[Cronos]

thank you — I will look up the Jewish bible! It is good to read the word of God in the raw, but it is also good to read it in community — and that community also includes past Christians.

[Cronos]

National Council of Churchs list throws something quite interesting

	Group	Population	Growth
1	The Catholic Church	68,115,001	1.49%
2	Southern Baptist Convention	16,228,438	-0.24%
3	The United Methodist Church	7,853,987	-0.98%
4	Mormons (LDS)	5,974,041	1.71%
5	The Church of God in Christ	5,499,875	-
6	National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc	5,000,000	-
7	ELCA	4,633,887	-1.62%
8	National Baptist Convention of America, Inc	3,500,000	-
9	Assemblies of God	2,899,702	1.27%
10	PCUSA	2,844,952	-3.28%
11	African Methodist Episcopal Church	2,500,000	-
11	National Missionary Baptist Convention	2,500,000	-
11	Progressive National Baptist Convention	2,500,000	-
14	LCMS	2,337,349	-1.92%
15	ECUSA	2,057,292	-2.81%
16	Churches of Christ	1,638,485	-
17	Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America	1,500,000	-
17	Pentecostal Assemblies of the Word	1,500,000	-
19	The African Methodist Episcopal Zioan Church	1,400,000	-
20	American Baptist Churches in the USA	1,331,127	-2.00%
21	Baptist Bible Fellowship International	1,200,000	-
22	Jehovah's Witnesses	1,114,009	2.00%
23	United Church of Church	1,111,691	-2.93%
24	Church of God (Cleveland Tennessee)	1,072,169	1.76%
25	Christian Churchs and Churches of Christ	1,071,616	-
	Total	147,383,621

Now, I can understand the ELCA and the ECUSA and PCUSA declining, but why is the LCMS declining? They are orthodox in their beliefs? Ditto for the SBC (though it is a much smaller percentage). And I'm sincerely asking -- if they are losing numbers, then they must most likely be losing numbers to secularism which is a common enemy. What can we all learn?

As an aside -- the PCUSA, ECUSA (with -3.28 and -2.81% declines) are seemingly in a no-way-out downward spiral, which is sad and shows the power of the pink mafia.