Alexander Strauch began his early boyhood in bustling Newark, New Jersey, surrounded by concrete in a tight-knit community of German-speaking immigrants. At age ten, his family moved to the country—a dramatic change from cramped city-life to sprawling forests, filled with beautiful streams and woods. Alex loved his new environment and began to hunt reptiles and fish almost every day.  

In this podcast, Alex shares his life story, describing how God used his love for fishing to bring him to Christ. When he was invited by a friend to fish at a Christian camp in New York State, little did he know that his friend was fishing for his soul. Alex was saved there at age eleven and, by age thirteen, he was compelled to serve Christ in ministry. After attending Bible college, Alex landed at Littleton Bible Chapel in the midst of the Jesus Revolution. It was there he met his future wife, Marilyn, as they ministered to youth together. Alex served as an elder of this church for more than forty years and now devotes his time to helping other churches better conform to the Bible’s teaching on leadership roles and loving one another. His books Biblical Eldership, The New Testament Deacon, and Agape Leadership have been a great help to churches around the world. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today, you're going to hear the life story of one of our dear friends, Alexander Strauch, and how he was invited to go fishing because he loves fishing, and found out actually someone was fishing for him. Hope you enjoy the discussion. So Jason, we have a brother that we've really benefited from for a long time. His name is Alexander Strauch.

So I think you introduced me to his books on biblical eldership and New Testament deacons, I don't know, 25 years ago or something like that. And they hold a special part in both of our libraries. I call it the gold standard. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, we do, Alex.

We call that like the gold standard. So you were writing about eldership and then deacons. It seems like he can't stop writing about love. You know, he's always, like, somehow we got to figure out how to love each other in these churches. Is that what he's talking about?

Yeah, your book titled Bite and Devour, yikes. I didn't invent that title. It came from the apostle Paul. It's called Blameshifting, Alex. Yeah.

You could say it's plagiarism. It was plagiarism. But yeah, so, hey, you got two fans over here. We recommend your stuff all the time. We use them and really, really am thankful.

And hey, you're doing some videos as well. How do people find those videos on eldership and deacons? Well, we have the website, Biblical Eldership Resources, and on that is School of the Shepherds, and we have many videos on that. So, just go to Biblical Eldership Resources, and you'll see it all right there. Fantastic.

Biblical Eldership Resources. Fantastic. Thanks a lot. Hey, but we're not here to talk about that right now. You're going to preach at our national conference coming up next year, and we want all the men who preach there to have a moment to tell their story, their life, how God drew them and cared for them.

So it's your turn now. These are such a joy. So Alex, tell us about your childhood. Well, I was raised in Newark, New Jersey, and I was raised in a part of Newark that was really almost a German community. Thousands of Germans came here from Russia in the early 20th century.

And I grew up hearing my aunts and uncles and we're all living within a mile of each other, speaking German. And then at about 10 years of age, we moved out of Newark into the country. And that was a life changing experience, which I'll explain in a moment. But we moved in a place where there was lots of beautiful, beautiful forests. And coming from a city environment where everything was concrete, we were in an environment of a beautiful stream and woods, endless hiking, and I became a real nature lover during those days.

In fact, I fished almost every day. I'll show you how life has changed. We could have our shotgun over our shoulder, walk out of the development into the woods. No one would say anything. If you did that today, they have the police all over you.

They'd probably shoot you first. But it was a wonderful childhood. Well, I did a lot of fishing and reptile hunting and it was a wonderful experience. And one of my dear friends said to me, I'm going to go to a camp in New York state and they've got great fishing. I said, could I go?

He says, well, I'll ask my parents And the parents said, sure, Alex can go. So I asked my dead mom. I said, dead mom, can I go to a camp in New York state for two weeks to go fishing? And they said, sure, get rid of them for two weeks. Well, I didn't know it, but they were fishing for me.

It was a Bible camp. I was not raised in a Christian home, and so I heard the gospel for the first time when I was 11 years of age. And what is interesting is that the first time I heard the gospel preached, I knew it was true, and I immediately responded and was born again. I had never had a question after that time, although I had some years where I didn't grow. I knew I was a born-again child of God, but it was fishing that got me to go to the Bible camp, and as a result heard Christ died for my sins.

