This is a complete and accurate transcript of the oral history interview of George Franklin "Frank" Spotts (CN 90, #T1) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words which were recorded are omitted. In a few cases, the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case "[unclear]" was inserted. Also, grunts and verbal hesitations such as "ah" or "um" were usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even rule than written English.
...Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker.
...Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
( ) Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[ ] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber.
This transcription was made by D. Reifsnyder and J. H. Nasgowitz and was completed on March 21, 1990.
Collection 90, #T1. Interview of George Franklin Spotts by Mary Ann Buffington, October 4, 1979.
BUFFINGTON: This is an Oral History interview conducted with Mr. [George] Franklin Spotts by Mary Ann Buffington from the Billy Graham Center Archives Missionary Sources Collection. The interview was conducted on the Wheaton College Campus on October 4, 1979, at 2:30 p.m. I will apologize in advance. Mr. Spotts has already been talking with me about thirty minutes, and the tape was blank, so we shall review briefly the information that we covered. I believe we first talked about your coming to Wheaton, and your background, as your father being in education, so maybe you want to just take off and have a short brief summary of what you told me in the last few minutes.
SPOTTS: Well, okay. Yeah, I...I heard a lot about Wheaton College mostly through books or testimonies, and my father was working as the extension director at the University of Michigan in the thumb area of Port Huron, Michigan, when I graduated from college and all through our...and when I graduated from high school and all through our junior high and high school days, we were continually encouraged to get a good education. And upon graduation from high school in 1961, I went to the local community college and, in 1963, I enrolled as a student psychology major at the University of Michigan, where I was for the school year of 1963-64. And the summer of 1964, I received a letter from Mr. Wendy Collins asking us to go to spend a year in France as a short term type missionary assignment. It was kind of a one man teen team directing American high school club ministries. And while I was there, as I saw people and as the Lord spoke to me, I felt the real burden to get back someday and work with the French. And so that burden and...and with that as a long term goal, I desired to come back and have some training, Christian Bible type training, which I hadn't had at that time. And I wrote to Dr. Sam Wolgemuth who was then the President of Youth for Christ of America, and he encouraged me to pursue Wheaton College, which I had suggested to him. And he apparently contacted someone here at the College, and I apparently couldn't get in because the enrollments had already been completed, filled, I think it was in January of the year for the fall term. And...but there was a possibility of me coming to summer school. So I came here for the summer, and did well, and then I just waited for the possibility of coming as a student in January. And I went home and substituted and took three more classes at the University. And so I was officially enrolled as a student then; it would have been in January of 1966. And I graduated then from Wheaton College a year later in January, 1967. So it was really my senior year, just my senior year that I had here, uh, yeah.
BUFFINGTON: Okay, I know you have already talked about most of this, but, I think we...the most important thing you've talked about is your national work in France. And this is after your first, the year you spent as a teen team member, before you came to Wheaton, and then you returned two years after doing other work in the States waiting on the time to pass when you would have a wife and you would return to France with your ministry with Youth for Christ. And I feel like the work you did there was very important and instrumental. It was pioneer work and I think that's some of the major contributions that we can have about preserving your work in France in that area; if you just tell me again about your national involvement, that has really impressed me as being the primary material that we need to preserve.
SPOTTS: Okay. We...we were desirous of going to France and of working with the French and of helping them do the job for themselves. I think that's maybe the summary as I see it, as the biblical plan of what all missionary work should be. I don't see missionary work as being something where a pastor settles down with a nice congregation overseas. I never see the missionary work described in the scriptures as that. And I think that the national people are so much more equipped from the standpoint of culture and context and language to do the job than people who are coming from foreign countries. It seems that one French fellow who is on our staff told me that in his area of France, I think he was the only Frenchman working. And there were something like fifteen foreigners, foreigners from Switzerland or from the States or other parts of the world. And I said, "You know, what we need is to see French young people trained and to give them the tools to do the job," because, in fact, that's what's lacking. I think that's lacking, not just in France, but I think as we go into a culture or a subculture, wherever it might be, we have to really look at that and we have to adapt our, our methodology so that those people can understand the message and not be turned off because of our methodology or because of our lifestyle or appearance or whatever. And so it comes back to that thing where, like Paul says, that you have to be all things to all people and you know sometimes that means to be maybe humiliated in some ways and maybe it has something to do with American pride and I think we have to get over that to be effective. And after my work as probation officer in St. Clair County and after I was married and after another year of language study, 1969-70....
