A few days ago on Twitter, I said this: “If you’re living your Christian faith in a way that no one knows you have one, you’re doing it wrong.” I’d like to discuss that in a bit more detail.
In Christian circles, we talk a lot about a “personal faith” in Jesus Christ, or a “personal walk,” etc. While I think those terms are appropriate, I think there’s some confusion about the word “personal.” For many, both in the Church and out of it, “personal” has come to mean “private.” Certainly, there are many outside the church that would be happy if we were treat our faith as private, keeping it to ourselves and “out of their faces.” Inside the church, many Believers are perfectly content to sit on their hands, so to speak, enjoying their faith in silence. Unfortunately for them, that’s not what the Bible tells us.
All through the Gospels, we see clear indications that, while our faith is personal (that is, it’s a faith that each of us must hold, not relying on that of another), it’s meant to public. For example, in Matthew 5, we are told that we are “the light of the world,” that “a city set on a hill can not be hidden,” and to “[l]et your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” The apostle Peter wrote in I Peter, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
Most importantly, Jesus’ last words to his disciples before his ascension included what we call The Great Commission. In this short piece of Scripture, we’re told to go, to make, to baptize, to teach. While the nature of you’re involvement is not something someone else can tell you, I think it’s safe to say that if you’re not involved in this great commission in some way, you are, indeed, doing it wrong.
Brian McLaren is “a prominent, controversial voice in the emergent church movement.” Like many in the emergent church movement, though, he has been, at least for me and apparently a few others, difficult to pin down on exactly what he thinks. That has all changed, it seems, with the publication of his book, A New Kind of Christianity. Melinda at 
From ChristianityToday.com:
“Oklahomans have an opportunity to express their belief in the sanctity of human life to their legislators during the 19th Annual Rose Day February 3 at the State Capitol.