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The Rising Influence of Islam in Marseille, France: A Christian Missionary's Perspective · Centrally Speaking

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Today we're talking about the rising influence of Islam in Marseille, France, from a Christian missionary's perspective.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: This is a valuable thing for us to be considering, essentially speaking, as we think about how the church interacts with the modern world.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: As the church has been so active in France, but now facing a new demographic, as many from North Africa who are Islamic in faith are entering Marseille.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: And it's great to have uh Craig Young here with us today.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: Craig grew up at the Central Schwankfeller Church, was involved with Young Life and FCA, graduating from Methekton High School in the area.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: He met his wife Katie while studying engineering at Lehigh University.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: They were both engineers for a little bit, but then followed the Lord's uh call to the mission field in 1990 and began serving in Marseille, France, which is in the southern part of France, right along uh the Mediterranean Sea.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Together, uh Craig and Katie lead a multi-ethnic church plant, uh, the Fouveau Chapelle, I hope I pronounced that well enough, that is now home to people from all over the Mediterranean rim, including several coming from a Muslim background.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Greg has a Master of Arts and Global Leadership, a doctor of mystiology from Fuller Theological Seminary School of Intercultural Studies.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: Besides uh pastoring the Fouveau Chapelle, Greg also directs a year-long mission training program, Chrétienne and Mission, as well as the Harmony Bible Camp and uh the Centre Bonafroix, Restreet Center.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: Katie uh leads Chorale Harmonia and works with uh also daughter Emily on Makur Akura, a Course of Hearts producing online worship songs.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Together, Craig and Katie are currently spearheading a transformation of a nearby abandoned monastery, the Betheline Monastery, turning it into a Christian outreach center.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Craig, thanks for giving us uh some of your time to talk about uh the changing dynamics in France.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: So we're very glad you're here.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Drake, for the invitation.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really glad to be here too.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us a little bit about uh the history of Marseille, France, and maybe you could just tell uh a little bit more than what I did in the introduction.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: Where is the city, and then tell us a little bit of history about it?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: So Marseille is the oldest city, considered the oldest city in Western Europe, and it is uh France's port of entry from all places Mediterranean.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so throughout its history, it has been the place where those from North Africa, from the Middle East have arrived and settled in uh France.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Marseille was founded 2600 years ago by Greek fishermen, and uh that corresponds literally to the time of the exile of Israel in Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's how long Marseille has been around.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as a little uh caveat, the Olympic flame that normally travels to the capital city upon arrival in the host nation, the Olympic flame for the 2024 Paris Olympics arrived by boat in Marseille to commemorate the arrival of Greek fishermen 2,600 years ago to found Marseille.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Marseille's current population is 1.3 million.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: And when they brought the flame in, were you able to see it?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when they brought the flame in, Katie was there with uh one of our Ukrainian refugees to witness that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was not able to be there, but there were 250,000 people on the port to welcome the flame.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was quite an event.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that was an event.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: So France has been known as a Catholic country and a Christian country uh since the fifth century.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: What's the condition of um the Catholic faith in um Marseille uh currently?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, France does have a very, very strong history with the Catholic Church, and as recently as the turn of the 20th century, France was known as the daughter of the Catholic Church.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: But while there have been peaks and valleys in general, Catholicism has been on free fall in France and especially over the last 50 years.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: France now has less than 50% of its population that considers itself Catholic for the first time in that history.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the term Catholic has actually become a cultural rather than religious adjective.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why there are a huge number of self-described Catholic atheists in France.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: The vast majority of the population today is atheist reagnostic, and only 4% of the French population actually describe themselves as practicing Catholics.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it can make some sense of that to our listeners.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: A Catholic uh atheist.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: How does how do people reconcile those two?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, with France's history, the connection between France and Catholic is kind of almost considered synonymous.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm here in France, I'm from this country, um, synonymously, therefore Catholic.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: But in my worldview and in my functioning, I am atheist in the way I look at things.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so the Catholic atheist idea actually is very unique, but that's a very true picture for many in France.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: And atheists, um, and not believing in a god, but uh the Catholic faith, at least believing in the in the Trinity, uh for centuries.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's yes, seems like a contradiction.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and what what has happened is been in the school system, the the French control completely uh the education system, government level, and that education is completely secular and atheist.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and is Marseille similar to the rest of uh France, at least as far as uh with Catholicism and with atheism?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, Marseille uh historically has been a very strong Catholic city, and one of the reasons for that is because of such an influence and influx of refugees from notably Muslim background, it's kind of been a kind of a fortress for the Catholic faith as those come in uh from outside of France to protect the Catholic faith.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it has been historically a very strong Catholic city.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: So this is a very large change in the overall history of Marseille.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um that uh the Catholicism has has dipped to this low of a level, and and then to even consider a term like Catholic atheist.