Alister McGrath
1953 - Present (69 years)
Alister E. McGrath was born on January 23, 1953 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. After studying at Methodist College Belfast, McGrath earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1975. He pursued graduate research in science while also studying theology, and earned a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics in 1977. He was later ordained as an Anglican priest and awarded a B.D. from Oxford in 1983 and a doctorate in divinity in 2001. He also later earned a third doctorate from Oxford, a D.Litt., in 2013 for his work on science and religion. McGrath is a renowned apologist, intellectual historian, scientist, and theologian.
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Billy Graham
1918 - 2018 (100 years)
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him "among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.
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Pope Francis
1936 - Present (86 years)
Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 2013. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since Gregory III, a Syrian who reigned in the 8th century.
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R. C. Sproul
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Robert Charles Sproul was an American Reformed theologian and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. He was the founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries and could be heard daily on the Renewing Your Mind radio broadcast in the United States and internationally. Under Sproul's direction, Ligonier Ministries produced the Ligonier Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which would eventually grow into the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, of which Sproul, alongside Norman Geisler, was one of the chief architects. Sproul has been described as "the greatest and most influ...
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Norman Geisler
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Norman Leo Geisler was an American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries . He held a Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University and made scholarly contributions to the subjects of classical Christian apologetics, systematic theology, the history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Biblical inerrancy, Bible difficulties, ethics, and more. He was the author, coauthor, or editor of over 90 books and hundreds of articles.
Go to Profile Michael S. Heiser is an American biblical Old Testament scholar and Christian author. His area of expertise is the nature of the spiritual realm in the Bible, namely the Divine Council and hierarchy of the spiritual order. He is Executive Director of the School of Ministry at Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He was a Distance learning professor at Liberty University and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Until 2019, he was scholar-in-residence at Faithlife Corporation.
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Bart D. Ehrman
1955 - Present (67 years)
Ehrman was born in 1955 in Lawrence, Kansas. He received a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in 1978. He then went on to study at Princeton Seminary, where he obtained a master of divinity in 1981 and a PhD in 1985. His doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude. Ehrman is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman’s work has focused on textual criticism of the New Testament, the origins of early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. He has written or edited thirty books, including textbooks for undergraduate students and five New York Times bestsellers.
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Rowan Williams
1950 - Present (72 years)
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.
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Wayne Grudem
1948 - Present (74 years)
Wayne A. Grudem is a New Testament scholar turned theologian seminary professor, and author. He co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and served as the general editor of the ESV Study Bible.
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William Lane Craig
1949 - Present (73 years)
William Lane Craig was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1949. He earned a B.A. from Wheaton College, and pursued graduate work at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the philosophy of religion. His earned his doctorate in 1977 at the University of Birmingham, England, with work on the cosmological argument for God’s existence under the supervision of John Hick. He pursued postdoctoral work under the direction of Wolfhart Pannenberg at the Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München in Germany, where he earned a doctorate in theology in 1984. Craig is currently research professor of philosophy at t...
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Candida Moss
1978 - Present (44 years)
Candida R. Moss is an English New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity, who is the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. A graduate of Oxford and Yale universities, Moss specialises in the study of the New Testament and martyrdom in early Christianity.
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Pope Benedict XVI
1927 - Present (95 years)
Pope Benedict XVI is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the church and the sovereign of the Vatican city state from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict chose to be known by the title "pope emeritus" upon his resignation.
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Péter Erdő
1952 - Present (70 years)
Péter Erdő is a Hungarian Cardinal of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, who has been the Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and Primate of Hungary since 2003. He was president of the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe from 2006 to 2016 and was the relator general for the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.
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Gerhard Ludwig Müller
1947 - Present (75 years)
Gerhard Ludwig Müller is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 until 2017. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2014.
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Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi
1975 - Present (47 years)
Yasir Qadhi , is a Pakistani-American preacher and imam. Since 2001, he has served as Dean of Academic Affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute, an international Islamic educational institution with a center in Houston, Texas. He also taught in the Religious Studies department at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently the resident scholar of the East Plano Islamic Center in Plano, Texas.
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David Bentley Hart
1965 - Present (57 years)
David Bentley Hart is an American philosopher and Eastern Orthodox theologian whose work encompasses a wide range of subjects and genres. A prolific essayist, he has written on topics as diverse as art, literature, religion, philosophy, film, baseball, and politics. He is also an author of fiction. As a religious scholar, his work engages heavily with classical, medieval and continental European philosophy, philosophical and systematic theology, patristic texts, and South and East Asian culture, religion, literature, philosophy and metaphysics. His translation of the New Testament was publish...
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Justin Welby
1956 - Present (66 years)
Justin Portal Welby is a British bishop. He is currently the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior bishop in the Church of England. He has served in that role since 2013. Welby was previously the vicar of Southam, Warwickshire, and then Bishop of Durham, serving for just over a year. Ex officio, he is the Primate of All England and the symbolic head primus inter pares of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
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Giuseppe Versaldi
1943 - Present (79 years)
Giuseppe Versaldi is the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, since his appointment, by Pope Francis on 31 March 2015. Previously, Versaldi served as President of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See since 21 September 2011. Versaldi had served before that as Bishop of Alessandria. Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the rank of cardinal on 18 February 2012.
