The Local Church and Community Service

Abstract

"The late Douglas Stewart often used to say that the conversion experience of a believer involved turning to Christ as Lord and Saviour but also 'conversion' to the worshipping company of believing people of Christ, the Church. Further than that Christians must. be 'converted' to the world in which their ministry must be exercised and learn to understand its problems, rejoice in its variety and power, and discover within it the guiding purposes of God. Writing of his own play, The Lady's not for Burning, Christopher Fry said, 'I see no reason why I should not treat all the world as I see it, a world in which we are all poised on the edge of eternity, a world of mystery in which God is anything but a sleeping partner'. Writing of the possible theological movements of the next generation, Neville Clark has said (Baptist Times 5.8.65) we shall be driven into the heart of the world's turmoil to find God there, and in his new and stimulating book, The Roots of Experience, R. C. Walton argues that there is in principle no encounter with the world which may not hold within itself an encounter with God"