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's that just wouldn't have any exact parallel anywhere else in Marseille's history.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: A very modern term, absolutely.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, absolutely.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: Greg, you've called uh your city of Marseille the furthest North African city.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: How does a French city become considered to be a North African city?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: What factors led to that type of condition?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, well, that that's a little French humor as far as geography goes.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the joke being that Marseille, with its enormous North African population, actually qualifies as the furthest North African city.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Marseille's North African population does hover at around 40% of the city population.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Those are folks coming from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco principally.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And among European cities, Marseille does sit right near the top, as far as the highest percentage of Muslims and North Africans in the city.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's France's main port on the Mediterranean, and it's the historic entry point to France from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it has become, in what is now known as the Med Rim, a major entry point for all things Mediterranean.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, over the last hundred years, the greatest factor impacting Marseille's population was the war that led to Algeria's independence and ended in 1962 with an influx of hundreds of thousands of North Africans in France in a very short time.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: Most of them coming through Marseille.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them coming through Marseille, by both.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: So you've given us a picture here of the city of Marseille having about um 40% Muslim coming from North Africa.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then you've given us a picture of the rest, perhaps Catholic atheists.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: That probably leads to very different neighborhoods in Marseille.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: What does it look like?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: And since you live there, uh can you tell us uh what's the difference between a Muslim neighborhood and a Catholic neighborhood?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Very good question.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's maybe two ways to go about answering that.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: The one is historically, with the influx of different people groups over all these centuries, you will find Italian neighborhoods, Spanish neighborhoods, Armenian populations, and other various people groups that have come in.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: But the bulk, again, of those who have come from other places are from North Africa.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the second way of looking at this question is how we see a city.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: In the US, we likely consider the inner city, that is a place that maybe is economically difficult and home to a minority population.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: In many European cities, the opposite is true.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the case for Marseille.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: The center of the city is thriving, and those in difficulty are pushed to the outer rim around the city.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is typical for France and typical for Marseille, where outlying population centers are economically difficult and home to immigrant populations.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we live, in the northern quarter of Marseille, out on the edge.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And in our particular case, on one side of the railroad track, so to speak, high-rise public housing has predominantly 90% North African population.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there are rampant drug problems that are found in these neighborhoods.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult, one of the big difficulties in the city.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: La Pos on one side of us is an example of that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: A more typical French population is to be found on the other side from where our church is located, called Saint Jerome, classic Catholic name and place.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the Saint Jerome Quarter is also now struggling with the influx of Muslims and the influx of drugs and the difference between the two.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: How would you see that?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the most obvious examples is during Ramadan.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: During Ramadan, on the La Rose Muslim side, essentially all the shops are shut down all day, in line with the Muslims that are fasting, not at all in line with the typical French Catholic vision of the way a week would be.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Just for our listeners, uh, what is uh the experience of Ramadan like in uh in Marseille?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So in in Ramadan in Marseille, again, which is a month of fasting for the Muslims who fast from sunrise to sunset and eat in the evening, the dress will be changed.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: They will trade in their European Western clothing for their traditional clothing, and you will see people all over the place in their traditional clothing throughout the month.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And again, as far as the economy goes, all those who are involved in business will shut down in order to keep Ramadan instead of keep open in order to keep their economy functioning.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: And Ramadan uh uh passed uh once every once every year.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Once every year, it kind of uh it moves with the moon, so it's not the same dates every year, just changes by about a month every year, but one month out of the year that is the case.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it must be difficult to carry on business uh when 40 percent of the the the city is essentially shutting down during that month.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's true.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that that's true throughout the city, that is true in our neighborhood, but uh it definitely makes a statement about how strong the Muslim influence is in the city.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it's growing too, right?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: Is this uh from uh migration or is it from uh from birth rates?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there those two vectors that are you've just mentioned migration and birth rate are both influencing the Muslim population in France today.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the two factors, in fact.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Prior to the Arab Spring, which we date 2011, the increase was predominantly through birth rate, which is much higher among Muslim families than among French families.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Since the Arab Spring, there's been a significant increase in Muslim population growth through refugees, Muslim refugees, specifically from the Middle East and especially Syria.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: So Syrians making it all the way across to Syria.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, France has a long and good history with Syria.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so Syria was one of the prized exit locations, if you would, for those who were fleeing the Arab Spring and then the civil war that followed in Syria.