Fifty-one years ago, Ed Christy graduated from Beech Grove High School in Beech Grove, Indiana. After graduation he found a job, and working alongside of him was a member of Thompson Road Baptist Church, at that time pastored by Dr. Fred Moritz. One day, Dick Reed, Ed’s co-worker, invited Ed to attend services at TRBC (Thompson Road Baptist Church), and Ed responded by saying that he would one day.
Ed had attended a local mainline denominational church with his family all of his life. He was a “good person,” and had felt no need of any further religious experience. But, remembering his promise one rather cold and snowy Sunday morning, Ed drove the short distance to the Baptist church.
It so happened that Pastor Moritz was sick on that particular Lord’s Day and the youth pastor was filling the pulpit. He preached, and while the message was going forth the Holy Spirit was doing His work in Ed Christy’s heart. He testifies that the message he heard that day was the first time he had ever heard the gospel plan of salvation. He had not had that personal experience, so when the invitation was extended, he responded by going forward to meet a personal worker, to whom he said, “I need to be saved.” And so he was. A layman knelt with him, explaining further the simple plan of salvation and encouraging him to by faith ask Jesus to forgive his sins and come into his heart. In a few moments, Ed Christy was gloriously saved. A short time later he was baptized by immersion and joined in membership to the local Baptist assembly, where for the first time ever he had heard the gospel proclaimed. But that is just the beginning.
In the course of time, Ed enrolled at Tennessee Temple University, graduating with a B.S. in Secondary Education. Then he graduated from San Francisco Baptist Theological Seminary with an M.Div. (Masters of Divinity), and finally from Bob Jones University with a Ph.D. in Old Testament. At BJU, Ed met Sylvia Carr, a graduate with a nursing degree who at the time was working on staff at the university hospital. Ed had sought the Lord’s will for a life’s partner earnestly, and year after year his friends had intensified their prayers that he would find God’s choice for him. Sylvia was a “jewel.” They have been married 39 years and have two grown children and three grandchildren, all living in France. Not by chance, Sylvia had wanted to travel with a Wilds Christian Camp team the summer that Ed met her, but her contract with the university mandated that she remain there for the duration of her commitment. So she “happened” to be there just at the time that she and her future husband would meet. God had that meeting planned and prepared in answer to the effectual, fervent prayers of His people!
When Dr. Christy was attending TTU, he was challenged in a conference for world missions. He learned from one of the speakers that France had 35,000 villages in which there was no witness for Christ. He listened carefully over time to that still, small voice of God’s Spirit speaking to his heart about taking the Good News to one or more of those villages in France. Sylvia shared that burden with her husband, so the Christys made plans to go to Europe as vocational missionaries. They were led of God to the southwestern city of Bordeaux, France, where God has used them to plant two New Testament churches in France during their 35 years of sowing, watering and reaping there.
The work at times has been slow. When Covid-19 made its ugly appearance in France, like churches most everywhere, the in-person meetings were curtailed and “on-line” services were substituted. At the end of June, 2020, an attempt was made to resume on-site services, but the first such service had the Christys and one other person in attendance. So, back to the “virtual” services for a while longer. Not long after that, a young couple called to see if they could attend a service, and Ed said the services were on-line but that they could come to the place where he was transmitting the message if they wanted to. They came and kept coming. They are now enrolled in the Bible Institute where Ed teaches, near Paris, and are preparing for ministry.
One Sunday morning after in-person services resumed, Ed arrived at the church site to open up and found two adolescents at the front door. When Ed asked if they were from the neighborhood they said “no,” and told him that their parents were coming. When the Dad and Mom arrived, four other children were with them, so their attendance that day swelled by eight! This family still attends, and the father has had some ministerial experience. They are, of course, a great blessing!
At present, the church is meeting in a restaurant. Buildings are hard to find and very expensive to rent. When Ed inquired about the restaurant as a meeting place, asking what the rent would be, the proprietor asked Ed what he would be willing to pay—something unheard of! The amount was agreed upon, and though not an ideal meeting place it has met a need. Now, however, with forty or fifty or more in attendance on some Sundays, it is becoming evident that a larger meeting place is an urgent need.
So, from six people on a Sunday in June of 2020, to forty or fifty people regularly in attendance, the Lord has built and blessed this church in Bordeaux. Missionary/pastor Ed Christy shakes his head and says it has really been “nothing we have done, but the Lord has just been bringing people to us.” If you are like me, you cannot help but think of that admonition in Gal. 6:9, where Paul wrote: “And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
And it all began 51 years ago when one believer extended a simple invitation to his co-worker to attend a service at his church. Think of the rewards that person will receive at the judgment seat of Christ!
“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
YOU and GOD 