According to recent research by Grey Matter Research & Consulting "relatively few Americans react negatively to the frequent intersection between professional sports and religion." The study considered seven different types of religious expression: Athletes from opposing teams gathering together on the field or court after a game for prayer, Athletes speaking up about their faith in interviews after the game, Athletes speaking up about their faith in interviews after the Read More …
Trends
Misusing Statistics (#0880)
Ed Stetzer, President of LifeWay Research, recently blogged about findings of research his organization conducted on how pastors use statistics in their ministries. The findings are based on a phone survey of over 1,000 pastors in late 2009. When these clergy were asked if Christians frequently misuse statistics to fit their own agenda, the vast majority (66%) responded affirmatively. Stop and think about this statistic about the use of statistics. According to Read More …
An Honesty Experiment (#0879)
Are certain groups of people more honest than other groups? Honest Tea sought to answer that question via a 30 city experiment designed to test people's honesty. They sold their drinks at the price of $1 per bottle at unmanned pop-up stores then published the results as the National Honesty Index. The interactive National Honesty website allows users to view information about and compare different groups. For example, the image at right appeared when I Read More …
Unchurched Americans (#0872)
Warren Bird, Research Director for Leadership Network and co-author of 24 books on various aspects of church health and innovation, recently explored just how many Americans are actually unchurched. He concludes that more than 1 in 3 adults are unchurched (have not attended church in the last year), which is a number of people that would be the size of the tenth largest country in the world. So What? Bird communicates several data points visually using an infograhic, Read More …
Choosing Larger Congregations (#0868)
More and more Christians are choosing to worship in larger congregations. Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, recently shared seven trends relating to American megachurches. His list (for another trend originating from the same data Rainer relies upon, consider reading my recent post) begins with a trend that has an impact that reaches far beyond megachurches (typically defined as congregations that average 2,000+ in weekend worship attendance): Further Read More …
Top 200 Church Blogs (#0867)
Kent Schaffer founded Church Relevance to "help ministries become more effective and efficient." Earlier this month, Church Relevance published its annual list of the top 200 church blogs, including an explanation of how it determined the rankings. So What? While certainly not a comprehensive this list, it provides a wealth of possibility for the would be reader. I plan to visit each of the blogs listed at least once over the next few weeks, and look forward to being introduced Read More …
Measuring the Web’s Impact (#0865)
Earlier this week I happened upon Megan Garber's piece for the Atlantic offering a high level summary of the first ever Web Index provided by the World Wide Web Foundation. The foundation was founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who "invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working as a software engineer at CERN." The Index itself draws on an incredible wealth of data covering 61 countries worldwide and utilizing 85 underlying indicators across seven components and three Read More …
Opinions on Educational Technology (#0863)
The Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission, a non-governmental organization exploring the opportunity to use technology to improve education in the United States, recently released the results of a poll on the opinions of teachers and parents about educational technology in K-12 education. Findings include: 96% of teachers and 92% of parents believe that schools’ integration of technology in teaching and learning is important to the education of American students Read More …
Smartphone Habits (#0861)
The Pew Research Center's Pew Internet & American Life Project has been tracking cell phone ownership and use for the past eight years. Earlier this month they released a new infographic on our smartphone habits: So What? More people today are buying smartphones than traditional cell phones. Smartphone ownership has been increasing for some time, and all indicators suggest that continued growth is likely. In addition to more people having smartphones, more Read More …
Weekend Activities (#0860)
Lam Thuy Vo's recent piece explores just how Americans actually spend their weekends. The data contained in Vo's infographic comes from the American Time Use Survey, which is conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So What? The average American spends a little over half an hour every weekend volunteering and/or participating in religious activities. Is this number higher or lower than you would have guessed? What are the implications of this statistic for your Read More …