Despite their reputation as symbols of baby-boomer America, Protestant megachurches attract a younger crowd and more singles than the average Protestant church, according to large-scale study released Tuesday.
The survey also found distressing news for a movement that took off in the 1980s and remains influential in evangelical Christianity: megachurch-goers volunteer less and give less money than other churchgoers.
Conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary and Leadership Network, the survey of nearly 25,000 people who attend 12 U.S. megachurches was conducted from January through August 2008. It is billed as the largest representative national study of that religious demographic to date.
I thought this was pretty clever. Mark Paul Gosselaar, best known as Zack Morris from his Saved By The Bell days, appears on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in character as Zack, complete with his old hair and high-tops, and his ability to freeze time.
Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them.
Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they’ve found what they consider to be “enough” information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don’t want to wait—if you’re interested in a word, we’re interested too!
Our goal is to show you as much information as possible, just as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.
By “information,” we don’t just mean traditional definitions (although we have plenty of those)! This information could be:
An example sentence—even if we’ve only found one sentence for a word, we’ll show it to you. (And we’ll show you where the sentence came from, too!
Related words: not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that are used in the same contexts. (For instance, cheeseburger, milkshake, and doughnut are not synonyms, but they show up in the same kinds of sentences.)
Images tagged by our friends at Flickr: want to know what a “pout” looks like? We’ll show you.
Statistics: how rare is “tintinnabulation”? Well, we think you’ll see it only about once a year. “Smile”? You might see that word many times, every day.
An audio pronunciation—and you can record your own!
Something YOU tell us! Use the “Contribute” links to tell us something—anything—about a word.
It is the world’s smallest, portable microwave and can be powered via a link to the USB port on a laptop computer.
The turquoise device -called the Beanzawave – has been created in partnership with Heinz to allow workers tied to their desks to create a warm snack, or hot drink, to see them through the day.
Yesterday at work I became extremely frustrated at a member on my team that didn’t really understand the concept of being on a team. While at work, I think I held my composure and acted professional and respectful, but on the drive home my blood was boiling. I almost wanted to take my anger out on a car. Or maybe drumming on a drum set made of ice and then breaking would have cooled me off. It was one of those days that just drained me, and I came home and took a two hour nap, something that is very out of character for me.
I really don’t like taking naps. For one, it disrupts my sleeping pattern and I don’t get a real deep sleep for the night. And even though I’ve never been drunk, when I wake up from a nap, I think I’m having a hangover.
SisterGeeding flies back to NYC today. WifeGeeding and I took her and her fiance out to dinner. It was a great time together, but man, it’s hard to say goodbye.
She should be racking up the airlines miles, she flies to Vietnam on Saturday.
So SisterGeeding is gone, and WifeGeeding will be gone to the beach for a week with her family starting Thursday. It’s gonna be weird to be alone for a while.
But I do find times of solitude quite enlightening.
I watched a little bit of basketball last night. There’s one thing about televised sports of today that I just can’t stand . . . interviewing coaches and players during time-outs, in between quarters, or anytime when coaches and players should be focused on the game and not during an interview.
Earlier yesterday while listening to sports radio, I heard them mention that the game was going to be played at Amway Arena, which I thought was a joke.
Cindy Sheehan, you made your point, move on, please.
Tough day for dachshunds yesterday. I saw on George Stephanopoulos’ Twitter account that his yesterday, and after I read that, a few hours later WifeGeeding called to tell me that her best friend had to put down her dachshund.
When I was a kid, I remember when ABC use to get celebrities to compete in different athletic competitions. It looks like they are going to revive the concept in a show called The Superstars.
Did you know that Nolan Ryan was once on a soap opera? He apears a little after the two minute mark. YouTube
I admit, I’m slow, I have no idea what grilled cheese means. (Somewhat mature stuff).
Something I didn’t know about the Southern Baptist Convention: The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 so slaveholders could continue to serve as missionaries. In 1995, Southern Baptists formally sought forgiveness from African-Americans. Source It makes me ponder even more about when my hometown Baptist church use to hold “slave auctions” as a youth fundraiser (third bullet point).
OK . . . the city of Cleburne has had about four earthquakes in a week? That’s just sounds like science fiction for a city in Texas. I took one geology class in college, and my expertise tells me it’s all related to the new horizontal gas drilling technique. And I saw a gas company representative state that geologists have told him the drilling isn’t related to the earthquakes. I just wonder if that geologist is on his payroll.
