o his work. Likewise, the
church needs to give some attention to its maintenance, for it needs to
be nourished in its gathered life in order that it may do its work in
its dispersed life.

The decisive role of the church is not in the church's church, but in
the world: ministering to people at the beginning of and during their
married lives, accompanying them in and through their marital failures,
and helping them to learn from their experiences so that if they marry
again they may do so with more understanding and resourcefulness;
guiding them in the raising of their children, and helping them to
correlate the insights of the social sciences that throw light on the
nature and meaning of human development, especially the ultimate or
religious meanings of that development; helping them find their place in
the world's work with as much meaning as possible, and nurturing in
them a faith and courage that makes it possible for them to face the
conflicts, temptations, and sins of modern industrial life; standing by
them in all the crises that they encounter in the course of their human
existence; encouraging them to advance in company with the most creative
minds on the frontier of human exploration and experimentation; and
fearlessly traveling with them as they wrestle with the changing value
structures of each new generation, and guiding them in the use of their
leisure. But most of all, in and through all of these ways, the church's
task is to try to reveal to men that, though their identity in the world
may be confused and lost, in their relationship with God they are known
and loved. The church, as a fellowship of men, should exist not only to
proclaim this truth in the abstract, but to live it in the sphere of the
personal and social.

_Various Concepts of Ministry_

Every congregation and every member of a congregation needs to ask what
image of the church governs its life, because our images can be idols
that keep the church from being the instrument of God's action, and
because that image can keep us from being persons in whom the Spirit of
God can be incarnate. Such an examination calls for that sort of
rethinking of our conception of the ministry that the Reverend Mr. Gates
called for in our first chapter. The conception of the ministry held by
both ministers and laymen will naturally reflect their conception or
image of the church. Here both the ordained member and the lay member
are caught in the grip of ste