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.

Tom Jones is the executive director of Stadia: New Church Strategies, a parachurch organization that finds, trains, deploys and supports church planters.

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.

Judith R. Blau, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has written about the expansion of religion and church membership in the U.S.

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.

Manuel Ortiz, professor emeritus professor of ministry and urban mission at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pa. Has focused his work on multicultural churches and the religious lives of American Hispanics.