Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend, and it went a little like this:
“Fifty,” I said.
“What?” my friend responded incredulously.
“Yeah, fifty.”
“No way.”
“That’s what this pastor I met last night said.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Me, too, but that’s what he said. And he’s a pastor!”
My friend shook her head in disbelief. I was simply grinning from ear to ear.

Let me give you some background, and then I’ll let you in on what we were talking about. Maybe you’ll guess before then.

When I moved to Europe a little over three years ago, one of the main worries I, a reformed Protestant, had was finding a church where I felt at home. I mean, isn’t Belgium Roman Catholic? Isn’t all of Europe? It used to be, of course, but as most people know, 21^st Century Europe is pretty secular. There are tons of Catholic churches but they are mostly just for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and for the inspiration of architects, artists, and people like me, Jesus lovers who get all excited about sacred art and the history of Christendom. I especially love the big Catholic church in Soignies, near where I live, with its clean, straight lines and dramatic outline against the sky, but as a Protestant, it’s not really an option for me as a “home church.”

Fortunately for me, there is a good Protestant Contemporary Service on the base. I love the English-speaking service with its familiar music and jeans-and-untucked-oxford liturgy. It reminds me a lot of the churches I’ve been a part of over the years in the U.S. By now, I’ve been singing with the worship team for a couple of years, and I enjoy the gathering of believers there. The chaplains we have right now are top-notch people who preach the Word. I actually only visited a couple of other churches, both aimed at Americans. I never even visited any of the French-speaking services nearby mainly because I figured I’d look and feel like and outsider.

I also surmised that there weren’t many local Protestant services, especially after I looked online and found only two or three. Adding to the mystery, of course, is the fact that you just don’t see any Protestant churches as you drive around. It isn’t like the U.S., where you drive a few blocks and oh, hey, there’s another church, and it certainly isn’t like my hometown of Wilmington, NC, where there are so many protestant churches in the downtown area that there is an entire poster devoted to “The Steeples of Wilmington.”  Even if there were a lot of them, they wouldn’t be all that obvious. Unlike the large and often breath-taking Catholic-owned buildings, Europe’s Protestant church buildings look like storefronts most of the time, or they are tucked away back in the corner of some residential area. The one I attended with friends in Grenoble, France is a sort of storefront, but nestled back behind some other buildings. And the one I attended on Friday night is similar, but more like a converted out-building behind some houses. But what the two buildings really have in common is much less tangible and far more valuable. They are repositories of the love of God.

I’ve met lots of really nice people since I’ve been in Belgium, but Friday night I met family. I attended a music service in an evangelical Protestant church. They had invited a Canadian worship musician to come and sing and deliver a message and the little building was filled to bursting to listen to this talented fellow named Luc Dumont (there will be a post about him, next). And every person I met, every single one that I talked with and sang with treated me like I belonged. Right there. With them.  I didn’t feel like an outsider at all, even though I was clearly the only American in the room, and my French is not as good as everyone else’s, and no one there, except my friends who invited me, knew me from Adam. But there, in that nondescript building, I met the international family of my faith, and it was like finding a treasure that had been buried in plain sight. I practically floated home afterwards.

So what were my friend and I talking about?  We were talking about Protestant churches in a tiny little area of Belgium, the itty-bitty Mons area in the French-speaking region of Hainaut. Now I’m pretty happy in the Protestant Contemporary body of believers on base, and I don’t expect to go anywhere anytime soon. I’m happily surprised to find out, though, that if I wanted to, I could visit a different body nearly every Sunday for a year. I’m not going to do that, of course, but I expect I’ll visit one or two here and there, just to get to know some more members of this big, unexpected, francophone family, and uncover another bit of this treasure.

Fifty. Five-zero. Five-oh. Pretty big family I’ve got over here all of a sudden.