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Father, we thank you that you have made it possible for us to be together tonight across distance. And because of our mutual interest in the life and the ministry of Francis Schaeffer, we ask that you would be with us these next couple of hours as we continue to look at his life through these very important years and the founding of Labrie, and that we would also be edified as we think about what he has written and left for us in his books. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. So we are starting, or picking back up I should say, 1951. Last year, last week I should say, the last thing that we covered was at the end of 1950 where Fran makes his pilgrimage to Rome, so to speak, to attend the Assumption of Mary ceremony and see some of the sites in Rome while he's there. This week I'm going to start us with a quick synopsis before we start moving into the details. We can think of what's going to happen over these years, especially the first few years, as headwinds, both in terms of personal and spiritual issues, also in relation to the mission board and the loss of support that Fran is going to be experiencing during these years. What that ends up doing, providentially, is helping to open the door for the launch of LaBrie. And the success of LaBrie comes with sort of a price as well because while Fran is excited about how his ability to answer questions with scripture is changing minds and changing hearts, he is frustrated by the fact that Labrie is a very small scale operation. So he sees the need to expand the reach of the ministry and of course a little later on it's going to lead to the publication of books. And my reason for choosing 1968 as our stopping point tonight is because that's when he first began to publish. Edith has to overcome her own resistance, especially during the early sixties. She will look back on this time and say that she went through kind of a phase of self-pity, where she wasn't as open as she should have been to how God was working in their lives. She was particularly resistant to the idea of having to travel in order to get the word out to a wider audience. But over the course of travel and lecture, the series of lectures that Fran gives in various places is going to lead pretty naturally to the publication of those works in his books. So we'll see how the books grow out of his lecture ministry. During this time, we'll also see that his family is growing. The daughters get married. Labrie is expanding in terms of its size and its influence. Frankie V is born during this time. And also just to show you that Fran wasn't sitting on his laurels, so to speak, he published at least 48 articles during this time. And there's a bibliography I have linked for you in Canvas if you want to take a look at that. Interesting too that not all of those articles were in English. He published some in French as well. So here we are 1951. The chalet that they have been staying in is put up for sale. So they end up moving to a larger chalet called Chalet Bijoux. That will become a stepping stone in their ministry. 1951, and I only saw one biography that mentioned this, and it seems more significant to me than maybe the biographies give it credit, but Edith is pregnant and miscarries in 1951. This is also the beginning of Fran's spiritual crisis. where he says that he has to go all the way back to his agnosticism and rethink everything from scratch. He has to know that Christianity is really true and that there are good and sufficient reasons for believing it. Now, a couple of potential contributing factors here, we saw last time that before his speech at the ICCC, he had an opportunity to meet with Bart and then corresponded with Bart afterward. And if you read Bart's response, you might understand why Fran was having a bit of second thoughts. Because basically, Bart said, there's no point in talking to you because you've already closed the shutters. You have already made up your mind of your beliefs. So there's no reason to even have a conversation. So between that and the criticism that he took from his mentor Alan McRae for starting the missionary work and going overseas, he's at that point now in early 1951 where he's having to start from scratch. He ended up spending several months either walking alone in the woods when the weather was favorable for being outdoors, or pacing in the hayloft of Chalet Bijoux when the weather was unfavorable. And you might imagine if you were Edith in the chalet with him while he was pacing and pacing and pacing all day long, that by itself might have been enough to give you concerns. She says that she was fearful during this time, but of course Fran's convictions were renewed through this process, and as well he began to sense a calling to a greater work. So we're already starting to see hints that something bigger is coming down the road. He experiences some building tensions during this time in terms of how to minister, how to communicate the gospel, And of course, as he travels around, he's experiencing the disappointment of seeing the state that the churches are in. One of his big concerns, and part of what drove him to this spiritual crisis, and what would eventually come out of it, was his concern about the lack of spiritual fruit among the separatists, as well as in his own life. Because from a young age, he had struggled with a short temper. He saw Christianity as a balanced whole. It had to be a moment-by-moment supernatural reality. That truth, objective truth, was found in Scripture, but it had to lead to an experience of relationship afterward. And that joy, which is the fruit of the Spirit, shouldn't have to be a burden. This is how Fran posed the problem to Edith. He said, what difference would it make if you removed everything regarding prayer and the work of the Spirit from the Bible. And if it doesn't make any difference, then it shows that you're only working in your own strength, you're not working according to spiritual power. So it really was a time of deep reflection on Fran's part, and part of what made Edith anxious about it was that she knew that Fran was telling the truth when he said that if I go all the way back to my agnosticism and I can't convince myself, then I can't be a Christian. So the following year, in August 1952, Frankie V was born. He will be the last of the Schaeffer children and obviously the youngest. Now, starting in 1953 and going into 1954, they went on a missionary furlough, if you could call it that. It wasn't a vacation. Over the course of a year and a half, Edith reckons that Franz spoke at least 346 times. While they were back stateside, he was also teaching pastoral theology at Faith Seminary in Philadelphia. His talks, as you might expect, developed out of this spiritual crisis he went through in 1951. So it ended up becoming a series on sanctification. This would later lead to the publication of the book called True Spirituality, which he says was really his first book in the important sense, even though it was published much later. Now the tension starts to build because as he's speaking and teaching and talking about sanctification and the need for charity, Some are beginning to wonder if he's compromising his views. So his message of love could easily be understood by some as accommodation. So much so that the mission board is reconsidering whether to keep him in the mission field or not. Now during the time that they were in Germantown for this year and a half, the girls attended school in Germantown. Germantown High School, and that's where Priscilla would graduate. The following year, 1954, Fran is awarded the first of his honorary degrees, Doctor of Divinity from Highland College. And as time goes by, they've been in the States for the better part of a year. It's not clear by this point in time that they're going to have enough funds raised to be able to return to Switzerland. So as they were wont to do, they made that a matter of prayer over many months. It's been said that they would use either the availability or the lack of money as a way of discerning God's will in a particular situation. We'll see that come into play just a little bit later in the story. So after eight months of prayer, just in time. Guess what? They had just enough money to purchase their return fare. Nevertheless, the support from the mission board was flagging at this time. They had a cut in pay, and their salary from the mission board is kind of a way of saying, a way that I would put it is, we don't really like what you're doing these days. So by September they returned to Champery. LaBrie would have its beginnings before the end of the year in the sense that it wasn't something that happened just right away or overnight, but it kind of developed over a period of time. That year Frankie would end up contracting polio. It would end up damaging, partly crippling one of his legs. That year Susan also contracted rheumatic fever, so again we see in terms of the normal rough and tumble of family life, they had their share of that. So the idea for Labrie is beginning to develop, and it stems from a desire to demonstrate the existence of God. And they never really had a plan. but they were determined as this unfolded that they were going to trust God to provide for their needs each step along the way. By 1954 they were already having visitors from distant places such as Asia and Central America. Fran is still speaking both locally and internationally, touring and speaking across Europe, so continuing to get exposure that way. And then meanwhile, we might say back on the home front, there's a growing belligerence in the Bible Presbyterian Church that's going to lead to another split in the next year or so. So 1955, January, is when Edith is reading from Isaiah 2 and has her inspiration for a libri. Fran would end up naming it based on the first verse of Psalm 91, referring to a shelter. Now a turn of events. Things get more dramatic. Here are some of the headwinds. In February, they're abruptly informed that their residency permits have been cancelled and they have less than two months to relocate out of Canton Valais and the nation of Switzerland. The caveat is that if they could find and purchase property in a Protestant canton, then they would be allowed to stay. The funny