We welcome our recent stream of visitors from two distinct areas: Dallas, Texas, and young people from throughout the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Our article, “The Modern Church: Blowing in the Wind” (Jan. 26, 2006), which provides a brief report on a church split in Dallas, has attracted about 30 readers to this blog from the Dallas area in the last 48 hours. We offer our greetings to the members of Valley View Christian Church and Cornerstone Christian Church. Rod and I pray for God’s best for both of your churches. I know enough about both churches to know that if anyone in the Dallas area is looking for a good Christ-honoring, Bible-believing church to attend, either church would be a good choice. (Here’s more information about Valley View. If anyone has a website address for Cornerstone, please send it).

Meanwhile, we also have been inundated lately with visitors from several foreign countries: Canada, Cyprus, India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom. Why in the world is this blog suddenly of such interest to people of those nations? Here’s the riddle wrapped around that enigma: Those visitors have all ended up here by plugging into search engines some combination of the phrase “hard to keep a secret.”

Google it for yourself. You will see that this blog comes up No. 1 in the world on the search engine list for that particular phrase. Those searches are hitting on an article we published about the completion of our first month online (“Hard to Keep a Secret These Days,” Jan. 23, 2006).

But why are people all over the world searching on the phrase “hard to keep a secret?” That’s a very good question which had me stumped for a few days. But I’ve cracked the code. The British Commonwealth of Nations, headed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II herself, is composed of 53 nations that were formerly British territories. The six countries listed above are all Commonwealth nations. A little noodling around has led me to the discovery that the Queen sponsors an annual essay contest for people 18 years and younger. The contest has been going on for more than 100 years. The deadline for this year’s entries is March 1, just in time for Commonwealth Day on March 12. Contestants are divided into four age groups, and each group has a choice of five essay topics. Guess what one of the topics for 12- and 13-year-olds is? “How hard is it to keep a secret?”

So, to the boys and girls of the Commonwealth, welcome to our little blog. I have a granddaughter about your age who is very special to me. I’m sure each of you is special, too, and I wish you luck on your essays. The fact that you found me and I found you back certainly proves how hard secrets are to keep these days.

It’s a strange world. A girl in Battaramulla, Sri Lanka, doing research for her Commonwealth essay, finds her way via the World Wide Web to the blog of an attorney and a writer in Oklahoma, United States – 9,498 miles away. When those Oklahoma bloggers wonder why a Sri Lankan girl came calling, one of them takes a trip via Google to the office of the Queen of England, and learns on the Queen’s website about the essay that Battaramulla girl is writing. Just 15 years ago, the words website, Google and blog did not exist, and the World Wide Web had just been invented. I don’t know your name, young lady of Battaramulla, but I hope you win the contest.

There aren’t many secrets any more – whether for students in Sri Lanka, or bloggers in Oklahoma, or churches in Dallas. Perhaps it has always been true, but it has never been more true than it is now: the things we do and say have a ripple effect that can reach all the way around the world. That can be a good thing, or bad. Guess that depends on what we do and say.

Jesus said,

“No one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed, but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” (Luke 8:16-17).

Everything we do, as individuals and as churches, will eventually come to light. We are sometimes surprised or distressed when something becomes more public than we ever expected that it would. We have the very human thought, “What will people think?” But the much more pertinent question is: What does God think? There are no secrets from Him.

As individuals, we are entitled to some privacy. For churches, however, it is almost always a good thing to get things out in the open, subject to the scrutiny and feedback of others. What one church does ripples through to affect every other church in the body of Christ, as well as our collective witness to the world. No church or church leader has the right to ever forget that.