Today, as it has always, the church confronts problems that appear to dwarf both it and its abilities. In the face of issues as massive as war, global warming, the AIDS epidemic and economic recession, Christians face challenges to their personal faith so great that a kind of spiritual paralysis can set in. How can the church get people moving again and buoy up their belief that their individual attitudes and actions do make a difference?

"How to Plan for 1995," a feature article in Fortune Magazine (December 1990), begins with the following declaration by management theorist Ronald Henkoff: "One year into the Nineties and this is shaping up as the decade in which we came, we saw, and we ran for cover." A recessing economy, a warring Gulf, a rising unemployment, a deteriorating environmen…