thing is the reason for their expulsion was that they had been an undue religious influence in this Roman Catholic canton. Interesting. So by April 1st, they end up moving to the town of Waymo and the canton of Vaude, which is where Lausanne is located. That's where they started in that canton. And they end up finding what will become a permanent home for Labrie. Just in time, once again, with just enough money, they were able to put earnest money on Chalet La Malaise. The story is that they received the $1,000 earnest money in response to prayer, just literally on the day that they needed it. And then they had just a few weeks to raise another $7,500 for the down payment on the purchase of the property. So again, they received just enough, just in time. This becomes a recurring theme in the ministry of Labrie. In May, Priscilla brings a friend home from college where she's attending a Lausanne. And that began what would be a steady stream of curious visitors, many of them young college students. In June is where they take their leap of faith, so to speak. Not in the existential sense that we'll discuss in the second hour, but in the sense that God is leading them to this point. So, Fran resigns from the Independent Board for Presbyterian Missions, and they officially launch Labrie in June of 1955. They start with these four founding principles. They say these are not intended to be the principles that anybody and everybody would use in their ministry work, but this is what the Lord led them to do in their ministry. First of all, to ask God to meet their financial needs, meaning that they would not ask for money or spend time fundraising. They would not recruit. They would be relying again on God to send them just the right people at just the right time to help in just the right ways. They never had a long-term plan, so it was very much a day-to-day kind of ministry. And they wanted to stay open to God's direction, whatever it might be. And then lastly, no publicity, officially, and yet what we'll see is that one of the things that Edith did so well over the years was to write letters to their supporters. And she was a very eloquent and very prolific writer. At this point, Fran says that they are so certain of God's leading that it would have been disobedient not to step forward. Now the terms of their remaining in Switzerland required a legal appeal. On June 21 their appeal was approved so they were able to remain in Switzerland. Fran would say that the real battle is in the world of ideas. They had a sense that this was truly a spiritual kind of battle that they were engaged in and that's how they wanted to think about it. We'll remember that Fran's interest in philosophy in high school was that he felt at home when he stepped into this world of ideas. Christopher Catherwood says this, this is part of your supplemental reading, if you want to take a look at that, that few leading Christians have stressed the importance of the mind more than Francis Schaeffer. And that seems to be a good way of summarizing the priority that they had in their work. Now, Labrie itself was designed to be a family atmosphere. And here's where Edith's gifts of hospitality were so important to making that possible, to making it a place that has beauty and warmth. Part of the significance of that was that so many who were coming to visit were coming out of very dysfunctional family backgrounds, and had probably never experienced anything quite like this before. Labrie was described as a spiritual orphanage, modeled in part by the works of Hudson Taylor and George Muller. And it was an international kind of ministry from the very beginning. Different kinds of backgrounds included Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, liberal Christians, Roman Catholics. Students came from as far away as Haiti, India, Argentina, Canada, England, Scotland, America, Scandinavia. It must have been quite an experience in those days for anybody who came to see the variety of people who were there. Part of their routine was physical work. It wasn't just a place for study and reflection and meditation, but they put you to work at least four hours a day, working in and around the building on just everyday kinds of things. So part of it was not just training in ideas, but also training in the ethic of work. Back in America, George Seville, Edith's father served as a home secretary, helping to distribute Edith's letters and also by supporting their work with his own prayers. So 1956, Things start to get interesting in the church. The Bible Presbyterian Church splits into two synods, one called the Collingswood Synod, which was led by MacIntyre, and then the Columbus Synod, which is where Fran followed, would later become the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and then the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod, which would later merge with the PCA. So if you're following your chart, you'll be able to see what's happening at this point in time. The Bible Presbyterian Church founded Covenant College and Covenant Seminary, which ended up following after the Columbus Senate and then becoming part of the PCA. That