BUFFINGTON: Where were you for the language study?
SPOTTS: We were...it was a new school...it was just started for missionaries in French speaking countries at Albertville. I think this was the second year it operated. Jacques Blocher, who is Billy Graham's translator in France and a long time member of our own Youth for Christ board, was starting the school. And he has a lot of involvement in the Ivory Coast and some of the African speaking countries and has seen a need to train missionaries so that they can properly communicate. Even though sometimes they were working in tribal ministries with still another language they, in fact, still had to deal with the government and in the big cities where French was being spoken. So we went to school there and upon graduation in the fall of 1970, we moved to Valence where we started working with Jean Jacques Weiler, who was a young evangelist. Jacques was a graduate of the Greater European Mission School in la Mole. He was struggling, had no, really no financial backing, had no big burden. But he just needed a lot of help. His burden was a lot bigger then what he was able to do himself. And he had just gotten this old farm, I think made a purch...I think it was originally a $9,000 investment. Seems like peanuts [laughs], and he was working club ministries and doing a lot of music team work. Two summers, he directed the...the World Singers, who had their start overseas. Even before the time they were married, and of course now they've become very well known in this country singing in Graham crusades and other ministries around the country. And we went to help. We started by working on the Club ministries, and the goal as we went from one ministry to the next, whether it be the weekend ministry thing or the club ministry thing or camp ministry things or whatever, expanding, really, the ministries that were there, just being a help. Sometimes it was just a matter of running errands, just a matter of doing a lot of dirty work maybe that we could do, and yet, it would free up the French people to do the job that we always felt they should be doing.
BUFFINGTON: Um-hum.
SPOTTS: And one thing after another, one ministry after another became, well kind of...became replaced by French people, which was the goal. The French board was established. We said the funding had to come from France. At first they did not want to ask Christian people, who were a very small minority, and they didn't feel they could ask French people, for funding. And they said that if the work was going to develop, it had to in fact be developed that way because that was the plan, a biblical plan. And money shouldn't be coming from America all the time for missions. And we set up, the second year we were there, the national office. And the state of Michigan, with Greg Lundun [sp?], who was the director, had Paul Roberts there at the National office; they were looking to develop a plan that they were going to call the five year plan.
BUFFINGTON: Um-hum.
SPOTTS: And, they set down a number of goals, and we tried to set down some things that we wanted to see accomplished. Some of those were things like various literature distributions, music...we had a music team and an exchange of some people. We had some people here from the States going over for leadership training. We tried to help in any and every way we possibly could. And we actually met some goals in that program in about four years. And we came back. We felt that, you know, if we stay there we'll just...you know, Franklin will always do it, and so it's better that we, you know, not count on Franklin to do it. We came back, and we started becoming involved in Youth for Christ in St. Clair County, which we'd help start when we were high school; that's really how I became involved in Youth for Christ in the first place. And as we continued to work there we would recognize a necessity as we would correspond of going back over to France for various assignments in leadership and music and taking teams of kids. I think we've been over five or six times since those days. And the most recent assignment was our work this past year where we finally saw the completion of a half-million dollar training facility, training camp facility, which was in the works now for ten years, because that was actually the facility...that old camp that Jacques had just purchased when we went there the first time, and the thing's paid for and it's operating on a full time basis, French staff, and so that's...well, a lot of exciting things, but those are some of them.
BUFFINGTON: You mentioned earlier about the literature that you were instrumental in gathering together on your first trip,...
SPOTTS: Oh, yeah, yeah.
BUFFINGTON: ...and if you could talk about the hymns...
SPOTTS: Oh, yeah.
BUFFINGTON: ...that you gathered in a little hymnbook, and also the materials that you thought were possibly the first French-speaking material in handbooks for Youth for Christ.
