Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| megacommunion | A worldwide communion, world confessional family, or family of megatraditions, usually with over 10 million adherents. |
| megadenomination | A Christian denomination whose affiliated members in a country number one million or more. |
| megametrodwellers | Persons residing in cities with populations greater than a million. |
| megaministry | A specific global or other large-scale ministry reaching or evangelizing over one million persons a day, or (in earlier years) over 1% of the world’s population every year. |
| megamissionary | A term coined for a missionary who is engaged in or working with a megaministry. |
| meganetwork | An electronic network linking a very large number of computers, around one million or more. |
| megapeople | An ethnolinguistic people speaking a single mother tongue whose population numbers over one million. |
| megareligion | A world religion or family of religions, usually with from one to 20 million adherents. |
| megarich | All millionaires of all kinds. |
| megatrend | A particularly vast, large, or significant trend affecting large populations. |
| megatypology | A global typology illustrating and explaining any vast worldwide religious movement or phenomenon. |
| Melanesian | An Oceanic ethnolinguistic family, with 380 languages. |
| Melkites | Byzantine Catholics of the Middle East using Greek or Arabic. |
| members | Affiliated (which usually means enrolled with names recorded) church members. |
| members, church | Affiliated Christians (qv). |
| membership turnover | A rapid flow of individuals into and out of church membership. |
| membership, total church | Affiliated Christians (qv). |
| Memorial | In Jehovah’s Witnesses’ usage, the major annual celebration of Christ’s death, usually located on a single day worldwide at the beginning of Christendom’s Holy Week; attenders number 100-150% more than baptized publishers; total attenders has risen from (1959) 1,283,603 persons to (1974) 4,550,457 to (1998) 13,896,312. |
| men, religious | Priests and brothers in religious orders and congregations. |
| Mennonite World Conference | (MWC). The major Mennonite world communion. |
| Mennonites | Protestant tradition dating back to 16th-century Anabaptists and Left-Wing or Radical Reformation. |
| mercy ground | In West African aladura and other indigenous churches, an open plot of ground near a church, often walled, where Christians may come for private prayer, often prostrate and for whole nights at a time; also called a gethsemane. |
| messiah | One accepted as, or claiming to be, a leader destined to bring about salvation. |
| messianic Jews | Jewish-Christians (qv). |
| Messianic Jews | Jewish believers in Christ as Messiah who opt not to join mainline churches but form independent churches retaining much Hebrew terminology and Jewish traditions and customs. |
Data on 18 categories of religion, including non-religious, by country, province, and people.
Data on all religions, Christian activities, and trends.
Membership data, year begun, and rates of change.
Population and religion data on all major cities & provinces.
Detailed information covering religion, culture, and geography.
A repository of historical data, including a chronology of Christianity from the 1st to 21st centuries.