They believed God!

Was it coincidence that brought Francis and Edith Schaeffer to their home in the Swiss Alps on an April Fools Day? Or was it another of God's subtle ironies pointing ahead to the essence of their future work?

Was God, in other words, as so often in history, choosing the foolish and weak things of the world to shame the wise and strong?

I say this because when the Schaeffers arrived that day they were in fact committing themselves to buying a chalet for which they had no money! They didn't even have enough for the initial deposit, let alone the final payment. A series of remarkable experiences (which would take too long to explain now but which are all in the book The L'Abri Story by Edith Schaeffer, including their expulsion from Switzerland!), gave them an assurance that God was leading them. Joshua-like, they were stepping into the unknown and trusting him for what they needed. They believed God was able to rescind the Swiss expulsion and give them the house. Well, the chalet was bought and the Schaeffers did stay. And that was how L'Abri began.

Lighting the fires

But when, on March 31 1955, my wife Susan, the Schaeffers' second daughter, went ahead to open the shutters and start the fires in preparation for the family's arrival the next day, none of them had any idea of what was to happen. They were walking blind and certainly didn't have L'Abri in mind. Then Susan's older sister, a student at Lausanne university nearby, brought a friend home for the weekend. Conversation turned to comparative religion and philosophy. Sartre and Camus were being widely read at the time and these were the sorts of things Grace was interested in. It intrigued her to find people taking the Bible and the historic Christian faith seriously in relation to all this. So she asked if she could bring another friend: and so the snowball began.

After three months the family realised God was doing a remarkable thing with their family and home. Not only were gifts coming in to buy the chalet, but many non-Christians were turning up ready to talk. The informality and homeliness of the place appealed to them. The view down to the Rhone was beautiful. They appreciated Dr. Schaeffer's openness. In time they requested a weekly 'discussion class' at a pub near the university campus.

What God is doing

Seeing what God was doing in and around them, the Schaeffers then formally incorporated L'Abri as a charitable missionary organisation. L'Abri simply means 'the shelter' in French, chosen because a young student who'd been converted there sent a donation asking that it be used 'for a shelter ('un abri') like the one you gave me'.

The key thing to notice is the order of events. The Schaeffers didn't start L'Abri because they had a clear idea what it would look like. They were simply responding to God's leading. So they decided to try to mould the work to fit this pattern. They fully realised it was an unusual way to do things and were always careful to say it was never intended to be a better or more spiritual way. It was simply their unique calling because of the way things started.

First and foremost it included the principle of 'no advertising'. Instead they wanted prayer to be the real centre of the work. As far as possible they hoped to demonstrate that God isn't just an idea or an argument in a discussion, but the basic reality upon which the universe depends. They knew from experience, too, that God's way of doing things is often different from our own, so they deliberately made themselves vulnerable. They designed things to be weak so that God's power might become more obvious, even in the way the work functioned, as illustrated by four main areas: not to advertise for people to come as visitors; or to join the work; or to give financial support; and, finally, and most difficult by far, not to make a plan for the future. It seemed a recipe for disaster - a tiny Swiss village hidden in the mountains and a long way from their base in the States.

Growing, small and personal

Instead the work grew steadily, but always in a small and personal way. Only by word of mouth did people hear that L'Abri was worth visiting. Then Time magazine sent a journalist down from Germany and for the first time Schaeffer was dubbed 'The Billy Graham for intellectuals', which didn't help; nor, quite unintentionally, did the nature and order of the books which Schaeffer started to write after 1967 (The God Who Is There, Escape From Reason, etc.). It seemed that L'Abri was principally about 'being intellectual' - which was misleading.

On one hand L'Abri certainly was and is a 'ministry to intellectuals' as people call it. That's how it started when Grace first arrived. But to the Schaeffers, Grace (or anyone else for that matter) was never an 'intellectual', simply a fairly typical Westerner with lots of questions. And with good precedent they felt it was important to try to answer these questions, just as the early church did (cf. Paul at Ephesus). Why? Because for one thing Christianity really is true intellectually (Romans 1.18ff). Also, no one should be treated as the object of some sort of evangelistic technique. Honest questions deserve honest answers, the Schaeffers used to say.

At the same time they were trying to do a lot else. For a start they were living an ordinary Christian life, just as we all have to - looking after the family, welcoming visitors, juggling home and work, fixing and cleaning, relaxing together, being creative and so on. In short, trying to show that all of life is important (not just the religious bits) and that the bottom line for us all is 'a moment by moment relationship with the living Christ' (cf. Philippians 3.10; see too Schaeffer's True Spirituality).

Big change

But resuming the story: 1960 brought a big change. Those who'd come for a short visit and had, like me, learned so much, began to ask if they could stay longer. So a study programme was introduced allowing people to stay up to about two months - though shorter visits were still possible, as is the case today. Each 'student' had half a day for supervised study and then spent the other in practical work like cooking and cleaning. The pattern worked well.

It then took about 16 years before other 'branches' started to emerge, each one a story in its own right; but only when the fellowship was clear about the Lord's leading. The criterion was never, 'Where can L'Abri be most influential?' but 'has God led us to this new place?' For example, my wife and I moved to the village of Greatham in Hampshire in January 1971 when the Manor House was given to the work. Now there are eight 'branches' - Switzerland, England, Holland, Rochester MN, Sweden, Southborough MA, South Korea and Canada - with two 'resource centres' in Australia and Germany. The larger ones accommodate about 30 visitors at any one time, though most are smaller. All share the same vision and are similar in structure, but each has its own character, obviously, because the workers have different interests and gifts.

When Francis Schaeffer died in 1984 many wondered if this wasn't the end of L'Abri? Was his original vision concerning the Holy Spirit's direction and empowering simply romantic and impractical, an ideal which would fade with his death? In fact the work not only survives but continues to grow as I've tried to show. True, not with the same visibility as in Schaeffer's life-time but choosing not to advertise made it automatically a somewhat hidden work.

God did it

Finally, measuring L'Abri's influence is best left to someone outside the work. In any event our calling has never been to success but to sacrificial and seemingly insignificant service, so it hasn't ever concerned us. Nevertheless, it was striking to find Richard Lovelace singling out L'Abri, almost uniquely as I recall, to illustrate his historical researches about the necessary ingredients for church renewal (The Dynamics of Spiritual Life, 1981). Also, a current list of evangelical leaders worldwide who do what they do because of the L'Abri influence would make interesting reading, whether in publishing, politics, education, medical ethics, the arts, environmental concerns or whatever. Supremely, however, Schaeffer's prophetic anti-abortion challenge proved foundational for the pro-life movements both here and in the States. 'Evangelicals For Life', for example, owed its very existence to his 1980 lecture tour with Dr. C. Everett Koop.

I vividly remember, as a recent graduate who had just joined the Swiss L'Abri, longing that some of the rich teaching I was enjoying could extend beyond the dozen or so people living incognito in that little Swiss chalet. It seemed an idle wish - but God did it.

Ranald Macaulay works with Christian Heritage, based at The Round Church, Cambridge. See the website at www. christianheritageuk.org.uk

L'Abri 50 years on

Lighting the fires

What God is doing

Growing, small and personal

Big change

God did it

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