church meeting in their space. God provided yet another miracle and we finally found a space where all generations are able to worship together.
We now have over three hundred people gathering every Sunday, and new people are getting saved and baptized. God is doing exceedingly more than we could ever think or imagine. It’s not stopping here. We have a vision to see more life-giving churches planted throughout France. We are part of a church that started in Normandy, France, and we see God do the miraculous there as well. They just had 65 people at their last interest meeting and plan to launch in the fall of 2025. God is up to something in France, and the harvest is ripe.
From the moment we said yes to our mission, you, Journey Church, have been behind us. Through your prayers and generosity, countless lives have been touched in this country. Countless more Maries and Justins need to hear the Good News here. Thank you for being a part of their stories and all the ones to come.