The Barna Group – Most Americans Consider Easter a Religious Holiday, But Fewer Correctly Identify its Meaning

As American society becomes more religiously diverse, the nation’s population has had to grapple with how to define its holidays and celebrations. A recent study by the Barna Group explored Americans’ definition of the Easter holiday, asking a nationwide, representative sample of American adults how they would describe what Easter means to them, personally.

The results indicated that most Americans consider Easter to be a religious holiday, but fewer identify the resurrection of Jesus as the underlying meaning. The study also explored the degree to which Americans are likely to invite an unchurched friend or family member to attend worship service on Easter weekend.

Sacred Descriptions

In response to a free-response query, most Americans described Easter as a religious celebration. Two out of every three Americans (67%) mention some type of theistic religious element. Common responses included describing it as a Christian holiday, a celebration of God or Jesus, a celebration of Passover, a holy day, or a special time for church or worship attendance.

However, while a majority of Americans indicated some type of spiritual connection with Easter, the research also showed that a minority of adults directly linked Easter to the Christian faith’s belief in the resurrection of Christ. In all, 42% of Americans said that the meaning of Easter was the resurrection of Jesus or that it signifies Christ death and return to life. One out of every 50 adults (2%) said that they would describe Easter as the most important holiday of their faith.

Even within the religious definitions offered by Americans there is a certain degree of confusion….

Read the rest of the report via The Barna Group – Most Americans Consider Easter a Religious Holiday, But Fewer Correctly Identify its Meaning.

Some online (print music/lead sheet) resources for music ministry and worship music

Getting the sheet music together for your music ministry and not breaking the law can be a bit of a challenge. Personally I think that a lot of the songs can be written down straight from the album almost if the music provided is limited to lyrics and chords.

Many use the CCLI site, for New Zealand that is http://www.ccli.co.nz/.

Other sources you may want to consider are:

• http://hymncharts.com/
• http://www.praisecharts.com/
• http://wordmusicnow.com/
• http://pwarchive.com/
• http://www.lifewayworship.com/

You may, especially when you are a guitar player, E-chords which has a lot of free download materials available.You will need to register for the site though. For the individual musician try “free sheet music” plus the name of the song or when you are a guitar player the same but for instance use the key search “free guitar tabs” and the name of the song.

My best advice however is to just train yourself in getting the chords together yourself. Most of the time the songs are not that incredibly complex and the more you do the quicker you get at it.

Bing Vs Google – Why You Rank Well on One Search Engine But Not the Other

With Microsoft and Yahoo combining their muscle in the search space, it is imperative that you do not ignore it in your search engine optimization efforts, especially since it will be the Bing search engine that works behind Yahoo search as well. There have been countless articles written online and in technology magazines comparing Bing to Google, but you need to know the differences between how these two search engines rank their pages so that you can optimize your web pages for both of these as well as Yahoo.

Why Would You Rank Higher in One, but Not in Another?

Most small business owners get frustrated that their site either ranks highly in Bing, but poorly in Google or vice versa. Here are some of the reasons why this may be happening and more importantly some workarounds to tackle this problem.

Read the rest of the post at Bing Vs Google – Why You Rank Well on One Search Engine But Not the Other.