In Debt . . .

I am still enormously in debt to Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the founder of the L'Abri movement and at one time a co-pastor in St. Louis with one of my Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary professors' - Dr. Elmer Smick.

I began reading Schaeffer in my mid-teens and discovered that there was a whole way of seeing, a world-view of which I had no idea - that the Christian faith was more than 'Are you saved, brother?' and constant reiterations of John 3:16 and various biblical stories (to be illustrated mostly in flannel graph - remember that?). I discovered there was skeleton-structure, bones, sinew and flesh to the faith - a philosophy for my life and for anyone seeking to become truly, fully 'human' - and I have been curiously pressing into the Mystery ever since.

Schaeffer and his wife Edith Schaeffer (as the British Grace Magazine puts it) were "determined to demonstrate, in the ministry of L’Abri, a true outworking of trust and dependence on God in all circumstances – a demonstration that the unseen supernatural world really exists. So, for example, they committed themselves to prayer, asking that God would send the individuals to them that would find their ministry helpful, and that God would provide all necessary resources of money, housing personnel and so on. They saw, and the work continues to see, real and powerful answers because, as he would often say, ‘God is there’.

"Francis’ book ‘True Spirituality’ (again another superbly helpful book) was born out of the desire to show what really living a Christian life looks like when we ‘moment by moment rely on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who is given to us because of the finished work of Christ on the cross’.