the Gospel and Our Culture Network

A Network for Encouraging the Encounter in North America

 

CONSULTATION REPORT

   Seventy five people met in Chicago in February to participate in the first general gathering of the Gospel and Our Culture Network. They came from both ends of Canada and all corners of the U.S.A. Among them, a wide spectrum of Christian denominations were represented (more than fifteen in all). They came to "work" in a consultation designed to give shape to the agenda of a growing network of people eager to share together the challenge of the missionary encounter of the gospel with our North American culture.

   There were several critical outcomes of the consultation. First, it began a serious set of conversations between academic people (professors, educators, etc.) and practioners facing these issues in the trenches of ministry (pastors, denominational executives, mission agency personnell, etc.). Second, the conversations gave greater clarity to the nature of the challenges in each of the three areas of the GOCN agenda: culture and society, gospel and theology, and church and mission. Through a series of major presentations, formal responses, and small group discussions, the participants identified the critical issues in each area. On the last morning, the consultation broke into three sections to sift through those issues and determine priorities for our collaborative work.

   Third, the consultation helped focus what it means for the GOCN to be a "network." Based on the character of the gathering and a sense of the ways people want to work together, the Steering Group has identified several levels of collaborative relationships, visualized as concentric circles. At the center lies the necessary research, interpretation, and framework-building which must engage the network. This is the level at which the network is most proactive. Work Groups in each of the three areas will shoulder this level of work most directly. At the next level outward lies a range of activities which bridge between analysis and practice. Particularly at this level, the interaction of academics and practitioners provides for mutual learning and a dynamic translation in both directions. In this forum, the visions for the missionary character of the church are formed and made accessible to the churches and their leaders. At this level, the network functions through partnerships with agencies or institutions which share common concerns and visions. At a third level, the network becomes a place where initiatives are encouraged. It functions as an open system of network-building out of which a wide circle of spin-offs emerge as people meet and agree to engage in common efforts. In all the levels, maintaining relationships and connections becomes crucial. The two primary means for achieving that will be to hold an annual consultation and produce a quarterly newsletter.

   Some of the flavor of the consultation is represented in what follows in this newsletter. There is a general reflection by Charles West, quotes from each of the major presentations and some of the respondents, and reports from each of the three sections about the way in which their work was taking shape. The newsletter also includes important announcements about the formation of Work Groups and about the next annual consultation (see p. 6).

NOTES TO COLLEAGUES ON THE GOCN CONSULTATION

   The announcement that was sent out for the February meeting [was] simple and listed three foci of discussion: culture, the gospel and the church. A few hundred of them were distributed. They must have met a felt need because more than seventy participants took part from most of the major denominations in the United States and Canada and from many mission and service organizations. The program was organized around the three subjects named above. A word about each will give its flavor.

   1. The culture theme was carried by two main speakers. The first, Craig Van Gelder, is Professor of Domestic Missiology at Calvin Seminary. Something of the flavor of his thought you can catch from the article on postmodernism in the latest issue of The Gospel and Our Culture (4:1). He has read omnivorously in the field of postmodern secular thought from Bloom to Derrida, and among theologians like Hauerwas and Newbigin, as well as the Reformers, and much of the modern literature on sociology of religion. He has a systematic mind with a flair for grand analysis, but he brought home to us sharply the problem of a world without a central focus in ideology, ethos, or lifestyle. Many practitioners in the meeting found this helpful and suggested that Christian mission and ministry concentrate more on the concreteness of particular spheres of meaning and experience. In other words, pluralism may be a good thing, and unity of ethos, of ideology, or even of the church may be an illusion. The fact that we were there, however, meant that we had not given up on unity. Van Gelder led us into a serious and, I hope, creative perplexity about the relation between the two poles.

   Paul Hiebert was the other cultural analyst. He is Professor of Anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, having spent many years previously at Fuller School of World Mission. I had previously passed over his work but I now will have to take it more seriously. His social analysis was a broad-gauge dialogue with major figures of past and present, from Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, to Peter Berger, Jacques Ellul, Edward Farley, and Gibson Winter. He gave us a solid description of deconstructionism. He also suggested that pluralism may be a friend of faith, allowing various groups and belief systems to exist and live together, and that it need not become a philosophical relativism if we trust the grace of God in the relationship.

   In these two contributions and in the discussion which followed them, one field of further investigation is being defined. [Ed. note: See the Culture Section Report below.]

