CPC Sunday School Apologetics-#6 (3-12-2023)

In his third year of studying architecture, the narrator had a chance encounter with a presentation on existentialism. This sparked his curiosity and led him to discover the works of Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer's books became an important part of his Christian journey. The narrator then goes on to give a timeline of Schaeffer's life, from his conversion to his ministry in Europe. The narrator also mentions Schaeffer's crisis of faith and how it ultimately strengthened his belief in Christianity. Finally, the narrator discusses Schaeffer's approach to apologetics, emphasizing that it should lead people to Christ and the lordship of Christ in all aspects of life. was I was in my third year. I was in a third year design studio. I studied architecture in my undergrad. And in addition to philosophy. But one of the studios next to me was having a presentation. Some students were doing a presentation. We were the design project we were working on was housing for the elderly. And so he was the professor in this other other studio was having students give a presentation on different aspects. Anyway, I happened to show up in this one. And these guys got up and start talking about existentialism. And I've only been a Christian less than three years at that point. And so they made their little presentation and they asked if anybody had any questions. And my heart's about to jump out of my chest. You know, I said, I got to say something, you know, and no one no one else said anything. So, you know, I made a comment and basically kind of presented, you know, that there's hope in the Christian life that God gives us eternal life if we trust in him and so on. And of course, you could hear a pin drop. Nobody responded to that. And but anyway, so it was like after that, I thought, I've got I've got to learn what existential is all about. And so I had no idea. So anyway, we had a little we had a little Christian bookstore downtown. I went down there and the lady, you know, I told her what I was kind of looking for. And she said, Why have you read any Francis Schaeffer before? I said no. And so anyway, that's how I kind of got turned on. And once I read the first book, I think it probably was he is the guy who is there, which was which was the first book that he came out with. This is a he wrote over like over 20 or 25 books. But anyway, this is his first three books that he wrote that before he died, he died in 1984. Before he died, he revised went back and revised all this work. And they were they were combined into a complete works set by Crossway. And this is probably for Crossway too. But anyway, these are the three books after he revised them that that that they compiled is kind of the core of his of his writing that the other writing that he did came out of that. And the other key book that he wrote was True Spirituality. And I'll mention that in my in my talk in a few minutes. But this is this was real critical to to the work at LaBrie. And he is Schaeffer's wife wrote a little history, I guess, of LaBrie, you call it. And that's and that's that's very good. If you've if you've never read either True Spirituality or LaBrie, those are good, even good devotional books just to read through and learn about their life and their ministry that they had. So anyway, let me go on. Talk about a timeline of his of his of the life of Francis Schaeffer. He was born in 1912 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the only child of a blue collar family who were nominal Christians. He was converted in 1930 at the age of 18 after reading through his Bible and attending an old fashioned gospel meeting, which happened to be led by an evangelist named his last name was Yoli. And he ended up having a relationship with his son later. And later he was a producer, I think, or had something to do with the film series that Schaeffer did back in the 70s. But anyway, from the beginning of his new faith, he felt called to the gospel ministry. And so after his graduation, my school, he started at Drexel College at night and worked during the day. But the urge to enter ministry became so strong that he eventually began pre ministerial studies at Hampton Sydney College in Virginia. It was a first rate Presbyterian school. And after four years of difficult but gratifying studies, especially having to deal, I didn't realize I didn't know this until recently, that he had dyslexia. And it was something that I just think he was diagnosed with later. But he would graduate from Hampton City Magna Cum Laude. So he must have done a pretty good job of studying. Anyway, it was during this first summer vacation that he met Edith Seville. She was the daughter of missionaries with the China Inland Mission. They had just moved from China to Philadelphia to work in the mission office there. Their relationship would grow over time, over the next several years, eventually falling in love and getting married in December of 1935 after his graduation from Hampton, Sydney. So following his convictions to be a minister and with Edith's encouragement, he headed to Westminster Theological Seminary in 1935. And these were the early years of Westminster because of the turmoil, the fundamentalist modernist controversy of this period had resulted in the formation of Westminster, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions. And these were the early days of Westminster, as I mentioned, with J. Gresham Machen and Cornelius Van Teel, among others, having a great influence on Schaeffer's development. So with the formation of the OPC, Francis Schaeffer left the