What are French evangelical pulpits really saying? For the first time, there is a data-backed answer. Efficient Church analyzed 464 sermons preached in 17 evangelical churches across France between 2025 and 2026: each message was transcribed, categorized by theme, and its biblical references counted. Here is what this first observatory of French-speaking evangelical preaching reveals.
Faith and family dominate the pulpit
Among the 464 sermons analyzed, two major themes tower over the rest: faith (addressed in 193 sermons, or 42 percent) and family (173 sermons, 37 percent). Next come inner life and prayer (134), commitment and calling (116), relationships and forgiveness (115), and church life itself (112).
This ranking points to preaching that is above all pastoral: it speaks to the believer's daily life (their trust, their marriage, their children, their wounds) far more than to controversy. One notable finding: trial and suffering, often assumed to be the great subject of churches, come in only seventh (45 sermons, under 10 percent).
John, French preachers' favorite gospel
The 464 messages contain 8,433 identifiable biblical references, an average of 18 references per sermon. The most cited book is the Gospel of John (904 references), ahead of Matthew (658) and Luke (554). The top three are entirely occupied by the Gospels: French evangelical preaching remains centered on the person of Jesus.
Behind the Gospels come two surprises: Ephesians (481 references) outranks classics like Romans (436) and 1 Corinthians (432), and Isaiah stands as the most cited Old Testament book (450 references), well ahead of the Psalms (376). Genesis (409) and Exodus (326) round out a heavily narrative Old Testament.
Two-thirds New Testament
Of all the references counted, 68 percent point to the New Testament and 32 percent to the Old. French pulpits therefore preach the Old Testament far more than is sometimes assumed (one reference in three), but the center of gravity remains clearly Christ-centered.
Sermons of 25 to 40 minutes
Once transcribed and edited, the average French evangelical sermon runs to roughly 1,900 words of structured content, corresponding to spoken messages of 25 to 40 minutes. A long format, running against the grain of the short-form content that dominates social media, yet one that still draws a crowd every Sunday.
Methodology
This study is based on the 464 sermons transcribed and published on Efficient Church between 2025 and August 2026, preached in 17 French evangelical churches (Paris, Bordeaux, Lille and their surrounding regions), spanning varied traditions (Baptist, Pentecostal, free churches, revival churches). Themes are assigned through content analysis (up to two themes per message); biblical references are counted automatically by detecting "Book + chapter" mentions in the text. This corpus is not a representative sample of every church in France: it reflects the churches that publish their services online, but it constitutes, to our knowledge, the first data set of this scale on French-speaking evangelical preaching. The study will be updated as the corpus grows.
To cite this study: "Observatory of French Evangelical Preaching, Efficient Church, August 2026." For questions about the data or requests for additional cross-analysis, contact the editorial team.
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