When you think of France, you might imagine a dream vacation to the City of Lights to visit the Notre-Dame Cathedral, museums, and other famous sights … and to stroll along the Seine, savor croissants, and marvel at the architecture. Or perhaps it’s the countryside you are drawn to, with its sunflowers, castles, and coastlines….

Either way, beneath all the beauty and history in this unforgettable culture lies a nation of spiritual seekers. Secularism has dominated France for generations. Yet while evangelicals represent just 1.6 percent of the population, these Christ-followers have grown in number from 50,000 in the 1950s to more than 745,000 today, with 35 new churches planted every year.

France desperately needs pastors. The National Council of Evangelicals of France estimates 1,000 new pastors need to be trained over the next decade just to replace those retiring. Currently, seminaries in France are only training about 30–40 people for the ministry each year. They have the ability to train more; however, “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” This stark shortage means many churches are forced to operate with undertrained leadership.

The once-traditional path of young seminary graduates has given way to older career-changers studying theology online while working secular jobs and eventually pursuing bi-vocational ministry. Meanwhile, burnout and lack of resources cause experienced pastors to abandon ministry—not due to moral failure, but utter exhaustion. This is how many pastors end up leading churches without the proper theological foundation that they—-and their congregations—desperately need.

Financial realities make this training crisis worse. Because most evangelical churches are quite small, the average salary of a pastor is under $30,000 a year, which is well below the national average.