Oh, praise the Lord. Okay, so what happened after that? You're 11 years old. Well, what happened was the next year and the next year and the next year I'd go back to camp every year, get rededicated to the Lord, but then I would go home and I had no training. No, the church I went to was a completely liberal church.

There was no gospel at all. But when I was 13, I was at camp again. Every summer I would go to camp. I did that all my teen years. It was my, really, salvation from getting in trouble with boys who are just goofing off in the summertime, not in school, a man at camp said, you know, you've been saved, your brother's been saved, we brought all these kids over the last couple years and they all got saved, and he said, I'm gonna come to your house every Friday night and we're going to have Bible study." So I asked my parents, could Bill Van Blarken, Bill is like millions and millions of other Christians who serve the Lord, no one will ever know anything about him, but the Lord knows, every Friday night for the next three years he came to our home, We had Bible study, we had songs, and it was at that point that I began to grow.

And he had us memorizing scripture, reading our Bibles. He would take us to meetings and conferences. He was a single man, about 10 years older than myself, but totally dedicated to the Lord and to young people. So that was really a turning point in my life. How, why this happened I don't know, but about 13 when he started really teaching us the all that's involved in the Gospel like the book of Romans and the book of Revelation and that was very fascinating to me.

At that age, I just had a very strong compulsion that I'm going to serve the Lord. That's the only thing I want to do, and that never changed. That feeling from 13 on never changed. Alex, what did you do after high school? After high school I worked for two years.

I worked for Emerson Radio and Television and I went to school that night, New York State Teachers College. I thought I'm going to be a teacher because I could have the summer off and I could be a camp all summer. Now we had a wonderful camp where I was saved, Pine Bush Bible Camp, 80 miles directly north from New York City, And it was an inner city camp with many black and many Puerto Ricans and whites. I mean, it was completely an interracial camp. And I thought I love this work in camp.

Well, by the way, I still love camp work. I'm the chaplain of our camp here in Colorado, but we just have seen throughout life so many young people saved at Bible camps. So after two years of working and going to school at night, I decided I needed more Bible training. And so I went to Emmaus Bible College in 1965, and then from there I went to Colorado Christian University. And then from there I didn't plan this, This wasn't my plan, but by this time I found the church that I've been in in 54 years, and I loved the church.

I met my wife there, loved her too. I said, let's get married. We got married, and that was during the Jesus revolution, and we saw a reaping that we've never seen since. In fact, our youth group was about 95 hippies. And I'll tell you a story.

Our church was faced with a real crisis. We had all these young people, girls without shoes and bras and boys without shoes and long, long hair down to their back. And the older people were really getting fed up with it. So the elders had a choice at this point. Do we ask us all to leave, which we would have to lift, or should we stay?

Well, the elders discussed this and then presented an announcement to the church that all these young people are as welcome as the flowers in May and we do not want any kind of harassment to these young people. God has brought them to us. Well, like you would expect, they all grow up and cut their long hair and have good jobs and very conservative. So that was a wonderful experience during the Jesus revolution. That was 1969, 70, 71, 72.

So my wife and I married. So I was in the same boat in Southern California at the same time. Oh, you were right there in the heart of it. Yeah, exactly. Go ahead.

It was a revival. It was a revival. It was fantastic. So my wife and I opened a home for five years. We had up to 11 guys living with us.

And this shows you how tough my wife is, you know, cooking for all these guys and doing that, but really almost all of them have gone on for the Lord. Some have disappeared, we don't know where they are, but that was a wonderful time in our life and in our church. Alex, how did you meet your wife? Well, I was at the church first and I was the head of the youth and she came with her roommate. They had moved just maybe a quarter of a mile from the church and so they thought they'd come to our church.

And the first Sunday I met her, I said, you know, we need help. We have no help with all these young ladies. And she and her roommate said, oh, we'll help you. And they were tremendous help. They were godly girls.

She was about 22 then, 23, no about 22. And well, after about three or four months of working closely together, I said, don't be an idiot. God has put this woman in her life. Move on this fast. Some other man is going to come by.

About four or five months later, you know what impressed me first? She was such a hard worker. She was finishing up a Colorado Christian, no, not Colorado College, the University of Colorado. She was finishing up there, working full-time, helping at the church, mega hours like 11 at night. And I'm going, this is one hard-working woman.

And I said, that's the kind of woman I want. So anyway, we were married by the end of the year. Amazing. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Don't be an idiot. And we're still married. And we're still married. 53. Praise the Lord.

Yeah. Hey, talk to us about people, preachers that influenced you the most along the way? I think a very big influence in my life was Dr. S. Lewis Johnson at Believer's Chapel in Dallas, Texas.

So a man came to our church and he said to me, are you listening to Dr. Johnson? We had those little cassettes, remember? Little tiny cassettes, we'd get those. I said, no, I don't know anything about it.

So he got me started listening to Dr. Johnson, Bill McCrae, They had Had Robinson there, Bruce Walkie. They were all in Believer's Chapel. It was a really important church in the 60s and 70s. And so I listened to probably every tape they ever had, hundreds and hundreds of them.

And I heard that S. Lewis Johnson, R.C. Sproul, Piper, all were influenced by that ministry from Believer's Chapel. They gave the tapes free. And so that was a very big influence.

And then that influence we brought into the church so that we became a bible teaching church. So it had a very big influence on us that way. Some of the people had a very big influence on me. You wouldn't know their names but As far as people you would know would be people like Martin Lloyd Jones had a very big influence on me. Of course, John MacArthur.

Biographies was Hudson Taylor. I was very deeply changed by the life of Hudson Taylor. Yeah. So who's a preacher we wouldn't know, a name we've never heard of before, but that influenced you and just tell us why. Well, the man who influenced me through much of my teen years, early 20s, and became a lifelong friend.

His name is Mr. Paul B. Sapp. He's dead now. And Paul was, we would be all summer together at camp.

He was a very bright guy, and he was about nine years older than me, and he just led me in a really good way and was a great teacher. Wow. So tell us just a little bit about the track of your pastoral life. You know, I know you've been forever at Littleton Bible Chapel, but you're bouncing around helping churches now. Just tell us a little bit about that.

Well, in 1969 I came to the church and by September they asked me to be the youth leader. And to their surprise, and my surprise, this explosion happened of young people. I was still in seminary then and again we were just reaping what we did not. So it was like picking apples off the tree. And once you get one person to come, he'd bring his friends.

And you remember Francis Schaeffer? Well, he had a big influence on me, and I took a lot of the Francis Schaeffer material, and at Denver University and other places, I started giving these Schaeffer lectures on the God who's there, escape from reason, explaining the contemporary culture. And that drew a lot of young people. They were really, as many of them said, their eyes were open. They didn't even know we could explain culture this way and how the gospel fit into our modern 60s culture.

So I really started out with teaching young people and seeing real results happening. Like I said, the youth group became bigger than the church. So for the next three years, I finished up a seminary in 1973. Again, something I did not plan. It was just that I was there.

Things were happening and there was a seminary just a couple miles away. I thought, well, I'll go to this seminary. I didn't even know if I graduated or not. At the time it was called conservative Baptist Theological Seminary. Now it's Denver Seminary.

And so while I was going there, I was working at the church and wonderful things were happening. So in 1973 I graduated and not knowing exactly what I would do, I get a phone call from the college, Colorado Christian University. The philosophy teacher for the summer came down with cancer and he couldn't teach the course. Well, they knew me from there and they knew I had a BA in philosophy. They said, could you teach one course?

One course. Well, I needed the money. So I said, sure, I'll teach you. Well, again, I had all this material I'd been building up on Schaeffer material, and much of it was evangelistic, you know, it was apologetic. I always loved the apologetic material.