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Russell D. Moore
1971 - Present (51 years)
Russell D. Moore is an American theologian, ethicist, and preacher. In June 2021, he became the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today. Moore previously served as president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention , and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as dean of the School of Theology, senior vice president for academic administration, and as professor of theology and ethics.
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Alvin Plantinga
1932 - Present (90 years)
Alvin Plantinga currently holds the title of the William Harry Jellema Chair in Philosophy at Calvin University. Previously, Plantinga has taught at Wayne State University and the University of Notre Dame. Additionally, Plantinga was the president of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division from 1981 to 1982. As an undergraduate, Plantinga studied at Jamestown College, Calvin College, and Harvard University. Plantinga went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of Michigan, before transferring to Yale University in 1955 and earning his PhD there in 1958. Plantinga is o...
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Ravi Zacharias
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias , better known as Ravi Zacharias, was an Indian-born Canadian-American Christian evangelical minister and apologist who founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries . He was involved in Christian apologetics for a period spanning more than forty years. Zacharias was the author of more than thirty books on Christianity, He also hosted the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking. He belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Keswickian Christian denomination in which he was ordained as a minister.
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Albert Mohler
1959 - Present (63 years)
Richard Albert Mohler Jr. is an American evangelical theologian, the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and host of the podcast The Briefing, where he daily analyzes the news and recent events from a evangelical perspective. He has been described as "one of America's most influential evangelicals".
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John Piper
1946 - Present (76 years)
John Stephen Piper is a Reformed theologian, pastor, and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper taught biblical studies at Bethel University for six years , before serving as pastor for preaching and vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 33 years .
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Johann Baptist Metz
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Johann Baptist Metz was a German Catholic priest and theologian. He was Ordinary Professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Münster, and a consultant to the synod of German dioceses. He is regarded as one of the most important German theologians after the Second Vatican Council, who influenced liberation theology and focused on compassion.
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Angelo Scola
1941 - Present (81 years)
Angelo Scola is an Italian Cardinal of the Catholic Church, philosopher and theologian. He was Archbishop of Milan from 2011 to 2017. He had served as Patriarch of Venice from 2002 to 2011. He has been a cardinal since 2003 and a bishop since 1991.
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Peter Kreeft
1937 - Present (85 years)
Peter John Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he is the author of over eighty books on Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics. He also formulated, together with Ronald K. Tacelli, Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God in their Handbook of Christian Apologetics.
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Phillip Blond
1966 - Present (56 years)
Phillip Blond is an English political philosopher, Anglican theologian, and director of the ResPublica think tank. Early life Born in Liverpool and educated at Pensby High School for Boys, Blond went on to study philosophy and politics at the University of Hull, continental philosophy at the University of Warwick, and theology at Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge. At Peterhouse, he was a student of John Milbank, founder of the radical orthodoxy theological movement and a noted critic of liberalism, philosophically understood. Blond's first work, Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philos...
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Douglas Groothuis
1957 - 2018 (61 years)
Douglas R. Groothuis is professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. Groothuis was a campus pastor for twelve years prior to obtaining a position as an associate professor of philosophy of religion and ethics at Denver Seminary in 1993. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Oregon. He was married to Rebecca Merrill Groothuis until her death on July 6, 2018.
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Gustavo Gutiérrez
1928 - Present (94 years)
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. He currently holds the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and has previously been a visiting professor at many major universities in North America and Europe.
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C. Peter Wagner
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Charles Peter Wagner was a missionary, writer, teacher and founder of several organizations. In his earlier years Wagner was known as a key leader of the Church Growth Movement and later for his writings on spiritual warfare.
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Lee Strobel
1952 - Present (70 years)
Lee Patrick Strobel is an American Christian author and a former investigative journalist. He has written several books, including four which received ECPA Christian Book Awards and a series which addresses challenges to the veracity of Christianity. He also hosted a television program called Faith Under Fire on PAX TV and runs a video apologetics web site.
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Walter Kasper
1933 - Present (89 years)
Walter Kasper is a German Roman Catholic Cardinal and theologian. He is President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, having served as its president from 2001 to 2010. Early life Born in Heidenheim an der Brenz, Germany, Kasper was ordained a priest on 6 April 1957 by Bishop Carl Leiprecht of Rottenburg.
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John Lennox
1943 - Present (79 years)
John Carson Lennox is a Northern Irish mathematician, bioethicist and Christian apologist. He has written many books on religion, ethics, the relationship between science and faith , and has had numerous public debates with atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
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Agostino Vallini
1940 - Present (82 years)
Agostino Vallini is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He has been a cardinal since 2006. From 2008 to 2017 he served as Vicar General of Rome. He is also the Archpriest emeritus of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.
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Josh McDowell
1939 - Present (83 years)
Joslin "Josh" McDowell is an evangelical Christian apologist and evangelist. He is the author or co-author of over 150 books. In 2006, his book Evidence That Demands a Verdict was ranked 13th in Christianity Todays list of most influential evangelical books published after World War II. Other well-known titles are More Than a Carpenter, A Ready Defense and Right from Wrong.
