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With many large churches across the U.S. announcing they won't be open on Christmas Day, some pastors are defending their decision to stay closed, even going so far as to blast those who question their motives. Among them is Jon Weece, pastor of Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Ky., who received complaint e-mails from Christians in all 50 states. "I was deeply saddened by the knee-jerk response of the Christian community as a whole to give the benefit of the doubt to the media and not a church or a brother in Christ," Weece said in his Dec. 10 sermon....

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The senior minister at central Kentucky's largest church defended a decision to not offer services there on Christmas Sunday and responded to mounting criticism. The Rev. Jon Weese praised the decision of elders at Southland Christian Church during a service Saturday and said they "chose to value families. People over policy." Weese has heard from hundreds of Christians across the nation protesting the closure, Southland officials said. Preaching before a crowd of about 1,150, Weece said the full story hasn't been heard. "I was deeply saddened by the knee-jerk response of the Christian community as a whole...

This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day. Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown. It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture. "This...

Central Kentucky's largest church will break with tradition and close its doors on Christmas Sunday so that staff and volunteers can spend more time with their families. Southland Christian Church near Lexington, where more than 7,000 people worship each week, is one of several evangelical megachurches across the country that are opting to cancel services on one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar. Supporters say the change is family-friendly. Opponents call it a regrettable bow to secular culture. The list of closed congregations on Christmas Sunday reads like a who's who of evangelical Protestantism: Willow Creek Community Church,...

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - The noise of chatting parishioners saturates the foyer after the five weekend Masses at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church. Busy parents sympathize with one another. Kids find new playmates. And singles meet other singles. The foyer helps the 5,000 worshippers each weekend preserve their sense of community. The fast-growing congregation decided five years ago to expand into a 1,500-seat sanctuary instead of splitting into two separate congregations and search for an available priest among a shrinking pool. Catholic churches are joining their Protestant counterparts across the country in creating megachurches - where thousands, sometimes tens...

'Megachurches' draw big U.S. crowds By Joyce Kelly and Michael Conlon CHICAGO (Reuters) - On a recent Sunday at Willow Creek Community Church, a Christian rock band joined by dancing children powered up in the cavernous main hall, their images ablaze on several gigantic screens. Thousands of worshipers from the main floor to the balcony and mezzanine levels were on their feet rocking to a powerful sound system. Outside cars filled a parking lot fit for a shopping mall. Inside some people drifted into small Bible study groups or a bookstore and Internet cafe for lattes, cappuccinos and seats by...

KING: Touch another base on guy marriage. If gays -- we have a gay say on this show, they want to enter the world of your world. They support family. They don't want to jump from one partner to another, they want marriage. Why deny it to them? They want what you have. What's wrong with it? LAURIE: Because I don't think it's God's natural order that he created, Larry. The Bible says that God created men and women in his image. And not good is the aloneness of men, and he brought the woman to be the companion to...

Stadium crowds, thousands of rabid devotees, all chugging Jesus like Kool-Aid. Should you be afraid? I have never been to a big creepy megachurch. This is my first confession. I have never been to, say, Lakewood Church in Houston, the biggest glossiest megachurch of all, which just dumped a staggering $75 million to renovate the former stadium for the Houston Rockets and turn it into a massive pulsing swaying arm-raisin' eye-glazed weirdly repressed House o' Jesus. I have never been to World Changers in Georgia or New Birth Missionary Baptist in Texas or Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa or...

-snip- Osteen's flourishing Lakewood enterprise brought in $55 million in contributions last year, four times the 1999 amount, church officials say. Flush with success, Osteen is laying out $90 million to transform the massive Compaq Center in downtown Houston -- former home of the NBA's Houston Rockets -- into a church that will seat 16,000, complete with a high-tech stage for his TV shows and Sunday School for 5,000 children. After it opens in July, he predicts weekend attendance will rocket to 100,000. Says Osteen: "Other churches have not kept up, and they lose people by not changing with the...

Labor's disarray echoes loudly for Democrats By RON FOURNIER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - Divided and desperate, union leaders are looking everywhere - from Ivy League classrooms to the ''megachurch'' pulpits of far-flung suburbia - for ways to reverse a 50-year decline in membership that is tipping the balance of power in politics. Labor's woes are a threat to the Democratic Party, because unions are the single-greatest organizing tool on the left side of the political spectrum. ''If we can't reverse course, the future is very, very bleak,'' said Harold Ickes, an influential Democrat and labor ally. Organized labor is...

This morning, Tuesday, Feb. 1st, 2005, Michael Horton appeared on NBC's Today Show to discuss the phenomenal success of Houston evangelist Joel Osteen. This transcript of this program, along with web versions of the video segment are available online. Click here to read or watch this story at NBC's Today Show site.