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: On average, how many uh children does a does a Muslim uh family have in comparison to one that is a French Catholic?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's uh an interesting question as well.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh to back up a little bit historically, concerning the traditional religious and family values that guided France for centuries and centuries, it's in the 60s, and May 1968 is kind of considered the cultural turning point in France, a cultural revolution that brought a rapid end to the last near decade or generation of large Catholic families.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: That used to be the norm in France, all the way up through the 50s, maybe.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the birth rate in France plummeted after that.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's now about 70 years along, a couple of generations along, and just in 2023, very recently, the birth rate fell to 1.66, 1.66 child per woman in France, the lowest birth rate since 1946, right after the war.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a fall.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, women from North African origin in France have a birth rate of about 2.5, meaning that across the board, Muslim families have at least one more child than French families, period.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: So if this continues very soon, the city will be at least over 50%.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that that's continuing to rise.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And again, in our particular neighborhood of the city, we are already over 50%.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: While the whole city is at 40, our particular area is already over 50 percent.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: And when do you think the city goes over 50 percent?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that's that's a question that maybe a maybe a decade, maybe up to a generation away yet, but coming.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, if one was in your uh the city of Marseille and uh looking at the skyline, uh, how many mosques would one see?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: That that's an excellent question as well.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the question of mosques in Marseille is a fascinating historical anomaly, if you will.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a good argument against calling Marseille the furthest North African city, because you will not find any mosques, any minarets on the skyline in Marseille.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer to that question goes back centuries, and again, kind of as a bulwark, as a fortress against the influence of Islam.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Marseille, for centuries, has kept Muslims at bay in that sense and has never in its history constructed a major mosque.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Even Victor Hugo wrote about the discrepancy way back in the 1800s.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Marseille, perhaps because it's a city of villages where each village has its own Catholic parish, 95 at least of them in the city today, did not have a village ready to welcome a mosque.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as the Muslim population has grown recently, the mosque question has been pushed back to the forefront.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the latest savi mayor of Marseille told the Muslim leaders to come up with one plan, and we will build you or accord you the right to build one mosque.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Fractured as they were in their vision and their non-negotiables between them, the Muslim group was unsuccessful in coming up with a single plan, and the project fell through.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for the second part of the question, while there is no mosque officially in Marseille, there are about 90 what we call Muslim prayer rooms scattered throughout the city.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's probably on equal footing with the number of what you would consider active Christian churches in the city.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Probably equal footing.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: Equal footing as far as churches and prayer rooms.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: For our listeners, maybe you could describe what a Muslim prayer room is.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's uh something that's very active on a Friday uh exact afternoon.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and some of the photos I have, we actually have, and they actually outlawed this after a while, but many times you would find the Muslim prayer gathering on a street in a predominant Muslim neighborhood.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the external expression of faith, which is very much frowned upon in France, whatever your faith background is, was used on a legal level to stop those prayer activities out in the street.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: What you'll typically find today in a classic high-rise subsidized housing situation on the ground level, where you may have a few small commerce activity going on, you will find a room on the ground floor that has been commandeered, taken over for Muslim prayer.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so many of these high-rise apartment buildings will have a ground level prayer room.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: That would be typical, active, especially on a Friday.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And active on a Friday.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Active on a Friday.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: Spilling out of the prayer room into the yes, exactly.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: And is there chanting and uh pretty quiet?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, that the uh that at that level, no, they they do keep a lower profile, at least up to this point.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Muslims functioning in a minority setting have a much lower profile than Muslims functioning in a majority setting.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The difference is extremely important.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: Can you see evidence of those who are Muslim integrating into French culture?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: Or are you finding that these two groups are essentially uh isolated from each other?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Again, a question that is very important to the current situation in France for the Muslims, and a question that involves consideration of multiple generations.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: If we go back to uh the mass exodus to France after the war of independence in Algeria in the early 60s, most Muslims came with the desire to integrate into French society in general.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And one would imagine, therefore, that the second generation to those born in France of North African parents would fare even better.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this was not the case.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Many in the second generation saw that their parents' efforts to adapt were met with rejection and racism in the part of the host French culture.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result, many in the second generation actually took a more isolationist view of their presence in France rather than an integrating view of their presence in France.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is where it's a good time to talk about the role of the church in all this.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because by the grace of God, we've seen many from a Muslim background come to faith in Jesus.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And relationship with Jesus has opened hope for a very different vision of integration, both across cultures and across generations.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And just to give you an example of how difficult a generational ship could be, I'll talk about, call her Gigi.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Gigi arrived in France at 20 years of age without speaking a word of French from Algeria.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Back in her village, she was pulled out of school at 10 years of age to take care of the children in the family.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And a generation later, here she is in France with two daughters who are studying in law school.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: The contrast is just incredible between the two.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: The difference in experience could hardly be greater, but the experience of this family being in the church and in Christ has allowed them to bridge these generational gaps.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: On the cultural level, when different cultures are allowed to come together, French and North African, in the church context, something new is born out of the two coming together.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: We call this a third culture.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And as a church, it's been part of our mission strategy to create a third cultural space, a space in the church where people from these two very different cultures can come together and find common ground in Christ.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Not always easy, but by the grace of God, something that's moving forward.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: So uh your example, I mean, Gigi was able to integrate by herself or with the help of the church?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely with the help of the church.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: The help of the church.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was a major.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so on the part of a more ethnic French church to have the vision to help integrate someone is a big part of the picture.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then for the one who is coming in from the outside to understand that there are people there that want to help them integrate, a big influence on their willingness and capacity to do so.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: But if someone is Islamic background coming into Marseille with Catholic atheists, do those worlds mix?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Those worlds typically do not mix.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Those worlds typically do not mix.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And there is an element of fear.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: One of the other fascinating experiences that I had was welcoming Syrian refugees from a Christian background from Damascus, who were placed by the French government in these high-rise subsidized housing areas, and came and told us that they had never had so much fear ever in Damascus, like they experienced in Marseille, living in a high rise of predominantly Muslim uh background people.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: Well, part of your strategy is to try and help uh people integrate one with the other.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you might share um some ways that you do that, uh, maybe a scripture text or two that might be encouraging, or um maybe just uh a dream that you have for a better society.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, very good.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: When we consider the Christian message and its role in this specific context, Muslim and Catholic, again, Catholic atheists, perhaps in many of the cases, in our worldview, very clearly, obviously, the only hope for Muslims and Catholics is the Christian message.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the fundamental challenge facing the first century church was the integration of Jew and Gentile together.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: In our context, it's the integration of French Catholic and North African coming together.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I do want to uh dive into the New Testament and bring out one text from the Apostle Paul.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: He addresses this question of integration in detail, both in Romans and in Galatians.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: But the little passage I want to look at today is found in Ephesians chapter two.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And in Ephesians chapter two, Paul says, For he, we're talking about Jesus, is our peace.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus as the peace between Catholic atheist and North African Muslim.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the peace between them.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he made the two groups in the context of Paul, Jew, and Gentile, in our context, Catholic atheist and Muslim, he made the two groups one.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And how did he do so?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: The verbs become very important.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: He did so three ways.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: First, he destroyed the barriers that were between them.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're trying to learn how and what we need to go about destroying.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are things to destroy, the walls that separate people, the hatred between people.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes and destroys that.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then the second thing Jesus did was to create, and I'm reading verse 15 in Ephesians 2, to create in himself one new man out of the two.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes in and creates what does not exist between people.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: He brings that to life and therefore makes peace between the people.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he does that in one body with the final word to reconcile both of them to God and to one another through the cross.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So through Jesus, God destroys the divisions between these people.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Through Jesus, God creates in himself one new man out of the two.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Through the cross, God reconciles them both to himself and to one another.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's an extreme call from the part of the Apostle Paul.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're not called to share the same city, they're not called to share the same neighborhood.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're not even called to share the same church building.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're called to share the same body, the body of Christ.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: A powerful, uh beautiful call that integrates people into a radically different way of life, allows them to live with a message that transforms their lives and the society that they are a part of.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And by the grace of God, this is not only a dream, this is a reality that He is putting in place.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this idea, this vision of a third place, a third culture place.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're striving to live and experience in Marseille.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, as the church then creates uh own culture of new people from different races and backgrounds.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we wish you all the best, uh Greg, and this.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: And uh thank you for taking the time to share about uh the demographics and society and also how the church uh intersects uh great pleasure and great pleasure.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we wish uh you and Katie the very best as we return to our station.