April, 1956, a rising opera star named Jane Stewart Smith visits LaBrie. And I pull this little bit of biographical information on her. That in the mid-1950s, under the guidance of Dr. Francis Schaeffer of Switzerland's Labrie Fellowship, she became a Christian believer. In 1959, she gave her final performance as Brunhilde in Die Wolker and joined Labrie, where she worked in the dining hall, lectured on music, formed a choral ensemble, and studied hymn writing and the theology of Bach. And I include that in the next point because as we've seen, art and music have been an integral part of Fran's life and will be an integral part of Labrie as well. So in July we have the visit from Hans and Anke Ruckmacher. They will end up later starting Dutch Labrie. And where did we hear their names before? They met When he first went as a, for want of a better word, an ambassador for ICC. Yep. ICCC came to the Netherlands first. Anki was a secretary. He friended Rookmacher. Rookmacher was a student. Rookmacher's fiance was an administrator And they've worked together in that capacity. And then they're also going to be instrumental in helping to set up Children for Christ and even to begin translating some of those materials for the Dutch people. If you pull up the website for Le Brie, you find Ruckmacher's teaching and everything, I guess, teaching series and everything. Yeah. We have one or two of his books. I think a book that he wrote about art and culture, and there's another one actually here in this room that I remember with his name on it. I think it's probably either, I'm not sure if it's about him or by him. I'd have to look. So he was certainly part of kind of an extension of the Labrie ministry from an artistic standpoint. Oh yes, that's right. So we're told that at this time that the students were typically three types, what we'll call the 20th century people, university students who disbelieve the idea of truth and sin, hence the importance of establishing truth as a foundation and true moral guilt. Most of the visitors that came during the 50s and 60s were of that variety. And we have young people from Christian backgrounds who have turned away from the faith, and older Christians who were having difficulty answering questions of the younger generation. And then there were three basic aspects to the teaching. One is the sermons. And Fran tried to use very simple language in his sermons. Then lectures, which usually were done in series. And then as we've said before, many one-on-one conversations or small group discussions. And relying very much on what we would call a Socratic approach, asking questions. And in effect, by asking questions, helping lead people to their own conclusions and what's the value in taking that kind of an approach rather than just telling. Yeah, there's going to be greater ownership. You feel like you discovered it for yourself, even though it was your clever teacher who led you to the answer. Now, something that Fran will end up being criticized for, especially by the academics, is that he read from an assortment of books and magazines. You get the impression from reading his material that he's read all kinds of books, all kinds of writers. He's seen an assortment of movies and is familiar with those kinds of cultural expressions. So he's in one sense, a man of the culture, but not so that he can imitate the culture, but so that he can understand it. He always made a practice of learning from those who came. So an example that we read about is that on one occasion, several students of Heidegger came to visit. And he tried to get as much information out of them as he could while they were there. They became the teachers, as it were, on that occasion. Topics could include books, arts, philosophy, theology, science, ethics, politics, law, drugs, this is the 60s after all, current events, medicine, lifestyles, religion, And I ask the question that, from this kind of list, is it any wonder that Frand saw Christianity as the integration point for all spheres of life? He wasn't just a specialist in one of those areas, but tried to understand as much as possible in each of them. Part of the philosophy was that no questions were disallowed, And his warning was that we should never be shocked by the questions that people ask. Be prepared to answer any questions. Now the family starts to expand in 1957. Priscilla marries John Sandry. There was a church in the nearby town of Olon where William Farrell preached back in the 1500s. Priscilla and John will end up studying at Lausanne for a time, and then move to St. Louis for John to attend Covenant Seminary. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, they expand a bit by renting another chalet. In 1958, Fran has an engagement in Cambridge. On that occasion, interestingly, he wanted to debate C.S. Lewis over the historicity of Genesis 1 through 11, because Lewis considered that to be mythology. He thought the history started with Abraham. But they weren't able to set up an opportunity for a debate. On this particular trip, they encountered a young law student named Ranald Macaulay. His name will be important here very shortly. In fact, during Christmas break that year, a number of English students came to visit from both Oxford, Cambridge, as well as St. Andrews, and Ranald Macaulay was among that group. Next year, 1959, during the summer, they host more than 185 visitors from 16 different countries. Fran returns to England for a lecture series Reynolds and Susan, who was a student at Oxford, helped to set up that event. 