of the Good News; the other pole is the encounter between men in which
the Good News is realized. Unfortunately, the image of the relationship
between the encounter and the content of the Christian faith has been
and still is that of opponents in a battle. This concept is erroneous,
for any dialogue must have content. The conversation between two people
that is not informed by learning produces nonsense. Discussion groups
have revealed their poverty when they have not been informed by
responsible knowledge; fellowship for the sake of fellowship becomes
tiresome; and relationship without good discipline, whether in the home
or elsewhere, becomes chaos and anarchy. So, there are some disciplines
that we need to observe as persons in whom the Spirit of God seeks to
incarnate His love.

_We Need Informed Christians_

First, if we are to embody and express the love of Christ in our
generation, we must keep our minds alert and our interests alive. At
this point, church people fail in several ways. Instead of having minds
that search for the meaning of life in Christian terms, they sometimes
have minds filled with musty opinions and prejudices. An otherwise alert
lawyer, for example, said that he did not want his church to take a
stand on any of the great social issues, but stick to its subject,
namely, religion. This preoccupation with the subject matter of religion
apart from its relevance to life is a characteristic failure of many
church people.

As Christian churchmen, we do not need to be scholars in religion, but
we should be interested in the issues of life, open to new
understandings, and engaged in some kind of reading or study that will
keep us informed and intellectually awake. Only in this way can we keep
ourselves from falling into narrow little ruts and pulling the world in
after us. A part of our ministry is to participate in and help to keep
alive the dialogue between man and man, between the church and the
world, between Christian thought and the problems of existence.
Emotional and opinionated thinking about religion, values, and social
issues is appallingly prevalent among "religious" people. The
conversations of church members often are pitiful in their concern for
the trivial affairs of the local church and institution, about its
building and organizations, its suppers and bazaars. What a pathetic and
inconsequential way of serving Christ! He needs, instead, men and women
who are out on the frontiers