SPOTTS: Yeah, we did...we encouraged the guys, of course, to teach the kids, because there's no...well, they don't have any Sunday school, for example, in their churches. And, we encouraged teaching of both doctrinal things but also practical things, there's really a Biblical emphasis for both. And a lot of the things that the kids were continually confronted with...oh, the area of cults, of relationships with people, one of the hardest things in a country like France is, oh, political and philosophical questions, where the people are so individualistic, so Descartian; they're rationalists, and of course since World War II they've gotten so much into the existential philosophy, particularly the younger kids, and they struggle with these things. Well, what is the Biblical answer? And so our club material that we developed was really as a result of one of these leadership training camps, where we said, well listen...how come French kids don't come to Christ? You know, what are those roadblocks, what are those barriers? We talked about those barriers and made a list of about thirty things, and each one of those we built a club program around it. So we in fact I think developed the first club ... Christian club material in the French language. When we first went there, we also were meeting with the kids, and some of them knew Christian choruses and things were in French, but there was no book, they...just kinda knew things, well, you know, here, you don't speak the...you don't know these things, you know, it's not one of those things, of course, where somebody coming in from the outside would know...how do you, you know, how do you learn, and what about these new kids that are coming, how are they going to fit in? So we started, we started writing all these things down, and developed a little songbook, which they still use, with other additions to it. And then of course the development of the office, the development as kids became more mature. They wanted to have their own church, not uniquely for them, but for the Christian people, and working behind the scenes we helped get the [unclear] preachers started, because they were the group that were working there in the area. And here again, it was always with a national pastor, which has now been. They were interested in evangelism, and at that time the mode in Europe, and I think there was even some of that here in the States, was to have a coffee-bar ministry, so we started a coffee-bar ministry near the train station as a front part of our offices. And much of my work was even, you know, equipping the facilities.
BUFFINGTON: Sure.
SPOTTS: In terms of decorating them, my wife is an artist; she did a lot of the preparing of literature, things that we'd pass out...invitations and things that we'd pass out to the kids in the streets. And, oh, everything from the stationary to the publicity all had to have a hand that way, and my wife was really quite good at it.
BUFFINGTON: And once you got them there, then your background in the theater, and song and all, kinda played a part there, I guess,...
SPOTTS: Yeah.
BUFFINGTON: ...after her art work got them there then...
SPOTTS: Yeah, she...for example, she developed some posters that we used with the music groups. We toured with two different groups. One was an American group, the Freedom Singers...they were known here in the States as the Freeway, and then our French group, which was a super group really, was known as the Les Reflets or the Reflections. And she developed the posters and the brochures and the handouts and things that we used in those concerts, high school concerts. It's not an unheard-of thing for the French people to say [unclear] ...yeah, you know we got these state schools over here...and they'll never let you in. And I really found that being an American had some significant advantages, because we always, you know, presented much of what we did in our concerts more as a cultural kind of a thing, using negro spirituals...
BUFFINGTON: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
SPOTTS: ...and then selling records and giving out information, and having evening meetings in the town halls or in churches or whatever and telling the kids, you know, if you want to come again, you know, come, and while we couldn't preach per se in the schools, we always were able to do that more in depth...I think the school meetings, in a lot of ways, were kind, you know, of pre-evangelism anyway. But they just...really the groups, they were almost...sometimes it's a danger, but I think these kids became almost Christian idols in some terms, and we're still...we're still going in France. If I go to France they'll always ask us to sing certain negro spirituals, wherever we go, which is fun, I love to do it. But really, had a...it's had an impact and it still is, with the records...
BUFFINGTON: ...and things that were left. While you were talking, you mentioned in here about the concept of the people, just the mind-set of the French people...what kind of obstacles did you find in the churches with the French way of thought and the predominant Roman Catholicism, or were there...was there a problem?