1960, Jesse Seville dies at the age of 85. Edith is somewhat distraught by the fact that she hadn't seen her mother in her last six years of life, so she makes a return trip to America to visit her father. And here we recall that George became a professor at Faith Theological Seminary and taught there until the age of 80. While they're back in America, Frankie is treated at the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital to surgically repair the leg that was crippled by polio and he would end up making nearly a full recovery from that. Also in 1960 is when the Ferrell House was completed They received a $20,000 donation from Edith's cousin, Marion, who had been a missionary in Egypt. And they named it the Farrell House because it was Farrell who convinced Calvin to remain in Geneva. And it was Farrell's even temperament that was intended to be the model for the students of LaBrie. That fall in 1960, they host a few reporters and photographers from Time Magazine. They're starting to get some interest from the press. Now during this time, and I put this here because I'm not exactly sure where to put it in the timeline, early 60s, Fran is speaking at many different university campuses. Remember that in college, he was part of a debate team. So that experience helps him to be able to think on his feet. And I'm not sure about the date of this event, but it was called a Cambridge debate with a humanist. And Fran won this debate so decisively that he decided he was never going to debate again. because he wanted to win people and not win arguments. It was apparently a pretty humiliating event for the humanist. And in front of a friendly audience as well, because Fran insisted on the Christians staying away so all the humanists could fill the arena. Interesting. In other words, we can say it wasn't because he was afraid of public debate or couldn't argue in a public debate, couldn't stand on his own feet. It was just the opposite of anything. He was so difficult to refute in debate that it ended up being pretty one-sided. So January of 61 is when the Time article is published. Missionary to intellectuals, did anybody have a look at that? It's posted in Canvas as an optional reading assignment. It's just a couple of pages. Typical little article. Maybe not as negatively slanted as you might suspect. This was the early sixties after all, before things got too hostile between the press and Christianity. The publicity did bring a little bit of additional interest to LaBrie, but Fran knew that if he wanted to get the message to a wider audience, he was going to have to start traveling. Labrie, by its nature, was always going to be a pretty small work. You might have, at one time, an audience of 30 or 40 people. And he was starting to think in terms of how he could be in front of audiences of hundreds. So that wasn't going to happen at Labrie. 61 is when Susan marries Ranald Macaulay. They're married in that same church in Olon. From there, they moved to England. Ranald was gonna study theology at the University of London. And as we'll see shortly, they will end up helping to start and run Labrie in England. That year, 1961, there's a young German law student who visits Labrie. He was abroad studying in Lausanne and heard from someone in Lausanne, hey, you need to go up to this little village and hear this guy. His name was Udo Mittelmann. And he's a name that you might have heard somewhere along the way. As a matter of historical note, In 1963 is when C.S. Lewis died and the reason I mention that is because it seems to be the case, I don't want to make too much or too little of it, but C.S. Lewis was a pretty towering figure particularly in England during his lifetime as a noted Christian apologist and His death in 1963 may have helped make it a little easier for Labrie and for Schaefer to get some traction in England. 1964, Debbie, the youngest, marries Udo Middleman. They relocate to St. Louis for, you guessed it, Udo was going to attend Covenant Seminary. So interesting that two of the sons-in-law of Francis Schaeffer were law students who ended up turning to study theology. That year, John and Priscilla will take up residence in Chalet-Mizeau in Ouimau. John would help by teaching French and also helping with the tape ministry. That was the year as well that Susan and Renald started the English Libre. And by now, Labrie in Switzerland is including at least five chalets. They also are able to build and open a chapel in Waymo. And it will become the location of the International Presbyterian Church that Fran will help to found. Now a note about the tape ministry. If you'll take a look at the bottom of the page, I wasn't quite sure where this fit in the chronology. But the story is that at some point along the way, early 60s