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1 in 10 Christians
Worldwide slightly more than 1 in 10 Christians live in the United States. As of 2015, there were 2,276,250,000 Christians with 248,148,00 (or 10.9%) residing in the United States. Perspective While a...
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Church Membership Down 20% in 2 Decades
Gallup recently reported that church membership in the United States has experienced a significant decline over the last two decades dropping from 70% in 1999 to 50% in 2018. This shift is attributed...
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Top 5 Posts of 2019 (January – June)
I’ve written more blog posts during the first half of the year this year than any year since 2015. My readers have selected the following posts as the top posts so far this year based on the number of...
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240 Months of Ministry
A lot has changed in the 20 years since I started my first role in parish ministry. I’ve grown through my experiences. The church I know best – the Mainline Protestant variety – has endured...
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What Americans Don’t Know About Religion
Over the last decade I taught an undergraduate introduction to world religions course more than two dozen times. From that experience, I learned the importance of having students self-assess their...
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Mainline: The 5 Percent?
Over the years I’ve written dozens of blog posts about Mainline decline. This morning, I happened upon a tweet that highlights the significance in decline by comparing current Mainline Protestant...
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Are 10,000 Churches Closing Every Year?
For years, I’ve heard people claim that 10,000 churches are closing every year in America. A quick web search shows that this big, bold, round number can be found on its own or, more often, as the...
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Another Decade of Major Decline in The Episcopal Church
photo by Greg Smith Earlier this week Episcopal priest Tom Ferguson wrote a piece titled “The Collapse is Here,” exploring The Episcopal Church’s recently published statistics on Sunday worship...
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Farewell to White Protestant Texas
Demographic shifts are happening more rapidly than many realize. In a 2014 post titled “End of the White Majority,” I shared that the National Center for Education Statistics projected that after...
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A Decade of Rapid Decline in American Christianity
Earlier this week the Pew Research Center published an update on America’s changing religious landscape titled In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace. Rapid Decline The following...
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Young Adults Projected to Decline Rapidly in the Mainline
One of the books I’ve read recently that I know I’ll return to many times in the years to come is The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults...
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Partisan Polarization – 3 Critical Issues
PRRI recently released a report titled “Fractured Nation: Widening Partisan Polarization and Key Issues in 2020 Presidential Elections” that presents key data from the 2019 American Values Survey. The...
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Religion is Losing Influence
A new survey conducted by Pew Research Center shows that Republicans and Democrats strongly agree that religion is losing influence in American life. In an era where Republicans and those who lean...
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Sermon Length: Comparing My Experiences to Pew Research Findings
How long should a sermon be? In my experience the number of answers to this question are equal to or even greater than the number of people participating in the conversation. How long are sermons...
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Top 10 Posts of 2019
2019 has been quite a year. My return to the Mansfield Mission Center and decision to join First Presbyterian Church (Fort Worth, TX) both made the top ten list of most viewed blog posts written in...
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Top 20 Experiences of the 2010s
The decade of the 2010s will end in just a few days. To celebrate my lived experiences this decade, I created a list of my Top 20 Experiences of the 2010s. Rather than present a single lengthy list of...
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Top 20 Posts of the 2010s
You voted with your readership. The top 20 posts of the 2010s are the best of the best. Only the top 1% of all posts published during the decade made the cut. Based on the most views per Google...
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Low Wage Workers: The 44%
For quite some time the dominant American narrative has focused on strong and growing economy, low unemployment, and significant returns in the stock markets. This is part of the story, but certainly...
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Open and Affirming: Significant New Stats (UCC)
I have long been an advocate for the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the life of the Christian church, and have been privileged to be a part of three Open and Affirming (ONA) congregations in the...
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May Love Overcome and Justice Roll Down
I was introduced to the music of Daniel Deitrich a few days ago. In the two weeks since his song “Hymn for the 81%” first debuted on YouTube, it has been viewed more than 140,000 times. An Invitation...
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