American Church in Crisis Groundbreaking Research Based on a National Database of over 200,000 Churches

David T. Olson is director of the American Church Research Project and director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church. He is a graduate of Crown College and Bethel Seminary. He has pastored, planted, and supervised churches in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida, and California. David and his wife, Shelly, have four children and live in the Minneapolis area.

Craig Groeschel was born on December 2, 1967 in Houston Texas. He is the founder and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv which is considered the largest church in the United States and has fifteen locations in five states. He attended Oklahoma City University on an athletic scholarship and was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and received a Bachelor's degree in Marketing. In 1991, Groeschel entered the ministry as an associate pastor in the United Methodist Church. He attended Phillips Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and earned a Master of Divinity degree. He was an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma…  More City during the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. In 1996, Groeschel and a handful of people started Life Covenant Church in a two-car garage. He later told Business Week that he started the process by performing market research of non-churchgoers and designed his church in response to what he learned. Groeschel's non-traditional style was successful and attendance of Life Covenant grew rapidly, eventually evolving to become the second largest church in the United States with fifteen LifeChurch.tv campuses. Groeschel began using video to deliver some of sermons. In 2006 he set up a website called Mysecret.tv as a place for people to confess anonymously on the Internet. LifeChurch.tv was named America's Most Innovative Church by Outreach Magazine in 2007 and 2008. LifeChurch.tv innovations include its free resource library with sermons, transcripts, videos, and artwork. Craig Groeschel's title Fight: Winning the Battles That Matter Most made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2013.  Less