Dick Keyes is the director-emeritus of L’Abri Fellowship in Southborough, Massachusetts, where he has been working with his wife, Mardi since 1979. They now continue in the work of L’Abri on more of a part-time basis. They have three married sons and nine grandchildren.  He holds a B.A. in History from Harvard University, and an M. Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has worked for L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and in England, where he served also as a pastor in the International Presbyterian Church in London. He has been an adjunct professor at Gordon Conwell Seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary and Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He is the author of Beyond Identity, Heroism, Chameleon Christianity and Seeing Through Cynicism, as well as chapters in several anthologies such as No God But God, ed. Os Guinness, Finding God at Harvard, ed. Kelly Monroe, and The New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics.  

John Mason Hodges is a conductor, lecturer, and composer.  He conducted orchestras and choruses for 26 years after finishing graduate studies in music at Indiana University in 1983.  He also has 14 years experience conducting, composing, and arranging music for churches.  He has lectured in this country, in Europe, and in South America on the subjects of aesthetics, education, the arts, and music.  He held the position of Associate Professor of the Arts and Culture at Crichton College.  In 2008 he founded the Center for Western Studies, a multi-faceted organization that offers a gap-year (centerws.com) and addresses the relations between faith, reason and the culture.  He has been a guest conductor with the Prokofiev Conservatory Orchestra, Donetsk, the Kharkiv Philharmonia, and the Rivne Philharmonia, all in Ukraine.  He is co-creator/composer of the musical GOLDEN that is presently in development in NYC.  He has been a regular guest speaker for L’Abri for the last 30 years.  He lives in Memphis with Day, his wife of 40 years, and has one son, Mason, married to Beth, and two beautiful grandchildren, Jack and Ruthie.

Richard Bradford and his wife Karen are both from Canada and met at Swiss L’Abri in 1993. They returned in January 2000 along with their 2 year old daughter Alexis and their infant son Simon (now 27 and 25) and became workers in 2001. They have been working there ever since and have been the directors of the branch since 2015.

Richard completed his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Trinity Western in British Columbia and went on to do an MA at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.  Within a month of finishing, they landed back in Switzerland.  Richard’s interests are in Christian life, theology, philosophy and cultural issues.  He also enjoys playing hockey on a local team and back-country skiing whenever possible.

Doug Groothuis, Ph.D., is Distinguished University Research Professor of Apologetics and Christian Worldview at Cornerstone University and Seminary. He is the author of twenty books, including, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (InterVarsity, 2022), Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal (InterVarsity, 2024), and The Soul in Cyberspace (Baker 1997)., as well as over thirty academic papers. He writes regularly for The Worldview Bulletin and The Christian Research Journal. His weekly podcast is called TruthTribe (Life Audio). 

Dr. Mike Sugimoto worked at Swiss L'Abri from 1979-84. He studied literary/social theory at the University of Minnesota and Cornell. He is a professor of Asian Studies at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA and is married to Carolyn, with two adult children, Michael and Jack. He and Carolyn were founders of Beacon Hill, a classical Christian school in Camarillo, California.

Timothy D Padgett is the Resident Theologian at the Colson Center. He is the author of Swords and Plowshares, a study of evangelical views on war, and the volume editor of Dual Citizens, a survey of political ideas in Christianity Today. His main areas of study are church and state, war and peace, and the ways the ideas of Christianity have played out across history. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and four children. 

Together with his wife, Terri, Mark Ryan spent numerous years working with L’Abri Fellowship in the U.S. and Canada. More recently, he served as Director of the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Theological Seminary and continues to serve Covenant as Adjunct Professor of Religion and Culture. Currently, Mark serves with Sage Christianity in St. Louis, MO, with Calvin Theological Seminary and the Missional Training Center in Phoenix, AZ. Mark and Terri have been married for 29 years and are parents of two teens and one twenty-something. 

Esther Dalton has been a worker at the Southborough L'Abri in Massachusetts since 2021. Previously, she has lived in Canada, Pakistan, Southern California, and India, and has worked as a teacher, trainer, and curriculum developer. She has degrees in English and creative writing from Biola University and Loyola Marymount University, LA. She is passionate about language, literature, the work of the imagination, biblical literacy, and how all of these things relate to following Jesus. When she's not keeping up with family and friends in different timezones, she's probably making something, reading something, or wondering if it's time for tea.

