Ed Stoffel

Many churches suffer from what I’ll call a revolving door syndrome, regularly adding members to the rolls while others are dropping off for no good reason. Some churches no longer have official membership, opting instead for a defacto membership of those who are present. Outside of those who move away and transfer to another church of like faith, a significant number seem unhappy, and searching for more. A recent study looks at how long typical church attenders stick with it…

Research conducted for Facts & Trends magazine revealed that the average length of time American Protestant adults have been attending the same church is 13.7 years. However, excluding the minority who cite a very long stay at the church, a more accurate median figure, the study noted, is 6.6 years. For older adults (55 and over), the average length of attendance at the same congregation is 15 years. Overall, 13 percent of churchgoers say they have been attending the current congregations for less than a year; 16 percent have been at the same church for one to two years; 11 percent for three to four years; 18 percent for five to nine years; 16 percent for 10 to 19 years; and 26 percent for two decades or longer.

 Continue Reading: Study: How Loyal are Churchgoers?, Christian Post

Cal Thomas recommends this film which opened this week…

“Amazing Grace” is the account of William Wilberforce, a courageous member of the British Parliament in the latter part of the 19th century who, more than any person, was responsible for ending the English slave trade. Starring Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce and co-starring Albert Finney as the slave trader, John Newton, who converted to Christianity and subsequently wrote the hymn, “Amazing Grace,” this is a film about political and moral heroism with implications for our time, offering all of the rationalizations for maintaining the slave trade, including allegations that it would wreck the British economy and the most outrageous of all, that the slaves, themselves, had allegedly not registered any opposition to the trade.

If we gripe about the lousy films most of the year, we should support the films that do it right, like Amazing Grace.

 Continue Reading: What a Friend We Have in Hollywood, Cal Thomas

Free will - do we have it or not? That’s the question scientists are now considering, rehashing the debates of philosophy and religion:

Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free. “The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said. That is hardly a new thought. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, as Einstein paraphrased it, that “a human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants.” Einstein, among others, found that a comforting idea. “This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals,” he said. How comforted or depressed this makes you might depend on what you mean by free will.

 Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t, Dennis Overbye, NY Times