Christmas Eve at Adam's House

It's December 24, 2001. United Methodist Church of the Resurrection is full. Eighteen hundred people, from infants in the arms of their mothers to grandfathers wrapped in sweaters, fill the chairs on the floor and in the balcony. Two hundred more sit in chairs lined up in the entryway, watching the service on two mounted monitors.

They sing the anthems of Christmas -- What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? -- following the words on two giant video screens.

In his sermon, the Reverend Adam Hamilton equates the love he feels for his daughter to "a small reflection of what God feels for you."

The congregation grows quiet as the lights go down, and Hamilton snuffs out the altar candles that children in white robes had lit so carefully before the service. The windowless room is dark. "This is what the world is like apart from Jesus Christ," Hamilton says.

Then Hamilton relights the candle in the center of the Advent wreath. The Christ candle.

"Two thousand years ago in the little town of Bethlehem, in a cave that was reserved for animals, the light came into the world."

From the first flame, Hamilton lights a second candle. Members of the congregation pass the flame candle-to-candle until the room, the balcony and the narthex are filled with flickering light.

The candles symbolize Jesus' light being passed from Christian to Christian, Hamilton explains. Two thousand faces are aglow with it, and now 2,000 voices sing Silent night, holy night/All is calm, all is bright.

It is a moment of peace after weeks of nonstop holiday shopping, wish lists, last-minute store runs, traffic and wrapping.

It is beautiful.

But first, a commercial.

Christmas Eve at Leawood's mega Church of the Resurrection starts with an ad.

Last year, video footage of Hamilton overdubbed by a woman's voice touted the upcoming sermon series "Love, Marriage and Sex," based on a survey of the congregation members' intimate lives. "Whether you are newlywed or celebrating your golden anniversary, dating or divorced, don't miss this honest look at God's plan for our love and our life," she said.

This year, the video screens will show clips of a Jewish synagogue, an Islamic mosque and a Buddhist temple. During January and February, Hamilton will present a seven-sermon series on other religions (with a break for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend). He'll tell his congregation about the differences among religions, their origins and how they relate to Christianity.

These are what Hamilton calls "fishing expedition sermons," and Christmas Eve is perfect for casting a net over people who have wandered into his church for the first time. Three years ago, Hamilton promised them a series on abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia. Two years ago, he made Christian sense of disasters, preaching on "Where was God when...."

"Our aim is to offer something that will be so interesting, and will so clearly speak to the issues the unchurched have, that they will want to join us for services beginning the second weekend in January," Hamilton reveals in his book Leading Beyond the Walls: Developing Congregations with a Heart for the Unchurched, a 208-page, first-person how-to manual on growing a megachurch. In it, Hamilton applies a corporate model to his ministry. If he can persuade church members to live according to scripture, Hamilton writes, "I have 'closed the sale.'"

Hamilton has closed a lot of sales since he founded Church of the Resurrection in 1990. With more than 11,000 members, it's the largest church in Kansas City and the second-best-attended United Methodist church in the country. Soon, it will be the biggest.

This year, Hamilton sealed one of his most difficult deals yet. He suffered a verbal stoning when the church asked Leawood city officials for permission to expand its increasingly crowded, 1,800-seat sanctuary to a sprawling campus of nearly 1,000,000 square feet. During the ensuing zoning debate, church members heard their neighbors say uncharitable things about their pastor. In Church of the Resurrection's blueprints, neighbors didn't see a church; they saw an arena bigger than Bartle Hall. They said they didn't want the light of the steeple shining through their vaulted windows and onto their cathedral ceilings. Most insulting, they accused Hamilton of being sneaky by selling his $300,000 home adjoining the church property just before he announced the expansion.

But Hamilton overcame. Work began on the church expansion in mid-October. Meanwhile, the church has kept growing, drawing worshippers who are able to look past its forbidding size long enough to find a friendly face or sixty, long enough to be charmed by the vibrant church's boyish salesman-cum-pastor.

Hamilton loves to tell his story. He has disclosed its most unflattering episodes hundreds of times during sermons or over coffee in congregants' living rooms.

Hamilton was conceived at a teen party. His parents dropped out of high school and defied his mother's father, who had gone to the trouble of setting up an abortion in Switzerland. The lovers fled the scandal, marrying and moving to Arizona.

Hamilton's parents were from opposite ends of the Christianity spectrum. His father was Catholic. His mother grew up in the Church of Christ. Hamilton attended church very rarely, until high school.