Southborough Staff, 2012




Dick and Mardi Keyes

Dick Keyes is the Director of L'Abri Fellowship in Southborough, Massachusetts, where he has worked with his wife and family since 1979. He holds a B.A. in History from Harvard University, and an M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

Dick 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 for eight years. He has been an adjunct professor at Gordon Conwell Seminary and Westminster Theological Seminary.
He is the author of Beyond Identity, True Heroism, Chameleon Christianity, Seeing Through Cynicism, and several chapters in anthologies such as No God But God, ed. Os Guinnes, Finding God at Harvard, ed. Kelly Monroe, and New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics from Intervarsity Press. He is currently writing a book on the significance of Jesus’ questions. He has lectured widely in the U.S. and also in Europe and Korea.

As with many workers in L'Abri, Dick's interests are many and varied. If there is any integrating idea it is the attempt to connect important aspects of modern life to Biblical truth with a theological, apologetic and pastoral concern. His writing on identity, heroism and cynicism, for example, are efforts to help Christians toward a more integrated and engaged faith, but also to help those who are not Christians to be able to see the claims of Jesus from a fresh perspective. Dick enjoys reading, working in the woods, rowing and playing blues and ragtime guitar for self-therapy.

Dick and Mardi are minority members of an African American Church, which has enriched their lives and experience of worship enormously. Dick is a member of the Ministerial Team.
Mardi graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in Biblical History in 1968. Shortly after graduation, she married Dick Keyes, and in 1970, they moved to Europe to work with L'Abri. They spent six months in Switzerland, and eight and a half years in England (London and Greatham). While working with L'Abri in London, a very multicultural church met in their home.

In 1979, the Keyes moved to Southborough, Massachusetts, where, along with the Seagren family from the Swiss L’Abri, they opened the first residential branch of L'Abri in the United States. Mardi's work at home includes hospitality, serving meals, tutoring students and managing their work, teaching and writing. She also travels in the United States and abroad, to speak at conferences, colleges and universities.

Since about 1980, Dick and Mardi have been on the Board of Help a Child, a charitable Christian organization providing homes, food, healthcare, education and job training to orphans and other poor children in India and Africa.

Mardi has lectured on a variety of topics, including hospitality, the problem of evil, the family, children, adolescence, youth culture, the Christian mind, feminism and other gender issues. Mardi has published a number of articles, and a booklet entitled Feminism & the Bible. She also contributed a chapter in response to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, in the book, Women and the Future of the Family. In her lectures and writing, Mardi relates Biblical teaching to social history and contemporary culture.

Mardi and Dick are the parents of three grown sons, and are grandparents of five! Chris, the oldest, lives nearby in Massachusetts, is a State Police officer, is married to Liz and has two sons, Owen and James. Tim, their middle son, is an ornithologist and wildlife biologist (who has spoken on the biblical environmental ethic at L'Abri conferences). Tim's wife Alice is also an environmentalist with expertise in water resources. They live in Brunswick on the southern coast of Georgia and have one daughter, Molly. Ben, their youngest son is married to Nickaela and they have both joined us working in L’Abri here in Southborough. They have twin daughters, Ellie and Abby who are a wonderful presence in the L’Abri house.



Joe & Sue Morrell

After having grown up in the countryside of Western Australia, Sue moved to Perth and became a Registered Nurse. She worked in a teaching hospital for several years and then traveled to Britain to become a midwife. It was during that time of traveling in Europe and living in London that Sue became familiar with the work of L'Abri in Hampshire. Sue joined the staff in August 1987 and continued working there after she and Joe married in 1992. Joe and Sue moved to Southborough in 1995 where they now live with their two sons Luke and Nate. They are responsible for most of the day to day running of the house amidst tutoring, lecturing and offering hospitality and meals to the students and visitors.

Sue's interests include gardening, learning about music and literature from students, reading about "simplifying life" in the busyness of today's culture and enjoying the beautiful outdoors of New England with Joe and the children. Sue is also a board member of Luke's school whose founder's have had a long relationship with L'Abri.

Joe grew up in Seattle and graduated in music from the Cornish Institute of the Allied Arts in 1982. He taught piano for several years and then moved to France to study French, and found his way to Swiss L'Abri where he stayed for a time as a student and helper. After spending a year at London Bible College he then joined the L'Abri staff in Switzerland in 1989. Joe and Sue met there and then moved to England to be married.

Joe's interests involve mainly culture and the arts, and he has lectured on music and literature and also on various aspects of relationships. He likes movies, gardening, theater, has a penchant for the New Yorker magazine, and doesn't want you to know he enjoys reading recipes from any cookbook or rag he can get his hands on.