Presbyterian Church. He had his licensing paperwork with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the Northern Presbyterian Church, and he joined the OPC. But however, he didn't stay long as controversy soon developed between two factions within the OPC. And in 1937, one group left to form the Bible Presbyterian Church, which Schaeffer also joined along with continuing his studies at its new seminary, Faith Theological Seminary. And so he graduated from Faith in 1938 and became the first minister to be ordained in the Bible Presbyterian Church. So the Schaeffers spent the next ten years in pastoral ministry, first in Grove City, Pennsylvania, where they had their first two daughters. Then in 1941, they moved to Chester, Pennsylvania, to serve a church there. And two years later, in 1943, they moved to minister in St. Louis, where their third daughter was born. And it was during this period his heart was being drawn to Europe as the devastation of World War II was unabated. Also during this period, they had been developing a ministry to children in St. Louis, and in 1945, they established the ministry called Children for Christ, which they would expand when they moved to Europe. And so in 1947, the Independent Board of the Presbyterian Foreign Mission sent Francis Schaeffer on an exploratory journey to Europe for the summer. The board was especially concerned for the children of the churches due to the inroads of theological liberalism within the European churches. And this trip opened his eyes to the challenges and issues which would come to occupy the rest of his life. So after returning to pastoral ministry in St. Louis, the Schaeffers continued with their outreaches to children for a time. Though his heart continued to be burdened for Europe, he had what has been called a Macedonian call to return to the continent. So Francis and Edith made the decision to become missionaries serving with the Independent Board, and they settled in Switzerland in 1948 and carried out their ministry in a multitude of settings. Francis was doing work. There were several organizations that were developing at that time, so he did a lot of speaking. And of course, Edith was involved with the children's ministry that they were also involved with. And there were various events which led to the beginning of liberty in 1955, but the most critical was a personal crisis in the spring of 1951. For various reasons, Francis Schaeffer plunged into the depths of doubt about his faith, about theology, and about the Christian life. He was truly depressed and at times despondent, and at stake was his view of reality. He believed he had to rethink the whole matter of Christianity. And out of this crisis, though, he emerged with a stronger and more vibrant belief that the Bible was true and his commitment to Christ had been the right move. In 1952, their fourth child, a son, was born, and the following year they returned for a 17-month furlough in St. Louis. It was during this time that through talks he gave on sanctification and his newfound understanding of spiritual reality that the book True Spirituality would eventually emerge. After they returned to Switzerland in 1954 to their Chalet Bijoux to carry out the work of speaking around Europe, Francis Schaeffer was thinking more intently about the Christian life and the new reality which he had discovered, that is, his understanding of the vital importance of prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit in living a faithful life. This understanding would help them deal with the difficulties they soon faced, including the lack of funds, the possibility of eviction from Switzerland, and some people on the mission board critical of their work in Europe. So it was through their new dependence on the grace of God, the work of the Holy Spirit, and prayer that they were able to overcome these obstacles by seeing God work in marvelous ways. In 1955, they decided to leave the mission board to become a faith mission where they would submit all their needs to the Lord in prayer. They were able to halt their eviction by the providential work of God supplying needed funds and opening up a way for them to move from a Catholic canton to a Protestant canton. Canton is just the word for state in Switzerland. So they could remain in Switzerland. In their move, they settled in Waymo and there the formal work of Labrie would begin in earnest. Now I'd like to turn to Francis Schaeffer's apologetics. It is important up front to say that Schaeffer himself did not regard himself as creating an apologetic system and stated that he did not believe there is any one apologetics with evangelism and felt that it was not really Christian apologetics if it did not lead people to Christ as Savior and then on to their living under the Lordship of Christ in the whole of life. And he said earlier, what I was trying to say is there is not any one apologetics that meets the needs of all people. So he ended up kind of being eclectic. It was hard. Different people criticized him for being this type of apologist or that type of apologist. But most of them were wrong in their assessment. So he maintained that it must be the whole man who comes to understand that the gospel is truth and believes because he is convinced on the basis of good and sufficient reason that it is true. So Schaeffer saw that the change in thought forms and in particular the change in the concept of truth make communication of the gospel to the younger generation extremely difficult. So this is in the 1950s and on in the 60s that as Labrie begins to develop that he sees this change has taken place. He was convinced