A creative minority

Richard E. Koenig is a churchman, and that fact becomes apparent in the pages of this book. It is not just another in a long line of jeremiads or lamentations on the institutional church, but a careful, well-documented analysis of the church's predicament in the America of the '70s. Koenig does see collapses- of Christian culture, of inherited faith, of conventuinal ministries and patterns of church life. But as Martin Marty notes in the foreword, he seems to say, "I want to be around to pick up the pieces."

As Koenig works his way though the institutional decline of the churchm the crisis of faith, the decline of religion among the young, he sifts through various aspects of the existing church and its traditions in search of basic strands of hope that promise a future. He finds that hope in the promises of God- in a new kind of ministry by a creative minority within the culture, serving the human community and willing to stand for life and for the world.

Richard E. Koenig is pastor in Amherst, Massachusetts, a frequent contributor to The Lutheran Forum magazine, and author of If God Is God.