SPOTTS: Well, France is of course known as a Roman Catholic country. That in fact means that kids go up to the time of their first catechism and came back, you know, old people--come back when they're about ready to die. Which does not make for the best communication of any kind of content, whether it be biblical or traditional...and so in terms of people really believing their religion in an outward practical way, and making it their life, no. It's their history, and it's viewed as their history by both the kids and by the adult community. But particularly by the kids who, of course since World War II, they only see a tremendous emphasis on the injustices of the church, as they study for example the crusades. And a lot of times they talk about these things--those are big barriers to kids coming to the Lord. You know...is that what your religion does? Do you believe that? Is that right? and of course you always say well, obviously not, that wasn't right, and I agree with you. And that of course is sometimes a shocker, because you're a Christian, and being a Christian, and just talking about Christ is so much different than talking about a religious heritage, whether it be Protestant or Catholic and I think the whole emphasis has been talking about a heritage of history, because of course they do have a history...at least in comparing it with our country, we have almost no history....
BUFFINGTON: Right [laughs].
SPOTTS: All our history is over there, really, and so even the Protestant kids...my goodness, they don't preach the reformed doctrine that those Huguenots gave their lives for. Literally thousands and thousands were slaughtered off in the time of the revolution. People were guillotined and fled the country to Geneva and Alsace and Germany and Holland, and today the kids that are raised in the Protestant churches and in Protestant homes, it's all, it's all just a lot of, a lot of history, that's it, and there's not the devotion to the Lord that the early believers, and even in the Catholic Church the time, oh there were many believers. Blase Pascal was probably the most outstanding example, if you've ever read his thoughts, of a Catholic believer, but you have others who made substantial marks on the culture, even...well of course this is going back into church history now, with the church councils, you know, the great university in Paris, the Sorbonne, said to be the oldest university in the world. That was a school, of course, where John Calvin was trained, but in that school the training was for preparation for the ministry, and at those dates they tell us that the examination periods were something like 12-14 hours nonstop, without food or rest, and those people learned the Latin and Calvin is reported to have known Greek and Hebrew, and much of the scripture by heart, they say. And there was a tremendous devotion on the part of those people, which today just is no longer at all.
BUFFINGTON: Does not exist. Dedication and....
SPOTTS: The Catholic Church is hurting for priests, even within their own church, and we went anyplace that would have us, you know. We went into Catholic schools, no problem. We went into Protestant places, no problem. Any Catholic churches, no problem. Then they talk about, "Well, are you Catholic or Protestant," and we just say, "Well, we're Christians," and I don't like to get into the...
BUFFINGTON: Nomenclature there....
SPOTTS: Yeah, recognizing the right things about both traditions when they started, because today they're far from where they were when they started. And that is tragic because they've gotten away from the Word of God. It's really....
BUFFINGTON: You've found the ground really fertile there for planting the seed of....
SPOTTS: Oh yeah, they're very...they're very hungry. I think French people are very hungry. I think missionaries get discouraged because they get a cold reception at first. The French people are not the warm American people. We often make the comparison between the high walls around the French homes and the difficulty of getting the Gospel to people. You know, this whole thing with the shutters and the bars on the windows and coming through the wars, and never being sure if you can trust the next person or not has made a tremendous impact on the people who have been taught to question everything anyways, and when you can talk to people and you can get behind those walls, then you've got it made. It's getting behind those walls that's hard to do. It's getting into the home. But once you're in the home, hey, they love you for ever, I've found. They're much closer, their families, than we are, they're much more sensitive about things than we are, and they're not in a hurry like we are.
BUFFINGTON: Don't rush them. [laughs]
SPOTTS: Don't rush them, really. Really. They know a lot more about their history, they have a desire to learn, they're questioning people. But here again they're individuals; French people are individuals, and they don't do it just to conform; they do it because they're personally convinced, and so although many times it takes them longer to be convinced, after they do become convinced, I believe they're much more solid...
BUFFINGTON: They're stronger in their faith.
SPOTTS: They're much stronger than the traditional folk decisions that we often see here in America.
BUFFINGTON: Do you think that individualistic spirit carries over in their church life, in the churches that spring up?
SPOTTS: Oh yeah....
BUFFINGTON: What did you find about the churches there; I mean....