And so I was ready to go. So we had a basic philosophy book. Well, I used a lot of this material. The kids loved it. Normally, they hate full introduction of philosophy.

So anyway, the kids loved it so much, they said, would you teach another couple courses? I said, sure, I've got nothing else to do because the church wasn't paying me, so I needed the money. And so for the next seven years I taught part-time at Colorado Christian University. I never wanted to go full-time because my heart was in the church. It was not in the school.

And as soon as in 1980 they asked me to leave my job and teach full-time at the church, I left the school, which most people would never have done, but my heart was in the local church. It wasn't really in the institution. So seven years it provided all my finances. We had that home for the boys. And then in 1980, I was full-time at Littleton Bible Chapel until about 14 years ago.

And one of the main teachers, I don't do all, we don't have one person do all the teaching, and I did at least 50 to 60 percent. And we had some other excellent teachers. So we're very missions minded, very interested in world missions and the gospel going out to the world. So we spend a lot of money in our church on foreign missions. So I've been there all these years and the last 10-15 years it's really been a lot of helping sister churches that we've started out of our church.

No that's great. Hey I want you to talk about some of your books. We already mentioned some of the ones that Jason and I love. Tell us about four of the books you want us to read the most. Okay.

I never thought you'd ask. All right. You asked about influences in my life. Robert Chapman, Robert Cleaver Chapman has had one of the biggest impacts on my life. And this is a little vignettes from his life.

Some call them the apostle of love. It's an amazing life, and we need this kind of model when we have so much ego in the Lord's work and so much self where It's not about us, it's about others and the Lord, and so that's had a huge impact. It's one of my favorite books. Jason and I read that right about the same time together, years ago. Yeah, let me break in and just recommend the full biography of Robert Chapman that Lewis and Roth, I believe, is your publisher.

And that is available there. I reread it again last year. It's such an inspiring Christian biography. If you're watching this and you like Christian biographies, get the biography on Robert Louis Chapman. It's a conviction.

Or better, write me and I'll send it to you free. There you go. Hey, there you go. And meet dad, unless you don't like free books. Yeah.

More books. You asked me earlier about why these books on love. Because early in my Christian life, in my 20s, I started to get very disillusioned with all the fighting and the disagreement and the harsh way believers were treating one another. That's why Schaeffer became important to me because he had the same experience of seeing in the circles that he traveled in, just a harsh, bitter, fighting division. And so being confused by all that and wondering what to do, I went through the whole New Testament very slowly, marking down, we didn't have computers in those days, writing out by hand, what does the Lord say about this?

And what became so clear is that most of the things we argue about aren't even in the Bible. Things like, do you use wine or not wine at the Lord's Supper, you know, or grapes, I mean, these and thou's and all that. I went through all those. It became so clear to me that love was the foundational virtue of the Christian life. And then I started seeing the humility, servanthood, a brotherly equality, all these beautiful, special virtues of the Christian life.

And that answered it for me. You're arguing over these and thou's, but you're killing your brother. You're breaking all the commandments of the New Testament for something that's not there. So it became A big theme in my life. Give some of the book titles on the subject.

Well, there's, yes, the 15 Descriptions of Love, which is an exposition of 1 Corinthians 13. Leading with Love, the Christian leader's guide. Agape leadership, of course, if you bite and devour. Those are some of the main ones. One that I really like is if you love or die, which is Revelation 2.4, where you've got this church, very much like our churches, solid in doctrine, discipline, false teachers, but the Lord says, I've got something against you, and I'll remove your candlestick, and that is you've left the love that you once had.

Very important verse for our churches. Yep, important books. Really appreciate you, Alex, so much. Okay, one more time to look at your videos. Where do they go to look at the videos?

Biblical Eldership Resources and included in that is the School of the Shepherds, which is a whole program for training local elders. Great, oh that's great. Alex, what a joy. It's been really, really fantastic talking to you. Can't wait.

This has been great for me. Can't wait to hear your preaching at our national conference. And so here we go, till we meet again. Praise the Lord. Amen.

And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we Hope you can be with us again next time. And Family Life dot com.