Byung-Chul Han's book, The Crisis of Narration would be a focal point for reflection. We will discuss the basic Christian story and how we can remember and enact it in the church and in community

Beauty as a missing component of faith has been a popular theme when discussing contemporary approaches to apologetics or worship. This workshop affirms this enlarged space for the beautiful, yet explores the historic fact that conceptions of beauty in art (or as a visionary utopia) have also been seductive features of fascist movements whether abroad (Nazism, Imperial Japan) or submovements at home. Examples include: novelist Yukio Mishima, film Fight Club, HBO series Succession, as well as notions of human flourishing among the dissident Right.

This talk goes deep into the Scriptural background of Jesus's responses to temptation, seeking to learn how Jesus's way of dealing with testing might be an example for us in our own wilderness wanderings.

Everyone has experienced the reluctance to admit that they were wrong.  Yet, Christianity is rooted in the idea that starting out, everyone was living as rebels against God in the biggest issues of life—nobody is born a Christian.  In every single area of life, real progress is made only when we face our mistakes, confusions, obfuscations, and pride.  This is an integral part of the moral order in which we find ourselves.  The wondrous invitation of redemption is laid out before us everyday.  The evidence for Christianity is everywhere, but it all begins with our experience of our own heart.

America is a deeply politically and culturally divided nation. With each month that goes by, our public rhetoric seems to grow more angry, our tolerance less, and our ability to live with each other more and more uncertain. Increasingly we see our politicized Culture Wars inside the Church as well as outside. Can Christians engage as citizens in the debates and controversies that roil our society without compromise but also without being sucked into the anger and hatred? In this lecture we’ll be trying to step back from arguing about what our positions should be on every issue and grapple with the question of how we as Christians engage with political, social and cultural questions and with people who disagree with us about them -inside and outside the Church.

In the last few years, increasing numbers of people have adopted ever more extreme socio-political positions. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 80 years after the fall of Berlin, hammers and sickles and antisemitic tropes are all the rage, literally. Statues are toppled and artworks defaced in acts of political theater. These things are not just extraordinary; they are irrational. Lacking any sufficient worldview, our post-Christian culture is leaping into non-reason.

I will give a Christian response to Byung-Chul Han's work, The Disappearance of Rituals. We all engage in some kind of ritual - regular  and meaningful actions associated with particular events. But are there rituals with transcendent meaning? Christianity provides us with rituals in the church and elsewhere to restore meaningful ritual, conducive to good living.

This talk confronts some of the common fears of our digital age with a study of God's covenant faithfulness and our faithfulness in response.

In the early 2000’s, I participated in the Stress Reduction Clinic founded by the physician and Zen Buddhist Jon Kabat-Zinn, from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  Since that time, his clinic has spread around the country. Mindfulness and meditation are central to the clinic. Throughout the six-week program, I continually thought about the Bible – asking myself where its teaching overlapped with what I was learning, and where “the paths divided”. During the next year, I read two of Kabat-Zinn’s books, to help me better answer these questions. Mindfulness meditation is now mainstream, as one of the most effective ways of coping with stress and anxiety. And the research is clear – it can lower blood-pressure and create a sense of well-being.  In this workshop, we will consider the Bible’s wisdom on coping with anxiety and stress, and evaluate where it overlaps with the wisdom of the East and where “the paths divide.”

More than any other play by Shakespeare (and more than most other plays), King Lear grapples with the question of suffering and presents us with the deepest human anguish.  Its characters face pervasive anxiety in many different ways and on many different fronts, and many of their fears are realized.  At one point, Edgar, having disguised himself to avoid capture by his own father (who has been deceived into thinking Edgar a traitor), says he has faced the worst anyone can face—only to regret his words when things get substantially worse for him. At that point, he laments, “Worse I may be yet: the worst is not / So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’”  Yet this darkest play, so full of anxiety and tragedy, does not lack light and redemption.  Join us as we explore anxiety and redemption in King Lear.

From the very beginning, believers have struggled to find their place in wider society. Are they Jews? Are they Romans? Are they citizens of any nation? Of no nation? Some Christians today call for us to embrace the stance of a “prophetic witness” over against culture, while others long to establish a formally Christian nation. Which way should we go?

Bitcoin- is it a get-rich quick scheme, scammy internet money, or a technological innovation with the transformative power of the printing press? Come learn about bitcoin, what it has done and might do, can and can't do. Reflect with us on this disruptive innovation in the light of the Bible.