On Thursday morning my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Sylvain.

The Conseil National des Evang�liques de France is a national body uniting evangelicals from pentecostal, charismatic and other groupings. As soon as the CNEF was formed we in the Gironde transformed our local pastors' fellowship into a CNEF33 group.

Since then the CNEF has issued guidelines and structures for local groups, so we decided to knock down all we had and start again. And the Assembl�e Constitutive was this Thursday morning.

Sylvain, one of our all-round good eggs, volunteered to go to the meeting for me. And now he was trying to phone me.

"I am in a meeting. Is it a grave emergency?" I messaged him.

"They want you to be pr�sident of CNEF33. Are you willing?"

"Yes, if that's what they want."

Moral of the story. Never miss a meeting and always turn your phone off!