I suppose, someone had gifted a tape recorder to LaBrie. And Fran was dead set against recording his lectures and his discussions. So the tape recorder sat unused for some time until some clever students hold what you might call sort of a prank. They hid a microphone in a potted plant while Fran was lecturing one evening and recorded the lecture. When Fran found out about it, his temper came to the surface. He was very angry that he'd been recorded. But over a period of time, he began to see the value in recording and distributing the tapes. And so the tapes the tape ministry would become an important aspect of the teaching at Labrie for students who came to study, as well as for those in other parts of the world who wouldn't have an opportunity to come to Labrie. And some of those, I think it's some of these same recordings that are archived for us today. Of course, these days everything's on the internet. But it's an interesting story, a funny story, how that got started. Because Fran, even though he was wanting to reach a wider audience, he was not happy about the idea of having those lectures and discussions recorded. But it turned out to be a very fruitful extension of their ministry. 1965. Fran goes and lectures at Wheaton during their spiritual emphasis week. The lectures were printed at the request of the students to be distributed after the lectures. That material would become the basis for the God who is there. Now funny, a couple of you finished the American history class just a few weeks ago. Mark Null wrote the book that you used for that class. We have a copy in the library, and I looked it up out of curiosity to see what he had to say about Francis Schaeffer. And there's just one spot where he mentions Francis Schaeffer, virtually in passing. And I'm thinking, hmm, it seems like he would have a little more airtime as a figure of American church history. But maybe this has something to do with it. Because in response to the Wheaton lectures, Mark Null had this to say, the danger is that people will take him for a scholar, which he is not. Not the most flattering thing you could say. Mark Null is a very prestigious historian, so he's going to look down his nose at Let me put it this way. Let me do a listening check. I think what you're saying is academics can be snobs. Yes. I'm not trying to put those words in your mouth. That's just my way of summarizing the idea. And the reason I include this is because as we start to look a little later in the class at what the academics had to say in the way of critiquing him, that could be helpful for us to understand. It's kind of like we were talking about positivism. The problem with positivism is that everybody brings their bias to the observation. And here's another example of how there is an academic bias to the observation when you're critiquing someone. It's kind of funny. There's a difference between a scholar and a Christian, too. Yes, those are not necessarily, you know, automatically connected categories. But Shaffer modeled the Christian life in a much more notable way than I can ever think of. Mark, or what is his name? Mark Knoll is his name. I don't know his first name. Mark. Mark Knoll? Yes. Yeah. I know that an elder at my former church actually knew with him and he never said anything bad about him but now that's what I heard it I don't I really don't like that the way he talks about Schaefer I mean that's not that's just more than snobbery. It's exquisite. Think about it if we just take it at face value and obviously this is one sentence it's not an extended critique and somebody might rightly say You're taking what he said out of context, or so forth. But think about it from this standpoint. The criticism that people will take him for a scholar. Was Schaefer a scholar? He didn't pretend to be. So no, he wasn't. Yes, but how are we defining the word? Well, I took what I guess Yeah, if we take it from an academic kind of definition then even Schaefer wouldn't try to say that he was a scholar. Yeah. But wasn't he a scholar in the sense of having a very broad knowledge and frankly a remarkable understanding of the times because he read so broadly. I think there are different ways to define And I think he could be called a scholar in his own right. He did end up being awarded three honorary doctoral degrees. So somebody thought he was somewhat scholarly. But the fact that he says there's a danger, it's just almost like People have raised similar concerns about Schaefer as a philosopher, because he's not an academic philosopher. Philosophy, history, I've seen him criticized in several different areas of study, but he was knowledgeable in a broad way of those areas. even though he wasn't, you know, it's like this. He didn't devote himself to the detailed academic study, you know, locking himself in the ivory tower, so to speak. This guy was in the trenches. And I think his approach to scholarship was appropriate for what he was doing, because what's this overriding theme that we keep hearing him say? We need to understand the thought forms of this generation to be able to what? To communicate to them. And so I think what he did was consistent