Published on
July 3, 2014
Video length
38 mins
An edited video interview with Elizabeth Dias of TIME Magazine

In June 2014, TIME magazine correspondent Elizabeth Dias visited Calvin College and participated in a public interview about her TIME cover story "The Rise of Evangélicos" published April 2013. Her article signaled a "Latino Reformation" in the US and provided an indepth look "inside the new Hispanics churches transforming religion in America." 

John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, conducted the interview. He asked Elizabeth to reflect on the following questions: 

  • Reflect on your journey to TIME. How does someone from Phoenix, Arizona, educated at Wheaton College and Princeton Seminary, wind up doing religion reporting at TIME magazine?
  • Tell us how this cover story came to be.
  • Tell us more: What shapes your reporting instincts? How do you know it’s a national story?
  • Is there a signature story that represents the main story line of the project?
  • Talk about the dynamics of mega and micro churches and how this story is shaped by church size and location.
  • What influence and shape has television ministry and social media made?
  • What are your impressions of regional, ethnic, and cultural diversity as they relate to the story?
  • What have been the responses and reactions to the story?
  • In the larger ecology of North American Christianity, as a journalist how would you challenge scholars and academics who research and write about Latino Protestant congregations?
  • Talk about the role journalists play in relationship to pastoral ministry and to those people—pastors and others in leadership—who are consumers of journalistic writing.

For related Protestant Latino worship projects sponsored by the Worship Institute, see our Protestant Latino Worship Practices Resource Guide. 

Recent Media Resources

Video Cultural Diversity Faith Formation
The First Nations Version New Testament and its Impact on Worship

In this session Terry Wildman will share the vision, process, and outcomes of the First Nations Version (FNV) New Testament. Why was this translation needed? Who was involved in the translation? What were some of the cultural challenges faced by the translation council? What does it say about the translations done in Native languages in the past? How did the translation council decide on more than 185 key words and terms? What are some of the unique qualities of the FNV versus other English versions? How has the FNV affected the worship expressions of some Native believers? What is the future of the FNV? 

September 14, 2026 | 73 min video
Video Cultural Diversity Dance
Thinking about Catholic Diversity as a Migrant Church (Salsa Style!)

How does one think about diversity as a Christian or as the church? How might working with and among—or even just thinking about—migrant neighbors contribute to our ecclesial identity? The language of catholicity allows us to imagine the unity of the church not in a monocultural way, but rather as a community inclusive of people of all languages and ethnicities. Migration and migrants today especially remind the church of its own catholic identity. How does the church's identity as a migrant church foster a healthy catholicity in the church's worship? This session will include the use of salsa music to invite participation in a more catholic way of life, asking what multicultural, cross cultural, and intercultural ways of being a church on the move might look like in worship. 

September 14, 2026 | 79 min video
Video Faith Formation Interdisciplinary
Attuning Your Philosophy to Enhance Your Creativity and Your Worship

As inhabitants of the modern age, we are deeply marked by skewed ways of thinking that thwart our humanness, our involvement with the world, and our spirituality. This is a philosophical tune-up that directly challenges and dispels modernity’s implicit philosophy. My philosophical proposals in my 2023 book Doorway to Artistry target the creative process, but they positively affect and bring healing to all arenas of life and work and worship. I pose that we as human persons are meant to live out a joyous “yes” to the real, and our involvement with the real takes the form of intimate encounter and communion. My approach reflects especially on God’s creative act and God’s created things. It taps epiphany, the redemptive encounter, and the Eucharist as paradigms for our knowing, our artistry, and all our everyday involvement with the world, so it should make us better at our stewardly dominion and voicing creation’s praise in worship.

September 14, 2026 | 77 min video