Mark Driscoll is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church, a fast-growing, nondenominational, theologically conservative congregation in Seattle’s urban Ballard neighborhood. He was named one of the 25 most influential pastors of the past 25 years by Preaching magazine in 2010.

Andrew Jones, a New Zealander and a pivotal emerging thinker, has been blogging tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com since 2001 – a long time as these things go. He is project director for the Boaz Project, based in the Czech Republic and developing “a support structure for church in the emerging culture.”

Read about Tenebrae services and their recreation of the emotional aspects of the passion story on the Rev. Ken Collins’ web site.

Michael Stillwater is the founder of Inner Harmony. With his partner, Doris Laesser, he led a group of Americans on a dark retreat in Switzerland in January 2006. He lives in Marin County, Calif.

Siroj Sorajjakool is an associate professor of religion at Loma Linda University in California. Sorajjakool wrote When Sickness Heals: The Place of Religious Belief in Healthcare (Templeton Foundation Press, forthcoming in April 2006) and co-edited Spirituality, Health and Wholeness: An Introductory Guide for Health Care Professionals (Haworth Press, 2004). Contact through the media office for the university.

Dr. David Spiegel is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral studies at California’s Stanford University School of Medicine and a leader in the field of psychosomatic research and psychoneuroendocrinology/oncology. Spiegel’s 1989 study showed that not only did supportive-expressive group therapy improve quality of life in women with metastatic breast cancer, it significantly enhanced survival time. This […]

Dr. Claudia Finkelstein is a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle who teaches and writes about mind-body medicine in clinical practice and in the education of physicians.

J. Scott Tonigan is a research professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque whose expertise in treating alcoholism includes studying spirituality as a variable in alcohol abuse and alcoholism. His work on a study called Project MATCH shows that treatment for alcoholism with Alcoholics Anonymous can affect the degree to which one reports […]

Dr. Elizabeth Bowman is a psychiatrist and clinical professor in the neurology department at Indiana University School of Medicine. Bowman, who also holds a master’s degree in sacred theology, led a panel discussion at the university on spirituality in patient care.