  2. How does one understand and communicate the gospel in modern American culture? Lamin Sanneh of Yale developed his now-familiar thesis that the very essence of the gospel story is its culture-transforming translatability. This set the tone. Sanneh drew his examples from early Christianity and from the contemporary mission of the church coming into cultures that had not been Christian before. He left us, however, with the question how the transforming influence of the Christian story can operate in a society whose cultural images and residual habits are Christian, but which have been secularized. George Hunsberger made a strong point in his lecture of the need to break with a Christendom mentality--which he finds operates too much still in the British group. After much discussion, we were left with a host of questions to explore. [Ed. note: See the Gospel Section Report on page 5.]

   3. The third theme developed was the church in mission. The model of Fuller Seminary's Church Growth Movement was almost universally rejected by the members of the consultation, even though some present had earlier been attracted to it. George Hunsberger struggled to express a new vision of churchmanship over against the temptations of cultural accommodation, drawing on such concepts as alternative community in discipline for mission, the healing ministry of the church in a fragmented world, the subversive witness of the gospel in a self-sufficient culture, the wider rationality of the Christian message, embracing and relating other universes of discourse, the search for a common good in the posture of a servant (Jeremiah 29), intentional pluriformity of church structures within the culture, and the communal creativity of the church as a vehicle for non-coercive community. His lecture outlined the problems and the possibilities which were reflected in the varied experiences of the members of the consultation. The task before the network is to continue the ecumenical work of exploring missionary structures of the church at the local level and relating them to an understanding of the church universal in mission.

   Plans for the future of the network continue to be formed. A steering committee was expanded and designed future meetings to carry the movement forward. We will probably proceed on two levels:

   a. Theological-cultural reflection on the mission of the church, continuing the attempt to define the basic issues and to pursue the dialogue with social analysis in depth. The objective will be to develop a dynamic theology of culture interacting with the experience of the church in mission. Such a project, if clearly enough formulated, may attract foundation support as a research project.

   b. The expansion of a network of persons concerned with the practice of mission in our culture who would meet in various groups to reflect and share experiences. The need for this was apparent among the members of the Chicago consultation. There was also openness to it across the whole range of participants, from Evangelical to Catholic, from Mennonite and Southern Baptist to Anglican and Lutheran.

   Some form of interaction between these poles will probably have to be worked out. More and broader intellectual leadership needs to play a part in it and ecumenical dialogue among both theorists and practitioners needs to be cultivated. We do not have the cohesiveness of British society, nor do we have a Lesslie Newbigin to define the situation and issue the challenge to which the rest of us respond--unless we would like to let Stanley Hauerwas play that role! In America, this must be a more dialogical and communal effort.

EXCERPTS FROM THE PRESENTATIONS AND RESPONSES

   What is becoming increasingly clear today in North American culture is that we are experiencing a crisis of paradigms. It is not that we have insufficient paradigms to explain reality, but rather we are beginning to recognize the socially constructed nature of all paradigms. With this recognition, we are also beginning to realize that there is no center or meta-narrative to explain the whole or the essence of the world we encounter. While our frameworks provide interpretations of meaning, they are all relative interpretations. The differences between interpretations lie in the different assumptions which each brings to the interpretive task. Such differences today are incapable of being adjudicated by a more rigorous use of disciplined reason or the scientific method. Their value and accuracy lie instead in critiquing the adequacy of their underlying assumptions to explain the reality we encounter....

   It is becoming increasingly clear to everyone that there is a growing obsolescence of the worldview which has shaped much of our understanding of culture, gospel and church.   We are finding that much of our church life is becoming marginalized, and many of our gospel presentations are becoming trivialized. What is needed today is a missiology for North America which can address the substance of the changes taking place. We need to reexamine our understanding of all three corners of the culture, gospel, church triangle with a view to repositioning the church to understand and speak a gospel message of good news in a radically redefined cultural setting.

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   If we yield to the temptation of working together to "better understand" the problem of gospel and culture in North America, if we attempt to formulate direct answers to Dr. Van Gelder's questions, we would be buying into the very linear, we-can-figure-it-out-up-front, management by objective framework that helped create the problem we are trying to solve. Will we have failed to color outside the lines?

   I began to wonder if we need to divide our focus between "better understanding" and "new ways of being and becoming." Would we be helped by adding some new questions to our list of things to think about together? Maybe some questions like the following would help.

