Our own generation has a special need for a reaffirmation of the personal because of our preoccupation with science and technology, and with vast space and enormous power. One wonders, and hears others wondering, what good is a person in the face of all these masses, spaces, and complexities. But it was revealed in Christ, and every now and then it is revealed to us afresh, that the whole vast structure of life is dependent upon the power of persons and upon our exercise of the power of the personal. The character of man, expressed in his relations with his fellow man, will finally determine whether we will use our vast powers creatively or for our destruction. The primary vocation of the Christian in this time is to respond to the call of the person to be personal. The church members with whose conversation we began this book, seemed oblivious to the personal nature of the church's purpose. They were concerned about substitutes for the personal, about institutions and professional groups, about a legalistic morality, and about knowledge for its own sake. Any one of their concerns, if caught up in the vitality of the personal, could have valuable meaning. Law, as we have seen, has its role, if it is a part of love. Human effort is important as personal response to what God has done for us. Dependence upon the clergy is a part of the life of the church, but the work of the clergy, as we have seen, cannot be a substitute for the ministry of the whole church. The church is important, but it does not find its meaning in its isolation from the world. And knowledge about God, His creation, and redemption is necessary to the Christian life, but such knowledge must find its meaning in our living relation with God. The recent emphasis on the interpersonal and group process has contributed much to our understandings of the human relationships of Christian fellowship. As a result of the emphasis, a new polarity operates in the life and teaching of the church: one pole is the content 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_