this was the most crucial problem facing Christianity because before a man is ready to become a Christian, he must have a proper understanding of the truth. And as I've already mentioned that his core books were The God Who Is There, which came out in 1968, Escape from Reason, which came out in 1969 but actually was published before the first book. It was a series of lectures that he had given in, I think, in England and IVP had got permission to publish it. And his third book, which came out in 1972, that he is there and he is not silent. And they reveal him to be someone with clear insight into the modern secular world of the mid-twentieth century and his thought forms. In The God Who Is There, Schaeffer tackled the problem of how to communicate Christian truth to people who no longer believe in truth as an absolute or as an antithesis. This situation was a result of a shift to synthesis, that is to say, a combining of the partial truth of a thesis and its antithesis. Historically, Schaeffer goes back to Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century to find the beginnings of this shift in thinking. In Aquinas' views on grace and nature, Schaeffer believed he had an incomplete view of the fall, that is Aquinas did, whereby while the will of man was fallen, the intellect was not. As a result, the intellect could be autonomous and a natural theology could develop independent of special revelation in God. So on this principle, other areas of thought also became increasingly free and separated from revelation. Schaeffer believed that once nature, that is the created order, is made autonomous, it begins to eat up grace, that is God the creator, and for him this reached a climax at the high point of the Renaissance. For Schaeffer, another unfortunate consequence of Aquinas' teaching was a dichotomy between universals and particulars. In nature you have particulars, that is to say individual things, while in grace you have universals, that is to say that which covers all the particulars and gives them meaning. Within Schaeffer's scheme, the particulars are placed in a lower story and the universals are placed in an upper story so that that marks a drift toward modern man and his cynicism. He said, we are left with masses of particulars but no way to put them together. So we find that by this time nature is eating up grace in areas of morals and even more basically in the area of epistemology as well. Schaeffer calls the particulars nature and the individual things, those that occupy the lower story, the universals grace and God, those which occupy the upper story. So Schaeffer, farther on in history, identifies a paradigm shift by the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the early mid-18th century from nature and grace to nature and freedom. Nature had totally devoured grace and there was no concept of revelation in any area. What was left in its place in the upper story was freedom. It was a freedom that is in itself as autonomous as nature and so it means a freedom in which the individual is a center of the universe. Schaeffer believed that it is a freedom with nothing to retain it and it is a freedom that no longer fits into the rational world. In the sciences there also developed a belief in the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system because scientists shifted their presuppositions to embrace a world view that understands reality only in materialist and naturalist terms. Naturalism was so closed and their system so determinist, everything was treated as a machine. The upper story disappears completely with the freedom in it and neither God nor freedom are there anymore. Everything is in the machine. Throughout the Enlightenment philosophers continue to think that they can construct a unified field of knowledge by means of rationalism plus rationality and by rationalism Schaeffer meant man beginning absolutely and totally from himself, gathering information concerning the particulars and formulating the universals. On the other hand, rationality meant mankind thinking in a way that is not contrary to reason or as he put it, man's aspiration of reason is valid. He maintained that rationality always involves antithesis for that is the way God has made us and there is no other way to think. However, by the end of the Enlightenment the philosophers came to the realization that they could not find this unified rationalistic circle and so departing from the classic methodology of antithesis, they shifted the concept of truth and modern man was born. This shift set the stage for Hegel who opened the door to the line of despair. This was, as Schaeffer said, a titanic shift for previously people above the line had been rationalistic optimists who sought an adequate explanation for the whole of reality without having to depart from the logic of antithesis. Now absolute truth was displaced and all possible positions are relativized and truth is to be sought in synthesis rather than antithesis. Schaeffer maintained that following Hegel, truth as truth was gone and synthesis, the both and end, with its relativism reigned. He says though Hegel opened the line of despair, it was Kierkegaard who was the first thinker to go below it. According to Schaeffer, Kierkegaard whom Schaeffer regarded as the father of modern existentialism concluded that you achieve everything of real importance by a leap of faith. With Kierkegaard the line between the upper story and the lower story widened considerably so much so that there was no exchange between the two. Below the line there is rationality and logic while the upper story becomes non-rational and non-logical. As