SPOTTS: Well, for one thing the churches...churches would have a hard time being big churches. The big church thing in America does not at all fit the French mentality. The Brethren/Quaker/Mennonite style church, even, well, our Evangelical Free church...there's a considerable difference between the style of service there than here. They...they are most...let's say most warm towards certain things that have to be in a service. And the preaching of a sermon is not necessarily one of those. The sharing is one of those, the communion services every Sunday, that's a part of their worship. Even many times in French Christian homes, at the end of the supper (I think as it was in biblical times, for that matter) they would pass the bread and the wine around, and there would be that remembrance, not having to be done by Christians, by some minister, but just as the head of the house...this is in fact a small church.
BUFFINGTON: Right.
SPOTTS: And that's how they think of it. There is not the problem with cultural hang-ups in many ways that we have, I'm thinking, for example, in terms of the wine...which made me thought of that...they don't have a cultural barrier there. They don't have a cultural barrier about what you have to dress like when you go to church.
BUFFINGTON: To church or whatever....
SPOTTS: If the man is a farmer, he might come that way shortly after doing his chores. There is a warmness that is sensed, I think, by even interpreting some scriptures literally that we somehow have forgotten and probably would be repulsed about in America. Such things as greeting the brother with a kiss. They are very hospitable and wanting to have you over for a meal. The meals, of course, for French people are something that is a big part of their life. There is no thing as this cheap American type food...junk food. And those are the best times, those are the best times to share with the people, around their table and in their homes. And if you can get past all the barriers that lead up to that, I really think you're in. Yeah....
BUFFINGTON: If they're comfortable they'll relax and that's where you can communicate....
SPOTTS: You're in their territory.
BUFFINGTON: You're on their level, well, they're on your level at that point. You can have a meeting of minds. Did you find that very difficult to overcome? Which I guess by the second time you were back the language was not as much of a barrier as had been the problem the first.
SPOTTS: Yeah, I think it takes longer to get, to get those barriers broken down, because of their personalities, it does take longer, yes. Yes, it does take longer. We go to our neighbors' homes here in America like almost like they're our own property. We would not think of, you know, asking the neighbor lady for a cup of sugar or whatever, and our first couple years in France, when we lived in an apartment, we got to know our neighbors, the ones that we did know, because of almost crisis situations. In one case, the lady across the hall's husband...she'd just moved in and...was lost in a tragic automobile accident, and she needed help. The people upstairs we got to know because of mail being put in the wrong mailbox And otherwise, you know, if there was a snowstorm, as there was one time, we helped them get out...but that's how you got to meet the people. Otherwise we would have never known them, unless we had gone and knocked on doors and introduced ourselves, and it's not just one of those things where you get to know people like we do here.
BUFFINGTON: Mm-hmm, just to buck up and say, "Hi, I'm your friend."
SPOTTS: Yeah.
BUFFINGTON: That's very interesting. Let's see...I have a couple of other questions I kind of jotted down, but I... seems...I was trying to jot down some of the things we talked about earlier so that I...at the conclusion...when you had to go on your way I could...go back over a few of these things, but...let's see. When you returned the second time...I'm really interested to know, you were working more with nationals than with the American schools and with the American children, and you were training the French people as they were to take over the responsibilities and the leadership in Youth for Christ. How did you...were they responding...how did you get them to be interested in Youth for Christ? How did you approach them and find a...of course I know you've mentioned the other, Jacques Dubowehr [sp.] and had begun a work and had started building with nationals, but I'm sure that America influenced [unclear] a little...
