People say, well, I like to keep my faith as a private and personal matter.

That's impossible.

There's no place in the kingdom of God for secret service Christians.

The persecution that forced the Christian community to flee from Jerusalem was one of the main causes of the rapid expansion of the Christian faith in the early part of the church's life because those who were scattered

everywhere they went,

they went proclaiming the gospel of Christ.

Now remember, this was the rank and file.

It wasn't the apostles. It was the laity of the church that was carrying

the message abroad of the ministry of Jesus. You know, the task of the minister of the pastor

is to teach, to preach, to equip the laity for ministry.

The ministry of Christ is given to the whole church.

Every one of you who is in Christ is to be a participant, not a spectator, in the outreach ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's not just the paid professionals who have been entrusted with the gospel, but it's the

whole church who has been given that task. That's how the church was built, and that's how

the church always will be built when the people of God are mobilized to go into the marketplace,

into their offices, among their friends, into their communities, as Christians proclaiming

the Word of God. There's no place in the Word of God.

There's no place in the kingdom of God for secret service Christians,

or for what I call Clare-all Christians,

where only their hairdresser knows for sure.

You know, people say, well, I like to keep my faith as a private and personal matter.

That's impossible. If it's true faith, it must be personal, but the faith of a Christian

...