Schaeffer noted in the lower story on the basis of reason man has no meaning, no purpose and no significance. There is only pessimism concerning man as man but up above on the basis of a non-rational, non-reasonable leap there is a non-reasonable faith which gives optimism. Thus given the total separation of faith from the rational, if rationalistic man wants to deal with the really important things of life such as purpose, significance, the validity of love, he must discard rational thought about them and make a gigantic non-rational leap of faith to the upper story. As Schaeffer perceptively observed the rationalistic humanistic man began by saying that Christianity was not rational enough but he has come around in a wide circle and ended as a mystic though a mystic with a special kind. He is a mystic with nobody there and for Schaeffer it was Karl Barth whom he blamed for opening the door to the existential leap in theology. Although Barth held to the higher critical theories which postulated that the Bible contains mistakes, he argued that a religious word comes through anyway. Thus religious truth is separated from the historical truth of the scriptures and as Schaeffer noted there is no place for reason and no point of verification. This constitutes the leap in religious terms. Barth isolated faith from reason according to Schaeffer and his approach was merely the religious expression of the prevailing thought form of modern man. In addition Schaeffer pointed out while one hears the word Jesus and acts upon it, the word is never defined. In addition Schaeffer pointed out the use of such words is always in the area of the irrational because being separated from history and the cosmos they are divorced from possible verification by reason downstairs and there is no certainty that there is anything upstairs. With this background let us turn to see how Schaeffer addressed this new concept of truth that is to say no longer thinking in terms of absolutes or antithesis. Christianity Schaeffer argued is the truth of what is there in terms of the external world with its structures and those things within man that form his quote unquote manishness, that's a Schaefferian word. That is to say his longing for significance, love, and beauty. To deny Christianity and live on the basis of non-Christian presuppositions is to stray from reality and the more logical a man who holds a non-Christian position is to his own presuppositions the further he is from the real world. So there is within every person he calls a point of tension. Schaeffer held that each person built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension. So engaging in one-to-one apologetics affords the Christian the opportunity to find the non-Christian point of tension and then lift his roof off. This allows the truth of the external world and of what man is to be upon him. When the roof is off each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what actually is. Schaeffer realized the seriousness of this process and reminded Christians that this is not a game to be played with. The person with whom one is in conversation must be able to feel that you care for him or her otherwise one will only end up destroying him and the cruelty and ugliness of it all will destroy Schaeffer said me as well. The aim was to push the person only so far as they recognize their need for the gospel. This process shows a person his or her need and then you can share the scripture from the scripture the real nature of his lostness and the answer to it. More could be said regarding the content of Francis Schaeffer's apologetic but it is essential that we consider the way in which he carried out his ministry for without doubt his approach was as much a part of his apologetics as was his argumentation. The core of his ministry at Labrie consisted of personal conversations with the individuals who visited it and from these various conversations evolved his writings. Following his spiritual crisis in 1951 and a self-imposed isolation in the Swiss Alps Schaeffer was convinced that his calling was to help provide a demonstration of the reality of God's existence. This led to the Schaeffer's decision to live by faith to make themselves available to whoever visited Labrie to listen carefully and then give some answers to those seeking honest answers to life's deepest questions. There was no grand strategy in Schaeffer's ministry for everything was allowed to develop in a relatively haphazard way and this reflected his view that quietness and peace before God are more important than any influence a ministry, a position, or activity may seem to give. Schaeffer's great concern was not to build an empire but to help the individual and central to the work at Labrie was a personal compassion based on careful and sympathetic listening. To communicate effectively Schaeffer argued that the Christian apologists must take time and the trouble to learn our hearers use up language so that they understand what we intend to convey. Just as missionaries have to learn the language of the indigenous people they seek to reach so the Christian church of each generation had to communicate in each setting the gospel with regard to the language and thought forms of that setting. Thus he suggested that if the word or phrase we are in the habit of using is no more than an orthodox evangelical cliche which has become a technical term among Christians then we should be willing to give it up when we step outside our own narrow circle and talk to the people around us. Schaeffer indicated that if he only had an hour to talk to someone about the gospel he would spend 45 