with what he said he was trying to do as a ministry. And the comment in last week's lecture that he criticized theological seminaries because graduates were not integrating their theological learning into the broader culture either. It was all segmented. Yeah, compartmented. Yeah. Teaching them to ask the right questions. That's right, yes. Yeah, and we'll see a little bit more of that when we look at Escape from Reason in the second hour. Okay, 1968. is when they held the first Labrie conference in Ashburnham, England. There were 450 who came on that occasion. And again, this reinforced for Fran the need to be able to widen his audience through books. And books are naturally going to follow reprints of his lectures. Keep in mind that he's been lecturing many of the same things over and over and over again for many years. He's had a chance to refine the message, fine tune it, so to speak. So he's really at that point where you might say he is primed to start publishing his work. So that brings us to 1968. We'll pick back up at about that point next time and look at the next 10 years where most of his books are going to be published. We're also going to see Edith publishing books during this time. And I'm choosing this next time segment, the beginning of his publishing. and in 1978 when he's diagnosed with cancer. And then we'll look at the last stage of his life, those last six years in our seventh lecture right before spring break. Any questions or comments on that before we wrap this session? I'd like to ask a question regarding his pastoral experience. how it prepared him for his future work. What is the one key thing that you see in that, that main ingredient that was the top of the mix? If you're asking me what exactly was I looking for on that question, the answer is, I don't know. And I'm not surprised, and I expected to get a variety of different answers. And that's OK. But I certainly didn't ring your bell. So did anybody ring your bell? What were some of the keys? 10 years of pastoral ministry. He established things like simplicity of preaching, his ability to speak to any kind of person, the realization, especially after he moved to his second call, where there was a mixed congregation of professional and working class, of being able to say, everybody has the same questions. They may ask it a little differently. No little people. Yep, well, and that's another point that from the beginning in Grove City, getting as many people as possible involved in the work of the church, putting an emphasis on children's ministry, and there was a particular need for it at Grove City because it was very small and they really had very little to offer the children when he first arrived there. Obviously a commitment to hard work and not just doing the hard work of ministry, but a very personal ministry. How many churches can you find today, for example, where you would expect to see such a personal ministry between the minister and the members of his congregation? So there were a variety of things like that. Even the physical aspects of putting his working class skills to work, helping on church building projects, where he had done some of that through school, helping at home, helping get accommodations ready for the launch of Faith Seminary. And then that's also gonna come in handy again in Switzerland when Labria started. So a variety of things, but everything from children's ministry to an interest in international ministry, they both came out of kind of a missionary background, or Edith came out of a missionary background, starting to get involved in missionary work while they were doing their pastoral ministry. So there are many different aspects that you could have picked up on that particular question. What did I leave out? I think that you covered it thoroughly. There are more and someone else could cover it in a different way. you could leave out a few that someone else covered. Yeah, there are plenty of thoughts that you could have picked up on with that. And it was almost a case of, you know, giving you a mirror with that question that might tell me a little more about you just the way that you answer that question. So, I like to throw those kinds of things out there from time to time. Okay. And two of you fell for my trick question. One of you didn't, so You can't say that it wasn't a fair question. I probably wouldn't have bought that argument anyway. What was the trick question? I'm sorry. See, I was the one who fell for it because I have to ask what it is. I don't even know what it is. It was the question pertaining to Frank's conversion before his death in 1942. Ah, yes. I'm one of the stupid ones. OK. It's time for a break. We'll see. All right. Well, we'll take that segue. So let's take our 10-minute break and resume at five minutes past the bottom of the hour.
Schaeffer Lecture 5A: 1951-1968
Series Apologetics of Schaeffer
Lecture for ST 540 The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer, New Geneva Theological Seminary, Colorado Springs.
Sermon ID | 6823131422155 |
Duration | 50:25 |
Date | |
Category | Teaching |
Language | English |
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