ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wyn Fountain is a Baptist who was a clothing manufacturer from 1950 to 1980, when he retired and became an assistant pastor for two years. He then went back into another business for another seven years
and then retired for the third time. During those last seven years he began to realise what a minimal impact
he had had on society outside the Christian fraternity. Furthermore most of the committed evangelicals he
knew were similarly so committed to the local church and similarly having very little impact upon society.
The conviction grew that the blame for the increasing corruption in society had to be laid at the feet of
evangelical believers as much as upon the secular humanists. Our theology and eschatology had created a
division between sacred and secular with the result that most of us had withdrawn from anything but a
minimal participation in the decision making forums outside the church. We had committed our lives to the
local church. The decision making had been left to those who were opposed to a Judeo/Christian culture.
Wyn founded The Positive Parenting Trust, which ran a programme of T.V. advertising promoting parenting.
Stephen Tindall, of the Warehouse, took this over. Wyn then ran the Auckland Forum, a monthly dinner
meeting for business people and others, to dialogue on ethics and morality, particularly in the commercial
field. When Dick Hubbard founded the Businesses for Social Responsibility he closed down the Forum and
joined the BSR, because the BSR was endeavouring to practice what the Forum was just talking about.
He was a founding trustee of the Maxim Institute, an independent research organisation seeking to formulate public policy which will reverse the disintegration of society that is evident today.
In recent years the increasing exodus of committed believers from the local churches has created an urgent passion in Wyn's heart to discover what it is that is preventing the church in New Zealand from exercising
the transforming function that the believers had in Wesley's day. These little booklets, written for busy people to read as they run, are an endeavour to help people to think "outside the box" because we have to admit that the church is regarded by most as irrelevant.In Wesley's day the impact was made by a great army of lay people. It is Wyn's conviction that until we can restore that situation, the church will continue to be
regarded as irrelevant.
