The Francis Schaeffer Institute
Equipping students and the church to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ as “true truth” that is culturally relevant and personally engaging.
Over the past quarter century, the Francis Schaeffer Institute has successfully helped seminary students and the broader church better understand and speak back into their culture. The Francis Schaeffer Institute plays a significant role in helping Christians come out from behind church walls to effectively and winsomely engage in apologetics and outreach while living obediently in all areas of life.
Equipping Students
The mission of the Francis Schaeffer Institute is experienced by Covenant Seminary students through:
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Since 1989, FSI’s Founder and Senior-Scholar-in-Residence, Professor Jerram Barrs, has personally taught and overseen instruction in apologetics, always with the practical design of helping seminary students from across our various degree programs to better understand and meaningfully speak back to the culture in which they are called to live and minister.
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Facilitated by members of the FSI team and by various ‘friends of FSI’ from other like-minded institutions, the elective classes that FSI sponsors often focus upon the arts, literature, or Christian living in God’s world. These elective courses are designed to cultivate an appreciation for the variety of God’s gifts to humanity, and to both encourage and enable a principled Christian participation within the wider culture.
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Continuing a tradition set by the late Francis Schaeffer who would often travel from Europe to regularly offer special lectures on campus, FSI seeks to bring to campus gifted scholars and leading ministry practitioners to inform and prepare the student body to interact with some facet of current research or a current cultural challenge. Open to the wider public, these Special Lecture Series allow FSI to play a significant role in helping believers in general come out from behind church walls to winsomely engage in apologetics and to live obediently in all spheres of life.
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Some questions are better heard and responded to outside of the classroom. Members of the FSI team consistently welcome the opportunity to meet individually with students and graduates in the quietness and privacy of personal office hours. Whether to talk through something that arose in a class, a matter of simple curiosity, or a personal concern, office hours provide a space to process and an opportunity for prayer and personalized counsel.
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As the culture continues to change and as even the best trained pastors, campus ministers, Christian counselors and educators meet specific challenges and discouragements, so FSI is often asked to field email inquiries, to meet with local sessions, and to help various ministries understand the culture and how to responsibility to communicate to it from a place of confidence in biblical truth. FSI welcomes these opportunities to serve students and alumni beyond the campus and to connect with other groups and ministries also striving to stand for Christ and to communicate his gospel.
Special Lecture Series
"We have to restore to the church a willingness to engage questions rather than act as if their questions don’t really matter or it is impious to ask these questions."
– Dr. Mark Ryan, adjunct prof. of religion & culture
Francis and Edith Schaeffer
Covenant Seminary President Robert Rayburn with Francis Schaeffer and Professor R. Laird Harris.
L’Abri Switzerland
Prof. Jerram Barrs with students at English L’Abri
The ministry of Francis Schaeffer
Dr. Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) was a Presbyterian pastor, author, and evangelist who wrote numerous books on the topic of the church's relationship to its culture. For many years Dr. Schaeffer was the pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, and was often a lecturer at Covenant Seminary. As one alumnus said, "There was often this man on campus wearing knickers who would gather a group of us students to have discussions about issues facing the church."
Francis Schaeffer authored numerous books–22 during his lifetime–about the Bible, spirituality, the Church, and its engagement of Western culture and philosophy. His most famous works include The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, and How Shall we Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. How Shall We Then Live? was later produced as a film series.
Dr. Schaeffer is perhaps best known as the founder of L'Abri, a ministry that he began in Switzerland and has since spread to 9 other countries. L'Abri, which is French for "shelter," became a short-term home for anyone with honest questions about Christianity. Francis and his wife, Edith, began L'Abri to minister to people through prayer and hospitality as a way to engage people spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually who had questions about the Church.
One early student and friend of the Schaeffers was Prof. Jerram Barrs, who came to L'Abri in Switzerland having recently become a Christian through a personal friend and the ministry of Francis Schaeffer. Prof. Barrs hitchhiked to Switzerland from his home in England to better learn about this Jesus he had recently come to know. He lived and studied at L'Abri before he eventually came to America to study at Covenant Seminary.
Prof. Barrs would later go on to found the L'Abri in England before coming back to St. Louis to begin the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Seminary. While he was at the English L'Abri, he would work alongside a talented young psychiatrist named Dr. Richard Winter, who would also later move to St. Louis to begin the Master of Arts in Counseling program at Covenant Seminary.
Today the Francis Schaeffer Institute carries on the mission of Dr. Schaeffer to the next generation of church leaders at Covenant Seminary.