Aubrey M. Malphurs, senior professor of leadership pastoral ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary. He wrote Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century: A Comprehensive Guide for New Churches and Those Desiring Renewal (Baker Books, 2004).

Matt Jones is director of new church development for North Alabama Conference for the United Methodist Church.

Penny Long Marler is a professor of religion at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., with interests in the relationship between church and society and religious change. She has written about measuring growth in church attendance.

Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ferndale, Mich., uses African drums in worship and holds classes to teach worshippers how to use them.

M. Jane Harris is a professor of religion at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. She has written on the role of Pentecostalism in political life in the South.

Jeff Farmer of Puyallup, Wash., heads the executive board of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches of North America. It is an umbrella organization that grew out of the so-called “Memphis Miracle” of October 1994, in which a number of leading black and white Pentecostal leaders and communities reconciled after decades of racial division.

Grant Wacker is professor emeritus of Christian history at Duke University Divinity School in Durham, N.C. He specializes in the history of evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and world missions and is the author of Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson is general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, with headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich. In October 2005 he gave an address in New York City on the promise of Pentecostal Christianity and the need for mainline churches like his own to forge bonds with this burgeoning, global movement.

Edith L. Blumhofer is director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. She has written extensively on Pentecostalism.