   If we're not able to describe fully or authoritatively where we're going, then our contemporary understandings of leadership must change. What kind of leaders lead by values, not objectives? What kind of leaders and leadership creates social learning? How are these kinds of leaders trained and developed?

   If we have to learn our way into the future, what does this mean? What does a learning organization do and how is one created? To whom do we listen to discover where we are and how we're doing? How do we recover our human, lived experience as a source of wisdom and become less reliant on abstraction and categorization as the way to truth?

   Finally, a look around the room reveals that we are trying to be missionary to our own culture by ourselves. There is wisdom outside our group that God has gifted to help us. Folks in the Two-Thirds World have experienced a missionary gospel coming to them and their culture over the past 150 years. We need to learn from them. There are folks within America who have experienced the good news of Jesus Christ and the not-so-good news of the dominant culture. They've had no choice but to work on the gospel -- culture problem. We need to ask the question, "what people has God put in the world whose differing cultural perspective and experience or vitality of faith might help us discover our blind spots?"

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Presentation by Paul Hiebert

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

   The social root for post-modernity is the growing pluralism of western societies. No longer can one group remain dominant and control the social order. A myriad of other voices are being heard. This is particularly true in our North American cities.... But post-modern society is more than the fact of pluralism. It is the acceptance of pluralism as the ideal way to organize society in the long run. No longer do we speak of assimilation into one homogeneous society. Rather we encourage different communities to maintain their distinct identities....

   What is the Gospel in our North American culture? I have only tried to lay out an agenda for further study. I am convinced that the solutions lie not in a prophet who will lead us through the land, but in a community of committed Christians who are willing not only to hear the Gospel together in our countries, but also to pay the price that obedience to that Gospel will demand.

   Our task is a two-fold one. We must address both our social order and our cultural order--particularly our worldview. To challenge one or the other is not enough, for the two systems are interlocked. We need, therefore, teaching and action.

                         *   *   *   *

   That our culture is going through a cultural or paradigm shift may no longer be the heart of the issue. Many of us sense that. Perhaps a greater need is help on how we can manage this massive cultural flux that we all experience. The anxieties these shifts create need to be addressed as well. Could it be that the Christian community can take a lead in this area? Can the Christian community regain an authentic witness for Jesus Christ by providing people a sense of hope in the midst of these changing realities?

   ...Could it be that the church that lives by the principle of interdependence will be best equipped to live out its faith in our culture? Historically, our modern North American culture has made its shift from being dependent to being independent. However, we have stagnated at this stage of independence, not fully realizing that interdependence is of greater value than independence. While other cultures are successfully making the shift towards interdependence, we have found it extremely difficult to do so.

                         *   *   *   *

   The connection between Christ and culture...is much closer than either what [H. Richard] Niebuhr calls the 'conversionist' or the 'dualist' position, and more susceptible to cultural manipulation than the liberals might think. It is thus pertinent to observe that it is not only religious sensibility which leads Christians to distinguish between Christ and culture, it is sensibility also for what promotes authentic culture. When we conceive the matter in these terms, so that the ONE Gospel becomes meaningfully mediated through many refractions of culture and historical contingency, and reflect on what Paul has to say on the issue, then the apostle emerges with new significance. Such a view of Gospel and culture blunts considerably his sharp dualist tone.... Christian pluralism in its uncompromising, rigorous form, is not only a committed state of mind with regard to God's Oneness in sovereignty and power but a committed style of living with respect to the many-sidedness of culture. In that convergence we may find strength for the critical relationship between the Gospel and the contending cultural ideologies of our time.

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   We need to spend a great deal more time with this dialectic between the one and the many, between the unity of God and a plurality of ways of speaking about and worshipping this one God.... We need to do more to articulate the essential contours of Christian monotheistic pluralism. That is, what does it mean for people of many different ethnic, linguistic, and cultural contexts, not only to confess, in multi-colored fashion, the one true God, but also to confess that this one true God is decisively revealed in Jesus who is Lord?... We need to develop forms of analysis that explore the basic contours and structures of the Christian story (note: not basic Christian faith, but the basic Christian story, which may elicit a wide variety of expressions of faith). That is to say, we need to be able to deal with unity and pluralism not only in our doctrine of God, but also in our articulation of Christian faith as a whole. All of this has the potential to bring us to a new renaissance in biblical theology and New Testament theology, organizing itself neither around events nor around concepts, but instead on the dialectic between the singularity of the Christian message and the diverse and multicultural forms in which that singular message finds expression in the ongoing life of Christian communities.

