Give Me Shelter

Dear Dr. Schaeffer,

I wonder if you know now what I'm wondering about. This change we go through at our death, at our glorification, I wonder how much we'll know about what is going on down here, and how much we remember about when we were here. Will you for instance, receive this letter, or is it destined for the dead letter office? And do you even remember me? We met twice, with a gap of a decade in between. I'm looking forward to when we will meet again.

At our first meeting I was around seven years old. You had come to visit the Ligonier Valley Study Center. I imagine the extent of our interaction consisted of you thinking, "Gee, what a cute little red-headed boy," whereas I was thinking, "He seems a little too tall for an elf, though he looks like one," what with your knickers and that long hair and beard. (By the way, something else I'm wondering: what can I do so that I too can get away with wearing my hair as long as you wore yours? I won't be wearing knickers though; I am short enough to be an elf).

About a decade later we met at the Congress on the Bible conference in San Diego. Your thoughts probably went something like this, "Boy, R.C.'s son sure looks like a sophomoric, pseudo-intellectual ninny," and my thoughts were, "Wow! That's Francis Schaeffer." I went home with several of your books, and as the saying goes, they changed my life. Which is interesting because you had already changed my life. I grew up at a study center that existed because of L'Abri. And now, here I am running what might be called a "Third generation Study Center." Of course what we do pales in comparison to the old Ligonier, and L'Abri, but we're trying. I wonder if you're smiling at the faltering steps of your institutional grandchild, or if you're thinking we're the institutional equivalent of your son Franky, that is, a big disappointment.

But I'm sure this wouldn't surprise you. You seemed to have this knack for seeing how history's ripples keep on moving. You showed us that we think what we think today because of what we learned yesterday, that ideas have consequences. It was you, like some reincarnated Abraham Kuyper, which got we Reformed folk in America to start working to take every thought captive. You gave us a vision for worldview. Your work spawned a host of illegitimate children as well, that army of para-church ministries that is more interested in borrowing and dusting off the world's old ideas than in thinking and acting biblically. For every George Grant you've given us a Ralph Reed, for every Jay Adams a James Dobson, for every R.C. Sproul a Chuck Colson, for every PCA church, well, a PCA church. Whether we're telling the truth or not, if we're talking worldview, we're doing it because of you. Ripples can move in lots of directions.

Our goal, though, is to honor and not to shame you. We have avoided the gaudy superstructure of institutions. Like the old L'Abri, we have no advancement department, no marketing machine. But we've also kept the institutional foundation of God-ordained accountability, as a ministry of a local church. The only people we have to keep happy are the rightful judges of Christ's courts, our elders. By the grace of God we won't become pandering prophets in search of profits.

And we hope we're making you proud because we are not only looking backward into history to glean the wisdom of our fathers, but laboring to think in a forward direction, teaching our children what we learn. We want to make the ripples run deeper, and truer, participating in creating that great tidal wave that will one day cover the whole earth.

Do you reflect on your life, on the ways in which God used you? I wish you could write back and let us know enough of the future that we would act with greater confidence. But then I suppose we have word from Someone I admire even more than you, and He has given us all the reason in the world to be confident. His Kingdom will come in its fullness, His will Will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and we get to participate in that.

And therein lies another lesson we learned from you. We can be prophetic, denouncing all that is wrong in the world and in the church, and still sleep the sleep of children, at peace and at rest, knowing that all that is wrong works out for the best. Even when we fail we do exactly what we're supposed to do, bring glory to God, if only because He has redeemed a loser like me, that He gave me shelter under His wing.

You may be hearing from us again. Who knows, the Highlands Study Center may one day end up in the institutional afterlife, another ministry that went the way of all flesh. Or we may grow big and strong and smart enough one day to send you a whole newsletter, an issue devoted to you. (And then when you meet new people up in heaven they'll think, "Wow! That's Francis Schaeffer, who was the first person, after Bob of course, to receive a whole issue from those guys in Virginia."

We thank God for you, Dr. Schaeffer, for what you taught, and how you taught it. And we are not alone. You served your King faithfully, and we hope to follow in your footsteps, who followed in the footsteps of Paul, who followed in the footsteps of Jesus. And we hope too that others will follow in that same path, walking simply, separately, and deliberately, to the glory of God and for the building of His kingdom.