minutes showing him his real dilemma that he is morally dead because he is separated from the God who exists. Then he would take 10 or 15 minutes to tell him the gospel. Each person must be dealt with as an individual not as a case or statistics or machine Schaeffer noted. Schaeffer's approach this is in the 60s and the 70s were quite revolutionary. It is important that we not miss this. Not only was he urging evangelicals to be willing to give up cherished phrases so that the truth of the gospel could be communicated to those beyond the church but he was talking about evangelicals failing at doing this. Schaeffer recognized that all people whether they realize it or not function within a framework of some concept of truth. For him the chasm between the general the generations was brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth. Thus the church was failing to communicate Christian truth to the next generation. He argued that if Christians were to be truly prophetic they must be the interpreters of the world and speak to the worldlings and cause them to understand these truths. This conviction underlay his discussion with individuals and it was his great desire to communicate the gospel to the present generation in terms that they can understand. Schaeffer frequently stressed that man has not ceased to be man because he is falling. Although twisted corrupted and lost as a result of the fall man is still man and he has become neither a machine nor an animal nor a plant. Furthermore as people are created in the image of God with individual personality and are able to make a free choice they live as significant individuals in significant history. He spoke forcibly about the significance of human freedom in order to challenge the ever increasing mechanistic mindset of the 20th century. To understand Schaeffer we need to understand the love he had for the individual person. As stated earlier he believed that communication about the gospel to a non-Christian must be made in love for each person has great value because he or she bears the image of God. Each individual is unique and worthy of love. For Schaeffer liked to say with God there are no little people. This was a lifelong core belief. Indeed it is crucial if we are to gain an insight into Schaeffer and his apologetics that we grasp the depth of his love for the individual. It was a belief that not only shaped him but his entire ministry. In his apologetics Schaeffer thought that loving the other person as ourselves is the place to begin. Though he warned that genuine love in the last analysis means a willingness to be entirely exposed to the person to whom we are talking. For the Schaeffers this involved opening their home to whoever was in need and welcoming whoever God drew to them making it an issue of prayer that God would choose the people who would come. The purpose of the Libri was to show forth by demonstration in our life and work the existence of God. To the Schaeffers living on the basis of prayer would mean allowing God to plan the work and unfold this plan day by day rather than their deciding how Libri should develop. Thus the love for the individual was a powerful demonstration of spiritual reality that showed that Christianity was not just a set of propositions but something true in experience as well as theory. Francis Schaeffer was convinced that love was the mark of the true Christian and thus Christians must show a practical demonstration of love even if it was at a costly price. As Edith Schaeffer recalled their own family life was almost non-existent and life at Libri was not easy. But we hadn't asked for ease she said we had asked for reality. With Schaeffer's concern for the individual and the importance of love as the final apologetic it is not surprising that a regular visitor to Libri remarked that most went away with the knowledge that they had been loved with a sense of worth and a clear idea of the existence of God and with the reality of communication on both the divine and human level. An evaluation of Schaeffer's apologetic that does not give as much consideration to his method as to his message he shared is defective. I just want to share as I was writing these last few paragraphs a personal experience of this love. I got to see Schaeffer three times before he passed away in 1977 in his first series I got to see him here in Dallas in fact it was his last stop on his tour showing the film series How Shall We Then Live. I was down at SMU in the Coliseum there and I think it went on maybe for like three or four days but they would show his films that they had produced and then after the films they would have a question and answer time and this was probably near the end of the conference and after the film Francis and I think Edith might have been down there and maybe Frankie and maybe someone else but anyway people were asking questions they had microphones throughout the Coliseum and anyway this one woman got up and she obviously had some kind of difficulty problem she had difficulty speaking and so she'd speak in a microphone and you couldn't understand actually what she was saying and I think he asked her to repeat it once or twice and tried to answer as best he could and then she asked another question and then it was like I was sitting there in my seat and it was like they were the only two people in the Coliseum the way he was talking to her and I was just amazed by it and so he said you know come on down afterwards and I'm going to speak to you personally and that's just the kind of man that he was and I got to see him again two years later when the second film series on abortion and