   Practically, this means that we need to learn how to listen to the voice of the people in North America in a way which invites a fresh incarnation of the gospel in our own context, listening in such a way that the gospel is truly embodied in authentic fashion but is not overcome by the secularizing, nationalizing, and relativizing impacts of our culture.... We need to enhance the practice of theology and the living of Christian life in cross-cultural contexts here in our own country, so that Christians acquire a deeper sense of the diverse possibilities of faith in the one God which we share with other Christians.... We need to rethink personal evangelism, and to develop ways to articulate the gospel which are appropriate to specific cultural contexts, rather than imposing the same laws, principles, or summaries on each situation.

                         *   *   *   *

 

   To suggest, as Van Gelder has done, that our agenda lies in the re-positioning of the church is certainly to the point because it recognizes that the basic issue we face in our context is ecclesiological. The first order of business, before we engage the issues of evangelizing secular people or approaching the principalities and powers, is discerning who we are. We have lost our way on that. We await rediscovery. But here we must also be careful. Are we eager to re-position ourselves simply to ward off the uncomfortable effects of being marginalized? Are we most interested in finding new images for our identity so that we may again capture a place of importance and prominence in the social scheme of things? Is the re-imaging driven by the need to be successful again?

    I am suggesting in all of this that a self-conscious break with Christendom patterns of mission impulse must be the pervasive thread characterizing the Gospel and Our Culture agenda, and in particular the strategies and forms we envision for the life of the local church as missionary congregation. Rather than a plan for re-seizing, re-winning, and re-positioning, we need a deeper re-vising ("re-visioning").

                         *   *   *   *

   The basic question that this article raises for me as a pastor is simply "how?" Not so much "How do we change our ways of thinking as Christian leaders, to accept and celebrate our post-Christendom status?", but more, "How do we take typical congregations of nice, moral people who think of themselves primarily as individuals, and who participate in church life because of their very personal and individualistic needs, and help them to develop into the type of alternative communities described in this article?"

   I certainly accept and applaud the vision. It is entirely biblical. The problem is that most of the people I encounter as a pastor have no inclination or desire to be formed into such a community. They have their own reasons for participating in church life, their own needs to be met, and most of them simply do not (can not?) see too far beyond their own circumstances. To develop such congregations into alternative communities constitutes an incredible challenge for the church. Beyond theological reasoning and biblical studies, church leaders and pastors will have to be helped in developing a number of practical skills that seminaries simply are not teaching.

 

CULTURE SECTION REPORT

Craig Van Gelder, Facilitator

   The work group on culture divided the various issues for study into the following categories for further work. These provide a framework for organizing and approaching the lengthy list of issues identified by the small groups following the "culture" presentation. These four identify the study strategies the work group will pursue.

   1. Culture and Society: meanings, assumptions and belief systems which stand behind the power relationships and decision processes; the basic structures which express these beliefs in power relationships and decision processes, such as government, economics, socialization, family life and religious life.

  2. Culture and Change: the development of modernity and its continued influence; the shifts taking place with postmodernity, radicalized modernity, and technological developments, and their impact on the emerging culture.

   3. Culture and Pluralism: the development of a multicultural context where there are a variety of cultural traditions and alternative structural variations; addressing the processes of resistance, blending, and cultural change in this context.

   4. Popular Culture: understanding the various mediums which shape and express culture, and their changing forms; understanding the impact of popular culture in shaping corporate and personal identities.

 

GOSPEL SECTION REPORT

Scott Young, Facilitator

   The twelve participants in the section first attempted to focus the issues which were identified in the small group discussions earlier. The major issues identified included the following:

   a. Who is Christ for our world? How must that take precedence over the what question about the gospel and its hermeneutic?

   b. Is there an intrinsic language about God coming out of the Christian story which transcends culture and transforms it? If so, what do we do about the way the tradition of Christendom has conditioned our understanding of that language?

   c. What is the proper hermeneutical key for reading scripture in our context?

   d. How is our culture formed and transformed by the gospel story given the domestication of that story in our historical past?

