One of the undisputed giants of 20th-century theology, Francis Schaeffer is today a household name in evangelical circles, known for his pioneering books, his global outreach, and perhaps most of all, his founding of the multinational Christian refuge and incubator known as the L’Abri Fellowship.
Yet few are aware that for all his lofty achievements, much of Schaeffer’s early career consisted of teaching children; such humility defined not just his ministry but the whole of his life, as he sought not to exalt himself, but to serve others and to serve his Lord.
Born in 1912 to working-class parents in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Schaeffer was raised on a diet of traditional morals and hard work. In a famous incident, Schaeffer’s conversion to Christianity began at 17 when he accidentally brought home the wrong book from a bookshop, a book of Greek philosophy. Stirred by the book’s larger questions of meaning, ethics, and ultimate reality, he began testing those questions against competing worldviews, including those in the local Presbyterian church he occasionally attended. Recognizing that his own literacy of Scripture was lacking, he began reading the Bible, becoming increasingly convinced of its authority before making a public profession of faith at a revival meeting in 1930.
A call to the ministry soon followed, and to prepare himself for deeper study he applied to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia against the wishes of his parents (Schaeffer’s father would later come to faith). While still an undergraduate, at home one summer he met Edith Seville, the daughter of mission workers in China (where she had been born). After a courtship of several years they married in 1935, shortly after his graduation from Hampden-Sydney and before his enrollment at Westminster Theological Seminary. A noted theologian and writer in her own right — her autobiography, “The Tapestry,” is a central source for all Schaeffer studies — Edith would play an indispensable role not just in Schaeffer’s family but in his ministry for the next 50 years.
During Schaeffer’s training, the tides of national denominations were changing, and the Presbyterian Church underwent one of several major 20th-century splits. Joining the emergent Bible Presbyterian Church, he and Edith left Westminster to help found Faith Seminary in Delaware, from which he would graduate in 1938. The next several years he pastored two churches in Pennsylvania until Schaeffer and his growing family joined a pastorate in St. Louis in 1945, where his second daughter was born, and where he and Edith created “Children for Christ,” their first Bible studies for young believers. These materials would serve as the basis not only for his teaching but for his later apologetics, as he believed one must be able to explain Christian doctrine to a child and to an adult with equal clarity.
Though the Schaeffers were fond of St. Louis, their tenure in the Gateway City would not last long. As European nations began rebuilding after a decade of war, American missions committees saw a unique opportunity to minister to suffering peoples across the ruined continent, and for three months in 1947 Schaeffer was sent to lecture, document, and observe ministerial needs on behalf of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Mission. As many of his biographers have observed, this first journey overseas marked one of the great turning points in his life. Shortly after returning to St. Louis, Schaeffer would be called by the International Council of Christian Churches to return to Europe in a more permanent role, moving in 1948 to Lausanne, Switzerland.
From its outset the mission of L’Abri was simple — to provide shelter for spiritual seekers from all walks of life, bearing all manner of questions and needs, and to equip them to return to the world having grown in maturity and faith.
This second act of Schaeffer’s life began in shadow. Not long after moving to Switzerland, Schaeffer underwent a crisis of faith. Discouraged by the loveless legalism and empty relativism of postwar churches in Europe, he resolved in 1951 to revisit everything he knew about the origins and claims of biblical Christianity, and to test his beliefs to rebuild them from the ground up. Rather than yielding to the contemporary critiques offered, however, this long period of investigation (what he called his “hayloft” period) served only to solidify his faith, and enshrined for Schaeffer a lifelong mission to preach the inerrancy of Scripture, man’s need for sanctification, and the fundamental truths that Christianity must speak to a fallen world — all later formalized in his book “True Spirituality.”
After a year’s furlough back in the States, the Schaeffers returned once more to Switzerland in 1955 with a new mission. Not only would they continue to teach, preach, develop materials for biblical education, and serve evangelical communities in Europe, they would offer a literal refuge for those who needed it. Famously inspired by a passage in Isaiah 2, Edith had a vision of God’s own house on the top of a mountain, a vision which would lead to the creation of the L’Abri Fellowship.
