WE WERE FINE AND ABLE TO MAKE CONTACT with the lay training institute at Jarvenpaa, Finland. Director Aarne Siirala was on holiday, but one of the teachers, Irmeii Packkonen, came to meet us and take us to look over the Institute. We asked many questions and shared our literature, ate supper, and then went out with a group to drink coffee, sing, and have conversation. It is clear that Dr. Siirala who will be coming to the United States soon to do three years of graduate study, has been the really creative person in the Finnish church. Therefore, we felt our time and money would not be well invested if we failed to see him. SO, we took a train two hundred miles northeast into Carelia, arriving in the village of Parakkela, half a mile from the Russian border, and after a two hour bus ride, finally came to the old country home of the Siirala family where he and his wife and four of his five children were enjoying a summer holiday. We spent a solid eight hours talking with him and. made notes on our conversation which included the history of the Church of Finland, and the establishment of the Institute its relation to the Church and its threat to the Church its training of Deacons for the Church, and its team thrust in various parishes, as well as its three­month orientation of pastors related to labor and management. The Institute also conducts special sessions with physicians, psychiatrists, and theologians on mental health, especially as this reflects the sickness of society, "our own sickness. Those who are mentally ill among us are bearing the burden of the sickness of all of us. What caused this sickness? What in our life has brought this about?" Siirala asks. The Institute seeks to mediate the challenge of mental illness to ministers, dramatists, teachers, etc. Dr. Siirala's brother, Martin, is a practicing psychiatrist in Helsinki and works closely with the Institute. They have now established a foundation called Therapeia Stiftur~g which will be Aarne Siirala's main work when he returns from the States. Martin Siirala has written a book being published in German, What Does Mental Illness Say to Us?, dealing with the sickness of our society. SWEDEN We went by train from Stockholm to Sigtuna, the ancient capital of Sweden, and visited the Lay Training center which was established there in 1917, the first of its kind. We were met by Mr. Liljehooke who showed us around and told us about the Institute, and then had lunch with Bishop Bjorkquist who was the founder. At seventy­six he is still alert and vigorous in spirit although now retired from active leadership. Although a layman with no formal theological education, he was made a bishop in the Church of Sweden because of his tremendous leadership. With a grant of three million kroner, he founded {continued on page seven)

continued from page one Dear Everybody the Institute to give modern man in Sweden an opportunity meet the Christian faith and to help the Church discover modern man with his special problems. Sigtuna, located midway between Stockholm and the University Center of Uppsala, is both secluded and accessible. The work has four branches: 1) Folk­High School where young people from eighteen years and up come to live and study for eight months per year; 2) Humanistic School where classic education is provided at nominal cost, preparing students of the University; 3 ) Laymen's Institute for preparation o church vocational leaders; 4) Special Institutes for laymen such as political leaders, sports leaders, etc. We took a five hour train ride north of Stockholm to visi Stiftsgarden and the director, Nils­Hugo Ahlstedt. This is, large conference center set in an industrial area, beautiful!' located on a lake and designed to provide a milieu of Christian' family life which will bear its own silent witness in the midst of conferences, retreats, and rest periods when workers and their families come on holiday. Worship is the continuing daily' activity and really the heart of all that goes on at this center which is large enough for about twelve thousand people per year to use its facilities. Formerly, Nils­Hugo conducted hi' ministry in the factories, working with labor and management but the bishop asked him to establish this center. One thing he's doing which could have great possibilities is work with; factory watchmen, of whom there are three thousand in Sweden. He has small conferences many times each year with groups of twenty­five of these men, educating them to lead small group discussions in the factories. FRANCE We were most impressed and excited by our contacts with Taize. Had we seen only the Taize Brothers in their "fraternity" at Marseilles or had we seen only the Community itself in its work and worship at the center, it would not have been enough, but to have seen both is truly exciting and promising. Where the Church has most to learn from them is at the point of mission, of "crying the Gospel with their lives" as do the "Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus" after the manner of St. Francis of Assisi. We spent five hours with a French Reformed pastor named Rene Rognon, and his wife. They both work in factories in Paris and are really involved in the economic and political struggles of the people. Rene is an amazing person, with much courage, a clear thinker and no sentimentalist. For fourteen years he and his wife have worked in factories. They understand their mission as being "with and for the people with whom we work and share a common existence." Not out of a book but out of their existential situation, they see that they are called to be ~zbo they are just where they are, not propagandists but neighbors. We spent two hours with Father Larche, a Roman Catholic Priest, one of ten working in the Parish under the direction of Abbey Michonneau, whose book, Revolution in a City Parish, you may know. We got a grasp of the work of an awakened group of priests in a laboring man's section of Paris. They have sixty­eight thousand persons in their Parish and have a genuine group ministry, which is the real sustaining factor in their work. GERMANY At Mainz­Kastel we stayed at Gossamer Haus with Horst Symanowsky. About eighty­five young factory workers, aged fourteen to twenty­five, live in the dormitory and experience' a type of life together. The staff, including cooks and maids has marring worship daily. I would say that a very significant work is going on in and through Gossamer Haus, as the staff works among laborers of five nearby factories. These workers

~t constitute the Gossamer Parish, which is an industrial mission, unafraid to experiment and move out in unorthodox ways to speak a relevant twentieth century word to the working men. r Horst Symanowsky took us through a cement plant where fourteen hundred men work, and it was easy to see that he was a real pastor to both labor and management. One of his chief concerns is to work toward the "democratization of industry." Symanowsky is an open man, with keen insight and a delightful sense of humor, despite the hell he went through in East Prussia during the war. He had much to share with us in terms of being mission in the world. While at Gossamer House, Mary and I drove thirty miles away to Darmstadt and spent eight hours in a convent of Protestant nuns. Eighty women live there in a community under a common rule of life, with a main purpose of doing penance for the persecution of Jews. The women are making a significant witness to the whole German nation by not letting the people or the Church at large forget their responsibility in the war. We drove to Marburg and had a forty­five minute visit with Rudolf Bultmann the great German theologian. We had a delightful conversation with him. He's seventy­six, short, badly crippled, but has a real twinkle in his eye. For the whole Christian Faith­and Life Community Mary and I expressed our indebtedness to him for his writings, and told him how we used them in our curriculum. He was greatly pleased to know his efforts were helpful in our situation. I asked if he would like to receive Letter to Laymen and he said he would. With a minimum of red tape, we were able to get visas to travel through East Germany on the Autobahn to Berlin, where we talked with Eva Richter about the special work she and three other laymen are doing in Stalinallee, a model housing district built between 1949­53 for Communist Party workers and functionaries. Clergy couldn't get into this area to visit families, and only these laymen had access. The institutional churches had no appeal to the residents, so the workers began to develop small congregations to meet in the housing units themselves. Here was another sign of emerging new structures of the Church in a pressure situation. We've been steadily on the go for almost six weeks so far and have been remarkably fortunate to have seen so many places and people related in one way or another to the renewal of the Church. We have much to think and write about and will be reporting in more detail in later issues of Letter to Lay men. Peace.