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Thomas Jay Oord
1965 - Present (57 years)
Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and multidisciplinary scholar who directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He formerly taught for sixteen years as a tenured professor at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho. He is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books and hundreds of articles. Oord is known for his contributions to research on love, open theism, postmodernism, the relationship between religion and science, Wesleyan, holiness, Nazarene theology.
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Georg Gänswein
1956 - Present (66 years)
Georg Gänswein is a German prelate of the Catholic Church, who serves as Prefect of the Papal household, and personal secretary to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He is a professor of canon law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. He has held the titular position of Archbishop of Urbs Salvia since 2012.
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Kevin DeYoung
1977 - Present (45 years)
Kevin DeYoung is an American Reformed theologian and author. He is currently the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church, in Matthews, North Carolina. The church he previously pastored, University Reformed Church , shifted to the Presbyterian Church in America in March 2015 after having been a member of the Reformed Church in America. DeYoung is a member of The Gospel Coalition's Council, and is frequently featured as a TGC article author.
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William L. Rowe
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
William Leonard Rowe was a professor of philosophy at Purdue University who specialized in the philosophy of religion. His work played a leading role in the "remarkable revival of analytic philosophy of religion since the 1970s". He was noted for his formulation of the evidential argument from evil.
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Richard Swinburne
1934 - Present (88 years)
Richard Swinburne was born in 1934 in Smethwick, Staffordshire, England. He graduated in 1957 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Exeter College, the fourth oldest college at the University of Oxford. He pursued a graduate degree in philosophy (1957-59) from the university and then entered St. Stephen’s House, where he earned the Oxford Diploma in Theology (1959-60). From 1985 until his retirement in 2002, Swinburne held the position of Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford. Since his retirement, Swinburne has continued to pub...
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Tariq Ramadan
1962 - Present (60 years)
Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss Muslim academic, philosopher, and writer. He was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, but is taking an agreed leave of absence. He is a visiting professor at the Université Mundiapolis in Morocco. He is also a senior research fellow at Doshisha University in Japan. He was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and used to be the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics , based in Doha. He is a member of the UK Foreign Office Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief.
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Paige Patterson
1942 - Present (80 years)
L. Paige Patterson served as the fifth president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., from 1992 to 2003, as president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1998 to 2000, and as the eighth president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, from 2003 until his firing in 2018. He played a major role in the Southern Baptist "conservative resurgence", called "Fundamentalist Takeover" by opponents. He has been alternately described as a fundamentalist and a conservative evangelical.
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Francis Chan
1967 - Present (55 years)
Francis Chan [藩] , is an American Protestant author, teacher, and preacher. He is the former teaching pastor of Cornerstone Community Church, an Evangelical church in Simi Valley, California founded by Chan in 1994. He also founded Eternity Bible College in 2004, and served as its early chancellor until 2010.
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N. T. Wright
1948 - Present (74 years)
Nicholas Thomas Wright , known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is an English New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop. He was the bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010. He then became research professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary's College in the University of St Andrews in Scotland until 2019, when he became a senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford.
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Jürgen Moltmann
1926 - Present (96 years)
Jürgen Moltmann was born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany. In 1944, Moltmann was drafted into the German army to fight in World War II. He served for six months before surrendering to the British, after which he was confined to prisoner of war camps for three years in Belgium, England, and Scotland. After his release, he studied at the University of Gottïngen, earning a doctorate in 1952. Moltmann is emeritus professor of theology at Tübingen University, where he taught from 1967 to 1994. Moltmann is best known for his theology of hope, a unique form of liberation theology centered on the idea that God suffers with humanity and the hope found in the resurrection of Christ.
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Frederick Buechner
1926 - Present (96 years)
Carl Frederick Buechner is an American writer, novelist, poet, autobiographer, essayist, preacher, and theologian. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister and the author of more than thirty published books. His work encompasses different genres, including fiction, autobiography, essays and sermons, and his career has spanned more than six decades. Buechner's books have been translated into many languages for publication around the world. He is best known for his novels, including A Long Day's Dying, The Book of Bebb, Godric , and Brendan, his memoirs, including Telling Secrets and The Sacred ...
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James White
1962 - Present (60 years)
James Robert White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, an evangelical Reformed Baptist Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He has contributed to more than twenty books.
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Karl Josef Becker
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Karl Josef Becker S.J. was a German Catholic theologian and consultor for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 15 September 1977. He taught at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
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Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst
1959 - Present (63 years)
Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is a German prelate of the Catholic Church and theologian. He was a vicar and an auxiliary bishop in Münster before becoming the Bishop of Limburg in January 2008. Pope Francis removed him from the exercise of his episcopal office on 23 October 2013 and on 26 March 2014 accepted his resignation as Bishop of Limburg, following a long-standing public dispute about the costs and financing of a diocesan construction project.
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Rick Warren
1954 - Present (68 years)
Richard Duane Warren is an American Southern Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author. He is the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention in Lake Forest, California.
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