   e. How should we cope with, and in what way may we affirm, the plural and secular structures of meaning in our society in the name of Christ? Can Christian symbols--the Eucharist, baptism, the liturgy, and pregnant words such as love, justification, and forgiveness play a role here? Can secular symbols have theological meaning?

   f. How can we witness to the reign of Christ in the world without seeking to control the world in the name of Christ? What is the relation between divine power and human power in the mission of the church?  How do we make a public claim for the truth of the gospel without seeking public power to make that truth effective?

   g. How may the church live the gospel in and for the world? If we are called to be "resident aliens," how then does the church take responsibility for the world and recognize the worldliness in itself as it expresses its mission?

   h. Can the Christian story function as a norm in the way that "propositional truth" once functioned as a norm?

   i. What shape does the message and lifestyle of conversion take in the West?

   A crucial next step will be to sharpen the focus of the current list of themes and increase its multi-dimensionality. The list we now possess has a bias toward critical reflection on the shape of the story and the sharing of the story. It will need to expand to include the creative engagement of the story with concrete manifestations of culture and church. This venture pulls us toward the other two work group areas. The distinctions between the three task areas is mandatory for critical probing but exploring the places where they intersect is inescapable.

 

John R. "Pete" Hendrick, Facilitator

   In a missionary, post-christendom situation, the church is called to function within culture (affirming culture and contextualizing itself), on behalf of culture (supporting and strengthening the sinews of culture for the common good), and against culture (critiquing and changing all in culture that stands against God's reign). The reality is that there are already some churches which are endeavoring to live out one or another aspect of this missionary calling in the North American context.

   The first task of this work group will be to identify churches (denominations, judicatories, congregations, pastors, church members) which are struggling creatively with this agenda. Having located them, the task is to learn from their experience on the front line between church and culture. The procedures for garnering, analyzing and sharing these learnings with the other two work groups and with others will be the responsibility of this work group.

   A second major task of the work group will be to receive the more theoretical data generated by the other two and to develop experimental designs for checking and testing these insights in North American church life. This work group will be responsible to design, market, oversee and report such research.

   A third major task of the work group will be to draw implications from its own research and the findings of the other two for the life of the church in North America. For example, what are the implications for worship, preaching, Bible study, evangelism, nurture, social ministry? What are the implications for denominational leaders, pastoral leaders, church members, theological educators, etc.?

   In all of this, it will be important to remain alert to the rich diversity of American sub-cultural life and to work to ensure the participation in the project of various ethnic groups and social classes, both genders, and persons of diverse theological perspectives.

   As the work of the group proceeds, it will center its work in three areas in which the concerns of the consultation participants clustered: pastoral formation, community formation, and forming mission in word and deed. 

NETWORK PLANS

Work Groups

    As a result of the working consultation in February, the GOCN Steering Group has set in motion the formation of three Work Groups. The three groups correspond to the three areas explored at the consultation: culture and society, gospel and theology, and church and mission. Each will begin with a nucleus of 4-7 people who will work toward an October 1992 meeting at which a plan of action will be developed. The Work Groups will design collaborative work which will invite and facilitate participation at a variety of levels.

   The Work Groups will be coordinated during this formative stage by Craig Van Gelder (Culture), Jim Brownson (Gospel), and Pete Hendrick (Church). For each group, a nucleus has begun to emerge from among those at the February consultation. In these initial stages of formation, other people will be added to fill out the working core for each group. Members of the Network who were unable to be present at the consultation are invited to express their interest in a particular Work Group by submitting to the GOCN Coordinator (George Hunsberger) a letter of intent. The groups are looking for people who bring the following qualities to the tasks at hand: a) a missiological orientation (an approach to the issues which sees them as essentially missionary questions and challenges); b) a collaborative style (one which works to build group reflection and common resolve for change and action); and c) a focused commitment (time and intention to work on the particular issues of the group's agenda as they interact with those of the wider GOCN agenda). At this stage, it should be recognized that participants will need to bear some major portion of their own expenses for meetings, etc. It is anticipated that as plans are detailed, the work of the groups will warrant consideration for funding by foundations and/or other agencies.

   Letters of intent should identify clearly the particular Work Group in which you are interested, the areas of your particular interest within that group's work and the nature of the contribution you are able to make, and the level and form of involvement to which you are willing to make a commitment [i.e.: 1) full participation on the work group; 2) selective but regular participation in some aspect(s) of the group's work; 3) occasional participation in some facet of the group's work].

