A 2002 poll indicated 86 percent of Pentecostals said religion was “very” important in their lives, and 88 percent said they believed religion could solve all or most of the major problems facing the country.

A 2006 Gallup Poll showed Pentecostals top the list of people who attend church on a weekly basis.

As Pentecostalism spreads into traditionally Catholic areas in Asia, Africa and especially Latin America, its popularity has created often fierce disputes with the Catholic Church, as this Dec. 15, 2005, Los Angeles Times story reports.

Professor Milton J. Coalter is the librarian at the Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Va. Also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church. He has written on the decline and growth prospects of mainstream Protestantism.

Mark Nelson is district superintendent and team leader of the Missionary Church Florida Church in Auburndale, Fla., an evangelical organization that looks to multiply clusters of churches throughout Florida that can work together.

The Rev. Donald Paul Sullins is a former Episcopal priest who was ordained into the Catholic priesthood in 2002. He is an associate professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and has written about church switching and patterns of Protestant affiliation.

The Rev. Edward P. Harding Jr. completed a new church start for the Presbyterian Church — Prince George’s Community Church in Springdale, Md., in 2000. He was formerly pastor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Mass.

The Rev. Joe Samuel Ratliff is pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston. He is co-author of Church Planting in the African American Community. Contact him through his executive assistant, Vernastene J. Davis.

Ed Stetzer holds the Billy Graham Chair of Church, Mission and Evangelism at Wheaton College and serves as executive director of the school’s Billy Graham Center for Evangelism. He was formerly the executive director of Lifeway Research, a division of Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. He blogs on a variety of subjects […]