then a year later Dede and I happened to be this is before we went up to Trinity happened to be still in Miami and he spoke at the Easter sunrise service at the My Marine Stadium and so it was just neat to hear him speak personally the first time I ever heard him on a tape before before I heard the film series I thought it was a woman and I thought it was a woman speaking on a tape because he had such a high voice and it was just weird and it was funny I was reading a book there's a professor at Westminster Bill Edgar who teaches apologetics there and I had corresponded with Bill back twenty or thirty years ago when he first when he came out with a book he was he's a he's a obviously a theologian pauses but he's also a jazz musician and he had written a book when he was teaching over in France on jazz and at that time I was working at Pro Ministries which is a worldview type of ministry and we were putting together resources and I came across his book and so I wrote to him about it because I couldn't find anywhere it was only published in England and the continent and he ended up sending me a copy of it and so we corresponded and talked once or twice since then but he in his book he wrote a book in a series called theologians on the Christian life he wrote a book on Schaeffer because he had he had visited Schaeffer back in the sixties and if he was he went to Harvard and his one of his teachers there ended up being a professor that I had at Trinity Seminary when I was there Harold O.J. Brown and he had encouraged and Brown had been it had been deliberate and knew Schaeffer and encouraged him to go and meet with Schaeffer and this is back in the sixties and he and he made a comment the first time that he heard him, you know, it's like, you know, it's a woman who is a woman is on his day, but once you kind of get used to his voice, you see, you know, it's not. I mean, if it is a woman, you got a problem, but anyway, but it just you know that the reality of the demonstration, I think, of love and the reality of that that demonstrates the reality of God, I think spoke volumes particularly to the people who were able to to go delivery and and talk with him and and and and the other people that were So, that's that's what I've got. Anybody got any questions or comments? Input? Yes, ma'am. Probably did. I think she did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, I just I noticed a lot of similarities. Okay. Yeah. I know you mentioned when you put up a list of of of apologists, her her name was on there and I haven't I haven't read any any of her stuff, but but the the blurbs and stuff I read it sound like she had that he had a lot of influence on her. Okay. Yeah. And their their effort to have Christ be connecting everything in a worldview and then after them, you see people like Chuck Colson and that were heavily influenced by Schaefer, which also, you know, were attempting to put together or apply a Christian worldview. Right. Right. I know he Schaefer and a man by the name of Hans Ruckmacher, who was a Dutchman. They knew each other a long sometime before Labrie started and Ruckmacher was an art historian, taught at the Free University in Amsterdam. And after I had read a lot of Schaefer and one of the things that Schaefer's books, which, as I read along, became frustrating was that there were no footnotes in it. He didn't he didn't point to anybody in particular in in in in his writing, except one of the last book that I think he did. So in the God who was there, there were some. I mean, excuse me, the how do we then live? There were there were some footnotes in there. But as I kind of advanced along in my understanding, I read a biography of Ruckmacher. He was a prisoner of war during World War Two. And in the and the prison that he was at, there was a copy. I think it's originally four volumes. You can buy it now. It's condensed into two volumes. But of a of a Dutch philosopher named Herman Herman Duyvaard. And he read through that. And so when I got exposed to Herman Duyvaard in particular, when I got to seminary, I thought, well, this is where Schaefer got all this material from. Because, I mean, he was he was he was a deep thinker. I mean, it takes it takes it takes years to kind of, you know, take in what you know, all that he all they wrote. But but a lot of what Schaefer and I assume that he got a lot of that from Ruckmacher, because Ruckmacher had had digested that and he had the same kind of perspective. So anyway, so we're thinking about apologetics. There's probably a tendency in more modern evangelicalism to think about apologetics as a system of combat, intellectual combat sport. It's a boxing match, as opposed to it seems to me that Schaefer has an emphasis on attacking much more of a broad worldview, the underpinnings, and particularly when you're speaking to his desire to have somebody feel loved through that interaction. It seems to me that there's more an emphasis on relationship built into his methodology as opposed to a single encounter, whereas you see like a Josh McDowell that is evidence demands a verdict. You have somebody sitting next to you on an airplane, the captive audience for an hour. And here's how you're going to intellectually beat them into being a Christian versus Schaefer has obviously different tactics. Maybe you can talk to that as far as broadly your thoughts on the tools for each, because obviously relationships have interactions. Interactions are repeated iterations of that same effort. So maybe your thoughts on that. Well, I think his understanding that you treat an individual as an individual and you meet them where they are. And when