Annual Consultation

    The Steering Group has announced plans to hold a GOCN Consultation annually for at least the next several years. This will provide a regular place for the widening circle of people in the network to meet face to face and a forum for exploring our shared agenda in a broader conversation. The next of these annual events is scheduled for February 18-20, 1993, and will be held in the Chicago area. In addition to several plenary presentations, the consultation will include a broad array of workshops on particular themes and issues of both conceptual and practical importance. More complete details regarding the location, themes, participants and costs will be available by the end the summer.

FROM THE MAILBAG

   I am intrigued by your newsletter and embryonic network. Coming from a family with missionary connections, I have long thought that a fruitful "field" for mission is North America. And I have been impressed by the work of Newbigin as well as others who describe our culture as "post-Christian" or "pagan." I endorse your work.

   I weigh in, however, from the perspective of the parish. Your newsletter sounds a bit like shop-talk among missiologists (and why shouldn't missiologists have your own bulletin boards?). But out here in the parish we face these issues everyday. The culture of "individualistic utilitarianism" (Schillebeeckx) becomes very existential when those who walk through the doors act as much like consumers as they do when picking out their new car. How can the gospel challenge our "needs" when we are busy filling them: for if we don't, the folk need simply walk down the street to the church that will fill them?

   I find this especially troubling when we attempt an evangelism with integrity. Too much of evangelism has bought the church-growth model with its affirmation of culture. And furthermore swallows the adjunct of consumerism--management. Church programs touted revel in the style of the manager (one of A. MacIntyre's three "character types").

   I see very little of your understanding of the issue (which I think to be fundamentally correct) in the life and practice of everyday, working, parish clergy. Most of us, most of the time, are fighting the losing battle of currying to the culture so that the culture will affirm the church.

   In reading that you have a course on the topic, I am encouraged. I hope that such a course is not for budding missionaries (in the classic sense), but for pastors who might adopt something like a missionary style for our own culture.

   But I also encourage you to make connections with those of us who live and work "on the front lines" in the culture. Who get battered and bruised everyday in the challenge while finding very little understanding from those who live far from the parish but seem always to have some advice for how we must do it better, without comprehending the immensity of the task. It would seem that you might find fresh insight as well as to give encouragement to those of us who try to articulate gospel to everyday folk who are bathed in the culture.

NOTES FROM THE BRITISH GOC PROGRAMME

   A number of North Americans will be on hand in Swanwick, England, when the Consultation on the Gospel as Public Truth is held in July (11-17). The Gospel and Our Culture programme there has been working toward this event for a number of years. The following excerpt from an article in their latest newsletter (No. 13) is shared to show some of the ways in which that movement is addressing the issues within their particular context. It is taken from a response by Kristin Ofstad to a previously published letter from Bernard Thorogood (their Newsletter No. 12).

   "The Gospel and Our Culture programme is arguing that the response to the question of truth and God is indeed a personal choice, but it matters supremely, not just to the spiritual development of the individual, but precisely to that logic which rules society.

   "Christian faith is not a blind faith; it is an attempt at a coherent view of life in all its aspects. Everyone operates out of some view/faith which makes sense of the totality of human experience.

   "The Gospel and Our Culture programme wants to claim that a coherent Christian view of the totality of life...should be given [its] rightful place in the public arena in order to present for dialogue [its] understanding of what the logic should be by which our society should be ruled.... To say that the Gospel is Public Truth means that we say that we are commending it as a way by which the world and all that is going on in it may be understood.... 'To affirm the Gospel as public truth is to invite acceptance of a new starting-point for thought, the truth of which will be proved only in the course of a life of reflection and action which proves itself more adequate to the totality of human experience than its rivals' (Newbigin). So it is not about telling everyone else they are in grievous error, but presenting and commending what we believe to be a true and coherent view of the whole of life. We wish to enter into self-critical and critical dialogue, to be tested and to test."

 

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This newsletter is produced and mailed by Western Theological Seminary as a contribution to the Gospel and Our Culture Network. Communications regarding the Network or items submitted for publication in the Newsletter should be sent to the Coordinator and Editor, George R. Hunsberger, 86 E. 12th Street, Holland, MI 49423. Requests for a free subscription to the Newsletter may be sent to Ms. Holli Rook at the same address.

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