EVERYWHERE in today's world the Christian church is facing, with a new sense of urgency, the question of its calling. It confesses to having received the gospel of God's grace in Christ Jesus. This, so the church acknowledges, must be presented and passed on. Such communication is its calling.

Communication by the church, however, is replete with frustrations. Nowhere do these come into sharper focus than when we become painfully aware of the multitudes estranged from the life of the church and its saving message. Bridges of all kinds are attempted between men and men, between one nation and another, between the church and the world. Frequently, however, the first piers sunk into the swirling waters are swept away. This happens most poignantly and painfully when the church sees children and young people, embraced by Christ's baptism, turn away. Millions of these sustain no living relationship to the Word of life. To us who know and love the God of our salvation they seem like salt that has lost its savor. While on many mission fields and in younger lands the Christian church still appears to be registering advances, in the Western nations it beats a slow but sure retreat.

This points up what may well be the major issue facing the church today. Can it so communicate the Christian message that from one generation to the next God is praised among the peoples? Unless this can be done consciously and committedly, men will experience no true reconciliation. Only the re-creation, the restoring, of the right relationship with God can be the basis of the re-creation of true unfrustrated communication with each other. This is one of the deep meanings of the Church, to be the place and sphere of this re-creation of true communication, because its function is to be the true community, founded through Christ in God, the embodiment of renewed humanity. - from Amzon