The Rev. Stephen W. Pogue c0-founded and led The Hip Hop Church, which holds services at Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion Church in New York City. He is now pastor of The Greater Centennial A.M.E. Zion Church in Mount Vernon, New York.

Dean Borgman is the Culpepper Chair of Youth Ministries at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s urban campus in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also founder and director of the Center for Youth Studies, a national and global network of those interested in the research of adolescence and the youth culture. His areas of expertise include urban and cross-cultural youth […]

Chap Clark is a professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and directs the seminary’s youth ministry programs. Clark immersed himself in the life of a public high school in Los Angeles County, working as a substitute teacher and conducting ethnographic research there, and convened discussion groups with teenagers around […]

The Rev. Kenda Creasy Dean is a professor of youth, church and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. She is also an ordained United Methodist pastor and co-founder of Ministry Incubators, a consulting group that works with pastors and faith communities to launch new ministries. She is the author of several books on youth ministry.

The Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush, an American Baptist minister, is senior vice president at Auburn Seminary. He is the author of Teen Spirit: One World, Many Paths and wrote a teen spirituality advice column on Beliefnet.com in which he answered teens’ questions on subjects from the spiritual implications of tattooing to abstinence to interfaith dating.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has raised concerns about a range of freedom of conscience questions related to protection of life issues and supports including conscience provisions in proposed funding bills.

Tommy Kyllonen, who also goes by Urban D., is a hip-hop artist and lead pastor at the Tampa, Fla., Crossover Church. The church’s ministry is the hip-hop culture, and worship combines music, dance, visual arts and other media. He has recorded albums, performs concerts and has written a book about hip-hop and the church.

Pastor Rob Bell is is the author of Love Wins, Velvet Elvis, and Sex God, and is a coauthor of Jesus Wants to Save Christians. He is also featured in the first series of spiritual short films called NOOMA with spiritual teachings aimed at teenagers and college-age adults.

This March 31, 2006, article in The New York Times cites a long-awaited study that showed prayer offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, and patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications.