From news editor Daniel Silliman: Sometimes when I’m driving, I’ll play a game where I see a church and try to guess the denomination before I get a glimpse of the sign. Where I live in Appalachia, one of the safest guesses is Free Will Baptist. They are so ubiquitous they get abbreviated without explanation as FWB. Last week I was driving in Rhode Island and Connecticut, though, and did not see a single FWB. The safer guess, up there, turned out to be Congregationalist / United Church of Christ. 

We forget how big the United States is. And how varied the regions are. The religious differences are notable—but of course only if you’re paying attention. Lots of people think that most churches are megachurches. Or assume all evangelicals are Southern Baptists. Or all Baptists are Southern Baptists. That’s wrong, actually.

As evangelicals who report on evangelicals for evangelicals, the CT news team tries to notice these things. Since the editorial staff is now mostly remote, we have the advantage of comparing notes from different communities, different denominations, different parts of the world, and across the US. Recently I had a question about a possible preaching trend and heard from editors in New England, the Midwest, the West Coast, and the South. 

Having all those eyes and ears really helps for the work we’re trying to do. And it makes me better at the guess-the-denomination game.