you're talking with them, you gain an understanding of where they're coming from. And so to have the resources that you need, you know, something like Josh McDowell, there's nothing wrong with that. And it's good to know that material, because someone may have a question about that. Well, what about this? Or what about that? And that you're able to answer that. But you do it on a personal level, that you're not that you're not sitting there, you know, you know, piling up the evidence and evidence to crush them to death, you know, and say, well, you know, you got to believe that you got to believe that you see all the evidence. And this and this is something that, you know, Schaefer, and I think particularly came out of his crisis in 1951, was he saw the reality and the centrality of the Holy Spirit, the work of the Spirit, and that you trust the Spirit in that process. So I don't know if that helps. Yeah. I'll repeat myself. Francis Schaefer was a huge influence of my mom's life. Now, when did she when did she have exposure to him? When, when, in her? When she was challenged with with her own faith, okay, in college, and how real this is, of course, you know, that would be back in the 1950s. And then fast forward with Chuck Colson. She was, she teamed up with his group in prison ministries. Okay. And you really saw that play out in the individual is, you know, in prison ministries, a woman ministers to other women, and most of the women you're ministering to are prostitutes. And they would tell her, you know, we can't get out of this work, because we have no means. And she'd be like, All right, come live with us. Come live with us until you get started. So when we were in high school, we had prostitutes live with us. So that became really interesting for us in school, we got picked on. But it's not a pretty life. But but it's that influence of it's just the work of the Lord. And it's exactly right. We're not going to be the Holy Spirit, right? You meet that person where they are. And even if they're prisoners, because of prostitution, you meet them where they are, and treat them as real people and show the gospel to them. And it's very impactful. Did you see lives change? Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. It's it's that stuff. Some of the some of the ladies that live with us died of AIDS. One or two in particular. But yeah, there there were, but you know, so often, it's so much easier just to go back to your old, old ways. But no, there was, there was effect, I think it made more of a left more of an impact on us her her kids. Seeing how you engage in your faith with with other with other folks. Cool. Take the mic. I'd like to add to that because we did a ministry. When we write a seminary for juvenile delinquents. I started it with a group of girls. And when we first went there, that these girls looked at us like they wanted to kill us. It was just like, Yeah, who do you think you are? And so we just kept coming never, never forced Jesus on them just kept coming kind of like what you're talking about. And just being there and listening to them. And within a few weeks, they could not wait to see us. And it's exactly what you said. It's because we just showed them we cared. And then we were able to share Christ later, but it was a long time. And then we moved to another state. And one of them, they're like, we want to come home with you. Every week, they wanted to come home with us. I wish I could have taken them home. Yeah, it's exactly what Yeah, what you're saying that had a big impact on me as a young mother. And the girl said it changed their lives. Just being in that environment and loving those girls just for the way they were. And they were rough. Yeah, I think this I think this aligns. I remember when we first started to meet together over Redeemer. And Mark was talking about the vision and Stephanie talking about the whole concept and idea of hospitality. And, and, and, and, you know, basically, you know, this is hospitality of opening yourself up. And I think for us as a church, if that becomes a mark for us as a church, we're going to see, you know, dramatic things. And we're going to, you know, the up and down the aisles praising God. You know, my question is, I mean, this wasn't really covered in your talk. But one of the ideas I've always found helpful and fascinating with Schaefer is the idea of co belligerency. So, you know, if we have an issue, abortion pro life, or an issue, you know, people try to trans kids. Now, we may align ourselves with people who are not Christian, who are also against, you know, that particular form of evil. And, you know, the question has always been, you know, where do you draw the line with that? And how do you, you know, how far do you go with people who are not Christian, but also, you know, in agreement with you on, you know, fighting a particular form of evil? That's a question I can't answer, because I haven't read. I never I read most of the books, but the later the later stuff, I was on the other stuff. And I never read it. And I've heard a little bit about it, you know, about the idea of co belligerency stuff. And but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, to expand on that, or, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, to expand on that, or, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, to expand on that, or, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, to expand on that, or, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, my own position, maybe on a personal level, but I don't know, you know, enough to really say anything about his position, you know, my own