Our workshop not only had to speak of the "significance of community for the church", but had to go through the experience of group-investigation, with all that is implied of tension, frustration, and the joy of discovery. after four afternoons of work the workshop decided not to produce a written report, but to communicate to the plenary some of the major questions and answers which emerged in the form of an improvised panel discussion. Here is the echo.

1. after a pooling of ideas we concluded that the church in its community life is not only the reflection of the glory of God, but also an expression of human misery. We need not be astonished at that; rather we can rediscover both in the positive and negative aspects what we may term the dimension of the incarnation of the church in human reality.

The ecclesial community is a human community. It cannot live apart from the laws which control the life of every human society, and with advantage it takes full account of them; otherwise without a total understanding there can be no helpful contribution. Thus our churches would be wisely guided to take account more fully of those elements provided by the human sciences (mainly psychology and sociology) and the techniques which they have developed ( eg "group dynamics").

On the other hand, our churches, being in the world, discover themselves at one with those communities in which they are set; and the more they are "incarnated" (consciously or otherwise), the more they run the risk of embracing the concerns or of echoing the mistakes of these same communities. In this way they do not always avoid the dangers which according to time and place are expressed, individual and collective egoism, nationalism, tribalism, racism, etc. That means that our churches as communities have to place themselves under the grace of God and through repentance experience his pardon. That brings us to a second question:

2. When the church speaks of sin and culpability, generally it addresses individuals, but it is difficult to detect in our churches any sense of culpability or indeed collective responsibility. Therefore the question has been put by one of us, as a disturbing problem of long-standing: in the absence of such a feeling of "collective guilt", how can we hope to release in our churches this "common repentance" which many of us believe necessary in order to re-create the "north-south" relationships or the way in which we handle nature? Have Jonah and the conversion of Niniveh nothing to say to us today?

Another member of our workshop emphasized a point which we must share: the church, influenced by western individualism has up to the present preached a gospel with reference almost exclusively to the individual. It is not surprising that, under those conditions, we have seen - if any - individual conversions. We have to rediscover and to preach the gospel in its social dimensions (Bangkok: "Salvation Today"), and then we shall be able to look forward to an awareness of collective responsibility and a "corporate repentance" (metanoia).

3. repeatedly, our discussions confronted us with this: everywhere there prevails a system which accents the advancement of the individual, based on an individualised structure of government which mitigates against every form of participation or coresponsibility. We cannot accuse the pastors alone of this tendency to clericalism in the churches. The parishes themselves tend to reject the responsibility which devolves upon them collectively, as people of God, and they often react negatively to attempts at new forms of sharing in communal service and responsibility.

The quest of the community in which modern man is engaged, is not just a style of life but also a challenge to rediscover an aspect of the gospel too neglected. We are convinced that our Reformed tradition is rich in many elements, whose "revitalization" would enable us to provide our parishes and our churches with an authentic communal dimension. We stress principally the reference to the "people of God", the concept of "universal priesthood", which our Roman Catholic colleagues are rediscovering with enthusiasm, in the movement of conciliar renewal (see Lumen Gentium 10, etc), or, with reference to the government of the church, the collegiality envisaged by the Reformed institution of the ministry of the elder.