From its outset the mission of L’Abri was simple — to provide shelter for spiritual seekers from all walks of life, bearing all manner of questions and needs, and to equip them to return to the world having grown in maturity and faith. With its headquarters at Chalet les Mélèzes (“Cottage of the Larches”) in Huémoz, Switzerland, L’Abri became a site for worship, discussion, teaching, cultural engagement, reflection, and rest. From here the Schaeffers would spend the greater part of the next two decades. And despite their increasing output of books, sermons, broadcasts, and Bible studies, they never forgot their first priority: men and women in need of God’s love. As biographer Jerram Barrs, who worked at L’Abri for 15 years, recalled:
… all the lectures Schaeffer gave, and all of his apologetic books were developed to answer the questions of both Christians and non-Christians who came and sat at his table in Huemoz-sur-Ollon in Switzerland. I personally know many people who became Christians while listening to his lectures, either when they were originally given, or as they listened to them on tapes at L’Abri or in other settings all over the world. Schaeffer would use the same approach that can be found in his lectures and books when he discussed the truth of Christianity with unbelievers or doubting Christians at mealtimes (as Edith served delicious food to meet their other needs).
This loving approach to Christian brotherhood extended even to the formation of the PCA (first called the National Presbyterian Church). His letter to the new denomination, published in 1973, urged fidelity to Scripture, a lifelong Schaeffer theme, at the same time as the careful maintenance of relationships following denominational divides. Having seen the damage of such splits firsthand in the mid-1930s, Schaeffer urged members of the National Presbyterian Church (NPC) not to shun the churches they had left, but to consciously “try to establish contacts with those who are true to the Scripture and committed to the practice of the purity of the visible Church in whatever groups they may be.” Such a calling, he wrote, would bear great import upon the church universal, if the NPC “exhibits and practices God’s holiness in life and doctrine, and simultaneously exhibits and practices God’s love toward all true Christians in whatever groups they are.”
Doubtless his prayer for the denomination that became the PCA remains evergreen. Even so, during this long season of patient ministry and growth, L’Abri opened satellite locations in England, the United States, and other countries, and by the mid-1970s Schaeffer was lecturing in venues around the world — including his former home of Lausanne, Switzerland, where in 1974 he spoke at the first-ever Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization.
Schaeffer rejected debates in favor of discussions, seeking to win skeptics over as friends.
Increasingly determined to combat the nihilistic secularism of his day, in the late 1970s Schaeffer composed two seminal works: “How Should Then We Live?” — a book and 10-part television series written as a Christian response to such programs as Kenneth Clarke’s “Civilisation;” and “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (co-authored with C. Everett Koop) — offering a meditation on the value of unborn lives that would shape the abortion debate to this day.
In the final decade of his life Schaeffer returned to the United States, calling Rochester, Minnesota home. Diagnosed with cancer in 1978, Schaeffer would fight the disease for the next six years, frequently using his hospital visits as opportunities to minister to others while undergoing his own treatment. Despite the occasional slowdown, he would nevertheless finish two of his greatest books in this period, including his “Complete Works” (published in five volumes in 1982) and “The Great Evangelical Disaster,” completed on his deathbed. Eschewing clinics in his last weeks, Schaeffer returned home to Edith and to his family in Rochester where on May 15, 1984, his faith finally turned to sight.
Francis August Schaeffer (1912-1984) was married to the former Edith Seville (1914-2013) for 49 years, and was survived by four children and numerous grandchildren. He authored seminal works such as “Escape from Reason” and “He Is There and He Is Not Silent.” He also received numerous honorary degrees. Schaeffer always rejected debates in favor of discussions, seeking to win skeptics over as friends, and spoke of himself simply as a pastor, whose job it was to spread the Good News.