unchurch

He said: "It is totally wrong for a conference of this kind to 'unchurch' people who believe themselves to be members of the church."

While such exclusive claims are not likely to win over non-Christians, non-Catholics, or unchurched or lapsed Catholics, the book and DVD series have cheered insiders who share Barron's triumphant vision and his view that the church has been unfairly treated over recent public scandals and controversies.

Thom Rainer, a prominent evangelical Christian author, has written a book on the "unchurched"--those people who have faith but don't belong to a congregation.

Of those surveyed, most who recently joined a PC(USA) congregation had previously been affiliated with another church or denomination, with relatively few "unchurched" people in the pews.

Perhaps someday Thrivent will give me a grant to spend a sabbatical being "unchurched" (smile).

Millennialism was present, but it disappeared when new Americans, both churched and unchurched, found themselves on their own in a fallen world.

Department of Health and Human Services suspended the use of taxpayer dollars to fund the Silver Ring Thing, a nationwide ministry that promotes abstinence-until-marriage sex education to "bring the unchurched to Jesus Christ." The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a lawsuit this past May challenging the misuse of more than one million dollars awarded by the federal government to the Silver Ring Thing since August 2003.

Nelson, who oversees the prayer groups in a six-county region, said the potential for growth is exciting for such a relatively unchurched part of the country as Oregon.

Such growth, especially in a state known for its hostility and/or indifference to religion (Oregon was ranked "the most unchurched state in the U.S.

Brent Smith, a youth pastor at Southwest Baptist Church in Ardmore, told Baptist Press News Service that FCA leaders asked kids already involved with the evangelical organization to hold off claiming tickets so that "the majority of the kids we would see would be lost or unchurched."

It is "new" because it must reach not only the unchurched, as before, but also the dechurched and, perhaps, decisively, the underchurched.

And so churchy spouses needle their unchurched partners about their reluctance to come along on Sundays.