SPOTTS: Well, we were together; we were brothers; we...we would always pray about people that we were considering. Our national board was composed of innately French people who had many...many contacts, the chairman of our board there is Charles Guillot, who...in charge of the radio broadcasts for Trans World Radio, and Jacques and Charles, they do a lot, they're both the chairmans of each other's boards. Jacques serves now, I think, on the boards all of the...or the three...the two Bible schools and the one seminary, and so they're well-known. They...Jacques serves as a member of the Billy Graham board, and they...they have all kinds of contacts with the people and the country, and yet, finding good people is extremely hard, extremely hard, because, quite frankly, going into Christian service in France is not considered to be a successful thing. Too many times when the kids couldn't do anything else they went into Christian service. Christian service, that is, full time, whatever that means. And they, they don't have...they're not producing in the schools the kind of leadership people that we're after. The best people, the best people for ministry are the people that you've been able to pour your lives in, that you've known, that are local people. It's kind of like Paul when he went to Corinth, and he moved in with some fellow tentmakers. You know? And I think old Priscilla and Aquilla there, they kinda followed him around some...they followed him around and vice versa and he poured...obviously, I don't know how much of his time he spent making tents with them, but he obviously had a lot of time to talk to them when he was doing it. It's kind of like, you know, Paul's instructions to Timothy, and here Timothy had an advantage of being raised by a Christian mother and grandmother, but yet Paul obviously spent a tremendous amount of time with him, which is evidenced by his two epistles, and the counsels that he gave to those people (and those are just examples, but) they're obviously...when you read, when you read, you know, the instructions of a man, a young man in the ministry in First and Second Timothy, and you can share those kinds of teachings and those kinds of instructions with somebody else, and a key verse in Youth for Christ has always been, you know, "Those things which ye have learned," to put them into the life of somebody else. That's the second chapter, second verse there. And channel those things that ye have learned of me and in turn pass them along to somebody else. That's really where we've gotten our best staff people...are people that we've been able to channel our hearts and lives into. I think one of the tragic things of both Christian education (maybe I'm being a philosopher now), but too many times the practical, particularly in America today...and the world is not that far apart...how do you deal with your money?
BUFFINGTON: Um-hmm.
SPOTTS: All the scriptural teaching that's given on time...how do you deal with your time? How do you organize yourself? That's what it really boils down to; how do you discipline yourself? And all the scriptural teaching that's given on discipline. The question of authority that Bill Gothard has really built his ministry around. The question of having things together in your home. If people don't make it in the ministry, and the guys that are going under I'm seeing here in the States, it's probably for three reasons. One is a home problem, with the wife or kids or something....
BUFFINGTON: [unclear] affair [unclear] ...breaks down your ministry.
SPOTTS: Yeah. We're so busy out doing it for everybody else's kids that we don't do it for our own, that type of thing. And one is finances, and one is, I think, the pride thing. You know, that has all kinds of ramifications, but it's the same in France. We gotta teach the people those practical things, and I don't feel that enough of that has been taught, and we're making a lot of effort to try to channel those kinds of Biblical truths, because they are, into the lives of the people that we know there.
BUFFINGTON: Do you see the ministry ongoing? It's taken root now; can you see how the YFC ministry is spreading and gaining ground and...
SPOTTS: Yeah, uh...
BUFFINGTON: ...over the years? I mean, you've already mentioned that ten years ago you went, and the $9000 farm had been purchased, and now ten years later they have a beautiful facility and many projects and....
SPOTTS: I think that it will continue to grow because actually one of the goals of the facility is to train kids. And with Jacques' involvement with the Christian community in the country, Christian teachers and pastors and evangelists and people from these schools are going to be able to come down and give short-term teachings which...to a group of kids. And then in the practical area they'll be able to go out, and they'll be able to go back to their little village. France is a country of villages, there are more unevangelized villages in France than in India. That's a statistic, I think, that Greater European Mission has always used.
BUFFINGTON: It's almost incredible [unclear].
SPOTTS: Yeah. There's nobody there. You know, there's no Christian witness whatsoever. You move into a town of thirty-forty thousand people and you really have to look a long time before you can find any Christians... [Buffington begins to speak and he continues under her voice] ...that profess a knowledge of Christ.
BUFFINGTON: Well, you think of France as being, not particularly...well, you think of it as being an evangelized nation, you know, civilized and all that...all the good things that go with our interpretation of it, but....
SPOTTS: Jacques usually quotes that there are probably about three or four hundred thousand evangelicals out of more than fifty million people, so that's really the percentages, yeah. And when a kid comes to the Lord in a community, he needs, he needs to know what to do with himself. And we don't feel that there has been a lot of emphasis made in that area, and here this is again giving them the tools so that they can do it.
BUFFINGTON: ...can go on. Well, now, so then you returned from France after your four years of accomplishing your five year plan and you've continued your work in Port Huron....
SPOTTS: Yes.
BUFFINGTON: What sort of work are you continuing to do there?
