Evangelical church membership growth during recessions: 1.52 percent

Evangelical church membership growth in non-recession years: 0.98 percent

Despite the best efforts of pastors and Christian educators, many children in America still don't enjoy going to church. These kids usually reveal their discomfort through one of a few predictable habits. Some fidget in their seats; others doodle or draw; still others try to sneak in a comic book or portable video game.

But a 7-year-old boy in Plain City, Utah, recently broke the mold and attempted ...

Rate of major depression in women who have attended religious services since childhood: 27 percent

Rate in women who have changed attendance patterns (nearly all had stopped attending services): 36 percent

Incidence of major depression in men who have always attended religious services: 31 percent

Incidence in men who have stopped attending: 24 percent

Highlights from a 2008 Harris Poll nation-wide survey of 2,126 U.S. adults:

• Americans who believe in God: 80 percent (unchanged since the last survey in 2005)
  
  
• Americans who believe Jesus is the Son of God: 71 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the resurrection of Jesus: 70 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth: 61 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the survival of the soul after death: 68 percent
  
  

Orthodox Church officials in Russia discovered in 2008 that one of their church buildings had disappeared. Poof—gone! The 200-year-old building northeast of Moscow had gone unused for a decade, but the Orthodox Church, which was experiencing growth, was considering reopening the church building, and that's when they discovered their building wasn't there.

They had to get to the bottom of this. ...

Spiritual formation is so often couched in more individualistic terms, that it's easy to forget the important role the church community plays in our growth as individuals. In her book Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott shares a story she once heard from her minister that illustrates well the necessary presence of others in our journey of faith:

When [my minister] was about seven, her best friend got lost ...

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, pastor, and martyr (1906–1945)

Without a doubt, my all-time favorite animal is the duck-billed platypus. It appeals to my nonconformist instincts because it breaks so many rules of biology. Consider: The platypus has a flat, rubbery bill, no teeth, and webbed feet, like a duck. Yet it has a furry body and beaver-like tail, and nurses its young like a mammal.

But wait—it walks with a lizard gait and lays leathery eggs like ...

Love cannot exist in isolation: away from others, love bloats into pride. Grace cannot be received privately: cut off from others, it is perverted into greed. Hope cannot develop in solitude: separated from the community, it goes to seed in the form of fantasies. No gift, no virtue can develop and remain healthy apart from the community of faith. "Outside the church there is no salvation" is not ecclesiastical ...

After his ordination in 1969, author and pastor Phillip Johnson received a call to serve one large church and ten smaller churches on the northern coast of Newfoundland, Canada. On the first day of his new circuit ministry, Johnson learned that in order to get to the smallest of the churches, he would have to travel 40 miles by snowmobile to a tiny village. When Johnson arrived, only one person had ...