Long doesn't run from controversy By ADD SEYMOUR JR. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday, December 12, 2004 Eddie Long has always been able to deliver a message. After graduating from North Carolina Central University in 1976, Long, a business major, went to work for Ford Motor Co. as a sales representative in a mostly white region of rural Virginia.His sales pitch, he recalled, was simple. "I said, 'Look ... I'm black. You're white. You can call me whatever you want, but I'm here to help you make some money. And I need you to help me make some money,' " Long...

New Group of Televangelists Reaches TV Generation Television Ministers Find Audiences in Both Red, Blue States HOUSTON, Dec. 8, 2004 — A new generation of television ministers — with a much subtler, decidedly more approachable style than televangelists of old — is finding an audience in both "red" Republican and "blue" Democratic states. Joel Osteen is senior pastor of the 30,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston, the largest church in America. His book, "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential," is on The New York Times best-seller list. He says there is an enormous demand for...

How one man's gospel tale became a global bestseller You've probably never heard of him, but a man in the loud shirt is well on the way to being the world's most influential churchman. Paul Harris reports from Lake Forest, California Sunday July 11, 2004 The Observer For one of the most powerful religious figures in America, Pastor Rick Warren looks very casual. Wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt and loafers, he puts his feet up on his office table and cracks a broad grin. 'If I didn't believe in Jesus, I would be a millionaire with a yacht, sitting in...

HOUSTON — During close games at Houston's Compaq Center, basketball and hockey fans did their share of praying. Next spring, the stadium will hear some serious hallelujahs. After a 14-month, $75-million renovation, the Compaq Center will reopen as Lakewood Church, the nation's largest house of worship. With 16,000 seats, two waterfalls and an interior camera ready for Sunday broadcasts, the reborn structure dovetails national trends that promise to shake up the economics of urban real estate: the increasing number of obsolete sports stadiums and the meteoric growth of huge religious congregations that need "megachurches." Requiring arena-sized seating and vast parking...

VIEW MEGACHURCHES AS SLICK, IMPERSONAL For evidence of generational upheaval these days, you might skip over the usual suspects -- sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll -- and consider instead Christianity. Two decades after baby boomers invented the suburban megachurch, which removed crosses or stained-glass images of Jesus in favor of neutral environments, their children are now wearing "Jesus Is My Homeboy" T-shirts. As mainline churches scramble to retain young people, these worshippers have gained attention by-creating alternative churches in coffee bars and warehouses and publishing new magazines and Bibles that come on as anything but church. But does a T-shirt...

Lakewood Church in Houston has been named the largest and fastest-growing church in America, according to the 2004 Church Growth Today Study/Outreach magazine report published exclusively in the May/June issue of Outreach. Lakewood Church, founded by the late John Osteen in a feed store in 1959, is pastored by his son Joel Osteen. The congregation recently purchased and is renovating the Compaq Center, former home of the NBA's Houston Rockets, to house its services. However, Lakewood is only one of 100 churches, which made each of the two lists: The 100 Largest Churches in America and The 100 Fastest-Growing U.S....

Just Who Is It That Has God's Blessing? By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon February 3, 2004 I constantly marvel at the thinking of today's professing Christians. The majority of them seem incapable of comprehending anything above the spoon-fed diet of religious and political propaganda that is daily disseminated from the ivory towers of "anointed" Christian institutions. In no place is this "sound bite" mentality more apparent than when reference is made regarding those people whom they believe are qualified to speak on their behalf. When speaking of those leaders who seem to have a robot-like...

Evangelicals defy easy labels. Here's why--and why their numbers are growing What would Jonathan Edwards think of suburban Chicago's Willow Creek Community Church, where every weekend some 17,000 congregants arrive in their Chevy Tahoes and Toyota minivans to worship in the enormous brick-and-glass auditorium? More specifically, what would the 18th-century Puritan preacher who penned the fire-and-brimstone sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" make of "seeker-friendly" services that use "drama, multimedia, and contemporary music" to serve "individuals checking out what it really means to have a personal relationship with Jesus"? Gazing across the packed rows, would Edwards recognize...

Christian Capitalism Megachurches, Megabusinesses Luisa Kroll, 09.17.03, 12:00 PM ET Maybe churches aren't so different from corporations. World Changers Ministries, for instance, operates a music studio, publishing house, computer graphic design suite and owns its own record label. The Potter's House also has a record label as well as a daily talk show, a prison satellite network that broadcasts in 260 prisons and a twice-a-week Webcast. New Birth Missionary Baptist Church has a chief operating officer and a special effects 3-D Web site that offers videos-on-demand. It publishes a magazine and holds Cashflow 101 Game Nights. And Lakewood Church, which...