A New Generation Experiences a Stream of Truth and Christian Hospitality

American higher education is shifting. College enrollment has declined for years. Christian colleges in particular face steep financial challenges, and many are shrinking or closing. The cultural landscape is increasingly fractured, anxious, and distrustful.  
Though the cultural landscape can feel daunting, a brighter story unfolds in the faithful efforts of those serving students with wisdom and hospitality.  

For many in the FEBC, Tim Johnson is a familiar name. For seventeen years, he pastored Rock Valley Chapel in Beloit, Wisconsin, shepherding a congregation marked by biblical depth, solid elder leadership, and a steady commitment to the gospel. Though the church became part of the FEBC only in his final 3–4 years there, Tim has been, and remains, joyfully ordained within the fellowship. His years in Beloit were fruitful and faithful, filled with preaching, discipleship, funerals, weddings, youth camps, and the steady, unseen labor of pastoring a local church.  

So, when Tim sensed the Lord drawing him into a new work a little over a year ago, he wasn’t looking for a career change as much as asking the Lord, “Is there anything else You might have for me in these next years?” What he discovered was a ministry that seemed to weave together every thread of his past - teaching, shepherding, apologetics, leadership, even military discipline, and even previous fundraising experience - into one role. What he stepped into was something you may or may not have heard of: the Christian Study Center movement.  

Tim now serves as the Executive Director of The Bradley Study Center, a ministry just two blocks from the campus of Virginia Tech, a major public university of more than 32,000 students. In a cozy building just off campus, students gather at tables with coffee, textbooks, and laptops. Volunteers bring in trays of home‑cooked meals. A quiet fireplace flickers. And everywhere you look, students are talking about theology, ethics, Scripture, engineering, philosophy, science, and how their faith makes sense of the world they’re about to step into. This environment is the result of deliberate, prayerful leadership.  

As Executive Director, Tim shapes the rhythms and relationships that define the center. He oversees a growing array of programs, from weekly Fellows gatherings to short courses and faculty initiatives. He meets regularly with students and fosters the kind of hospitality that encourages honest conversation. He leads fundraising efforts, manages staff and volunteers, extends the building’s hours to meet student needs, stewards donor‑supported resources, and works to expand the center’s physical space as interest grows. It is a pastoral, intellectual, and organizational calling all at once, and a ministry of presence as much as programs.  

Tim sees a pattern emerging across campuses nationwide: Today’s students are desperately hungry for community, stability, and truth. Attendance at the weekly Fellows program has more than doubled since Tim started in September. Students stay long past closing hours, not wanting the conversation to end.  

​“It’s a home away from home,” Tim explains. It is also, in his words, “a place where we help people think Christianly about the world for the glory of God.” But what draws them isn’t entertainment or programming. There’s something deeper, cultural, and even generational.  

​This generation grew up in the shadow of terrorism, school shootings, cultural fragmentation, and the isolation of COVID‑19. Many feel unanchored. Their questions are not philosophical abstractions; they are cries for clarity and meaning.

Study centers speak to this moment by offering hospitality, intellectual depth, genuine community, and a place where honest questions meet honest answers.  

​Tim says, “We’re the grandchildren of Francis and Edith Schaeffers’ L’Abrí, stepping into a stream that began long before us.” To fully understand the power of this model, we must go back to where this stream began.  

The Stream

In the 1950s, Francis and Edith Schaeffer moved to the small Swiss village of Huémoz and opened their home to anyone seeking honest conversation about life, faith, and culture. They called it L’Abri, meaning “the shelter.” Their ministry emerged during the turbulent 1960s and 70s, when Western culture was being reshaped by new ideas, political movements, and spiritual uncertainty.  ​

Francis Schaeffer became known worldwide for his ability to engage art, cultural criticism, philosophy, and politics through a deeply biblical lens. His book Pollution and the Death of Man anticipated the philosophical foundations of the environmental movement decades before it became mainstream. He offered Christians a way to understand and engage culture without fear.  
Edith, often working quietly in the background, provided the spiritual and emotional architecture of the ministry. She organized meals, welcomed strangers, prayed continually, and created an atmosphere of warm, thoughtful hospitality.  

​Helen Cloyd, a current member of FEBC’s Crosspoint Bible Church in Omaha, Nebraska, stepped into the stream in the early 1970’s. Frustrated by shallow teaching and longing for depth, she read Edith’s book L’Abrí and knew she had to go. She sold what she owned and traveled to Switzerland with a friend. 

For three months, she studied taped lectures by Francis in the mornings, worked in the afternoons, and gathered for long conversations and worship with people from around the world. She typed Schaeffer's correspondence from a Dictaphone of his recorded voice, a front‑row seat to the pastoral mind of one of the century’s most influential Christian thinkers. She saw the Schaeffers’ marriage up close, remembering how they listened carefully, spoke slowly, and prayed before responding.   

​The hospitality, honesty, depth, and intellectual discipline she experienced at L’Abrí have shaped the rest of her life. Back in the States, she has opened her home for years to young women, students, and ministry workers. She has quietly practiced what the Schaeffers embodied.  ​

From Switzerland to Vancouver to Virginia  ​

One of the major offshoots of L’Abri was Regent College in Vancouver, founded in 1968, not to train pastors, but to shape everyday Christians to think deeply and biblically.  
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From Regent came the next development: the Christian Study Center movement. There are now nearly forty centers across the United States, grounded in hospitality, conversation, intellectual seriousness, and the integration of faith and learning.  

​The Bradley Study Center is part of that lineage.  ​

The Bradley Study Center: A Modern Shelter  ​

When Tim arrived in Blacksburg, he stepped into a ministry already rooted in prayer and vision. Young adults, shaped by cultural upheaval and longing for stability, are drawn instinctively to a place where truth is spoken with love, where Scripture is honored, where hard questions are welcomed, and where hospitality reflects the heart of Christ.  

What began in a Swiss chalet is now shaping conversations, convictions, and callings in a Virginia town thousands of miles away.  
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God is still using the same simple ingredients: hospitality, truth, prayer, and a willingness to welcome honest questions. And He is using obedient Christians, like Tim Johnson and Helen Cloyd, to walk alongside a new generation of thinkers.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Stutler grew up attending an FEBC church and became the editor of the Fellowship Focus in 2025. She enjoys interviewing and reporting on stories God is writing across the fellowship. She and her husband, Josh, live in Fremont, Nebraska, where they both work at Midland University. ​