SPOTTS: Well, I'm the director of St. Bercana [?] Youth for Christ. We have a staff of...we have one fella working in the area of youth guidance, which is a ministry to underprivileged and [unclear]-type kids; we have two full time staff working in the area of Campus Life, which is where the bulk of the teen-age population is today, the high school average run-of-the-mill American-type kid; we have a music ministry with a guy who works part-time, we have a part-time girl staffer, and we have a secretary, and we do a program there that is somewhat comparable to the programs of Youth for Christ in North America, although each program, as you know, is autonomous, each program sets its policies and sets its job descriptions and sets its goals and sets its...you know, we're free to do whatever we want. We have just done a lot of the same kinds of things that they do other places because it works, you know, and....
BUFFINGTON: Can't beat a known....
SPOTTS: Yeah, you can't beat it. So, if its working one place, maybe its in another area of the country where it wouldn't work for us. It's always been known that people on the west coast are more avant garde than we are in Michigan; we're more conservative, particularly around the Dutch area of the state, and we're from a very conservative area, so we can't do some of the things that people other places do, but we have to be sensitive to those things. I think we are. But our goal is to have a club in every high school in the county. We're in five schools now, and we have one, two, three, four schools to go, so...
BUFFINGTON: Over fifty percent. [laughs]
SPOTTS: Yeah, we're getting there, yeah, we're getting there, yeah...
BUFFINGTON: That's great. Back to your French experience, I just thought of another thing I'd like to ask you about. I know that you were working basically with hostels but what about your involvement with other mission agencies, and I know you mentioned the Evangelical Free Church that was started in the area you were in because of, I guess, missionaries or someone there interested in that church formation. What type relationships did you have with the other mission agencies, or....
SPOTTS: No, in our area there is only one other mission...in our area, where we were... that had any or maybe no other contact, I don't know. But that's the Unevangelized Field Missions, and when we started our church , actually Jacques Nesby who directs the work there in France, who came as the pastor, the first, in the first year of our church. Incidentally the church was really an outgrowth of ministry, you know, and that's the way a church has to be.
BUFFINGTON: Right.
SPOTTS: A church unfortunately, and I do get turned off many times by some missionary groups at work, because many people think the first thing they have to have is a building, and they have to invite the people into the building, for ministry. Quite frankly that is not at all the Biblical pattern, not at all the Biblical pattern. That's the American pattern...but it might work here with all the neat bussing programs and everything else, but that was never the way to do evangelism. And so we are very sympathetic to the missionaries there that were working with the Unevangelized Field Missions, because they, too, they were developing many tools, particularly in the area of printing. They have a printing press which is about an hour's drive from where we were, and we got to know some of the missionary families there. Otherwise we had almost no contact with foreign missionaries. In fact, we were kind of the unique American family and that in a town of...in an area really of over a hundred thousand people. So I think our town of Valence is about, Valence and suburbs must be about eighty thousand in the areas out around the towns all around, yeah. So, there's an area that was touched by the Reform, but has had no contact with foreign missionary-type groups, with the exception of occasional groups that are coming through, for example, Wheaton College Choir. For the two years....I remember two concerts that we'd been there with the guys, and you know when they come through then we have them, yeah, but, you know, those things happen, and they'll always be a good thing, ...
BUFFINGTON: I was thinking, though, more in terms of what you were discussing, the permanent-type, resident missionaries that were there for [an expressed] term. Well, as I said I was not going to keep you for ever, and we have managed to talk for about an hour since I got the tape recorder to record,...
SPOTTS: Is that right?
BUFFINGTON: ...but um, your contribution, I feel, is great, and I certainly appreciate your time and the information that we, we've [unclear]. Perhaps, in a few more years when you're back in Wheaton again...hopefully it won't be as long as your last visit you said, but maybe we could get together again, and discuss a more in-depth...more things, because I feel like definitely you've seen how much you know that we would like to hear, and ...
SPOTTS: Um-hmm, well, we continue our contacts, and that's something that we'll never give up, even as we're making plans tomorrow for a couple teams of kids going over with Project Serve to work in developing, building churches and camps and other things, you know...where American kids and people can make a contribution, those help, again those help kinds of ministries.
BUFFINGTON: Right, right. Well, Thank you.
END OF TAPE