Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God’s guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.   Thoughts? It’s interesting to me that a full 78% believe that God still played some type of role in creation. What’s your takeaway? More...

Fascinating infographic on how our younger generation communicates.  Take note people… this is the church or tomorrow.  Change or...

Russ Rankin writes: Professing Christians progressing toward spiritual maturity will have a firmer grasp on important doctrinal positions, according to findings from LifeWay Research. However, plenty of churchgoers still struggle with basic truths about God, the Bible and salvation. The LifeWay Research study on “Doctrinal Positions” shows that while 81 percent of churchgoers say “When you die, you will go to heaven because you have confessed your sins and accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior,” 26 percent agree “If a person is sincerely seeking God, he/she can obtain eternal life through...

More than half of Americans think the Bible has too little influence on a culture they see in moral decline, yet only one in five Americans read the Bible on a regular basis, according to a new survey. More than three-quarters of Americans (77 percent) think the nation’s morality is headed downhill, according to a new survey from American Bible Society. The survey showed the Bible is still firmly rooted in American soil: 88 percent of respondents said they own a Bible, 80 percent think the Bible is sacred, 61 percent wish they read the Bible more, and the average household has 4.4 Bibles. If the...

Do you have Facebook on your smartphone? How often do you check it? In a recent study commissioned by Facebook, smartphone users were found to be checking the social network an average of 14 times a day. The study also found that 79% of smartphone users use their phones within fifteen minutes of waking up while 62% grab their phone immediately upon waking. With this in mind, we ask the question: how are churches leveraging Facebook for the Gospel? In a story we covered in the just released April edition of Ministry Briefing, we discuss these stats, what they could mean for churches, and how the church...

According to a study by FaithCommunities, 75% of churches report that they are experiencing some kind of conflict in the past five year’s time.  And 25% report their current conflict as ‘serious’. Here are the sources of conflict:   Does this sound about right to you? Has your church experiences ‘serious’ conflict in the past five...

Are you a modern-day televangelist?  Chris Nye thinks that we have merely re-defined what a televangelist is (in the current day) with blogs, youtube, satellite campuses, tablets, smart phones, etc. He writes: We are not finished with the Televangelists, I’ve realized. We have simply rebranded them. We’ve changed the style but not the substance. When it comes to the habit of elevating certain gifted communicators, and trying desperately to be like them, little has changed. As our culture has moved from the television screen to the computer/tablet screen, the Televangelist has moved along...

New from Barna: Additionally, despite a generally high number of Americans who think the Bible is sacred, there’s also a fairly high proportion of Americans who at least somewhat agree the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths. Nearly half of Americans agree with that statement (31% of Americans agree somewhat, while 16% agree strongly), which hasn’t significantly changed since 2011. Overall, there has been a decrease in people who are friendly or neutral toward the Bible—those people in the “middle” who are neither engaged with...

A recent study done by Ed Stetzer and Lifeway Research points to a decline in church attendance on Easter for Americans. The study suggests that 41% of Americans are planning on attending services on Easter, 39% will not be attending, and 20% are undecided. This morning we debate the meaning of this, how churches can learn from this study, and what this says about the culture we find ourselves in. What do YOU expect attendance to look like at Easter this...

It hasn’t been all that long ago that there were no cell phones. In high school, we had one pay phone.  And that one phone didn’t work half the time. I remember waiting in line to put in my dime to call my mom to pick me up… many times. I remember at my first job, we had a cellular phone (kind of) in our company vehicle.  It was like a CB, and you shared the  ’line’ with other businesses (so everyone could hear what you were saying).  When it worked. And I remember my first real cell phone.  Yeah… try sticking THAT in your pocket. So I was a little amused by...