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I took this job to pay the rent, and to learn a little something about how to edit. It accomplished both those things, as well as a few more important things. They have to do with matters of the spirit.

Sharing my faith is not my strong suit. I can write about my belief in Jesus, but when it comes to actually talking about it to a living, breathing non-Christian, I clam up. This isn't because I don't care if the unsaved find God; it's not because I think Jesus is anything less than clear when he charges us to spread the gospel. No, I don't witness because, well, I'm embarrassed.

I'm not sure that most of my professors and classmates even know that I'm a Christian. I hem and haw for hours about my jewelry before I go to a professor's office. Do I leave the cross hanging around my neck, right there in plain sight? Or do I tuck it discreetly beneath my blouse?

Once I was on the train heading upstate for a weekend retreat. I ran into a professor, who asked me where I was going. "Poughkeepsie," I said, which was almost true—the retreat house was near Poughkeepsie. He assumed I was going to Vassar for the weekend, which is exactly what I had wanted him to assume. So much for the Great Commission.

I know my campus is a mission field in need of the gospel, but I'm too determined to fit in and impress people to really take up that challenge.

But at the Web site, I couldn't hide my faith. At one of our very first meetings, staff members went around the table and talked about our religious and spiritual selves. So everyone at my office knew my religious autobiography: that I grew up Jewish; that at some point around the end of college I came to faith; and that I now worship at an evangelical Episcopal church and actually believe kooky things, like that Jesus died to purge my sins and that after he died, he literally rose again.

Being surrounded by non-Christian coworkers pushed me, on a few occasions, to witness—even in the ladies' room.

A coworker at the sink said, "So Lauren, can I talk to you about a little something?"

"Sure," I said.

She told me, in short order, that she'd had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, that things weren't looking any better, that she was feeling bereft, what could she do? First I suggested lunch. Then I suggested shopping. Then I finally got it, and I suggested we pray. And we did.

The next week we had a longer conversation about what I believe and why, and a few weeks later I noticed my coworker was browsing through the pile of books that might be reviewed and landing on books by Philip Yancey and Os Guinness.

Even when I'm not put in the position of asking people to kneel with me and pray the sinner's prayer, I'm still doing some kind of evangelism—the kind, I think, that we now call "lifestyle evangelism." Everyone at work knew that I was a Christian, and there was no way around it, even when I wished there were.

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November 12 2001, Vol. 45, No. 14