Research
How to: Uncover trends in numbers
You can use a few pieces of data and a few math formulas to uncover some amazing trends. I will illustrate this with several posts on global trends. I will show you to do the same thing for any part of the world: a region, nation, people group or country.
Start with the population at two [...]
The Russians are coming
Despite the sexist photo on the front page (sorry, folks), this article from the International Herald Tribune is an excellent analysis of the burgeoning Russian economy and its results: Russian tourism. Time to start thinking about mobilizing Russian businessmen for BAM and tentmaking, as well as long-term Russian cross-cultural church planting missionaries.
Following Sudan
ReliefWeb has these great analyses of current conflicts and humanitarian crises; if you are advocating for Sudan you want to be subscribed to these RSS feeds.
More on SBC changes
Steve Addison has two graphs up which are quite revealing. The first shows the growth of SBC membership over time, but note the slowing in growth from 1995 to 2005. This means Baptists are still growing but not as fast as before. Look at the second chart carefully: its not charting declines in membership but [...]
Canadian Anglican row over same-sex unions
Five clergy broke away from the Anglican Church of Canada over theological disagreements including the blessing of same-sex unions. The Church said the five would be considered “trespassing” if they were on the property of their parishes. The clergy insisted they intended to remain in their churches with the support of their congregations. Should be [...]
Baptists could fall to half by 2030
Page, who ends his second annual term as SBC president this week, has predicted that the number of Southern Baptist churches will fall by half by 2030 unless the denomination makes major changes. Amid the falling numbers, Page cautioned Southern Baptists against pointing fingers. What would the decline in membership do the annual Lottie Moon [...]
Religion in Europe
The Jewish Post has an in-depth analysis of the past, present and future of Jews in Europe. Interestingly it notes a revival of all faiths in Europe (notably Orthodox and Muslims), increasing “sensitivity to faith groups,” and the fact that Islam is the second largest group in Europe (15 to 20 million) and set to [...]
Oil much in the news
This professor reiterates the idea that oil production has reached its peak (yet advocates exploring more oil fields–go figure). This article talks about the global impact of oil prices: South Korea, Kashmir, Europe. Everyone wants the price of fuel to be cut, or subsidized, but no one wants to pay more in taxes. What’s a [...]
Updated HIV/AIDS stats
New reports on the vulnerability to AIDS: Subsaharan Africa is world’s most affected region (link): 68% of all adults and 90% of all children who are infected with HIV, 76% of all AIDS deaths in 2007, 61% of all women with HIV, need for US$7.5 billion for resources. Global total: 33.2 million people living with [...]
Rise and fall of regional populations, 1900-2050
Here’s another one of our ongoing Google Motion Capture charts. This one focuses on the change in regional populations for the period 1900-2050 (with projections from the UN database), in the context of each regional population’s share of the global total. After you play it through a time or two, you might try stopping and [...]
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