Christmas Eve at Adam's House

Green, who will make $4 million this year as a Chief and can look forward to bigger dollars when the team renegotiates his contract, doesn't flinch.

Of the 75 who started the evening, about 60 have their photos taken in the lobby, then come back to recite a creed together, hold hands and pray. Among the new members are Taff and Green.

Hamilton is heir to a tradition of large, influential churches in Johnson County, having picked up where Village Presbyterian left off.

For 47 years, the Reverend Robert Meneilly was the pastor at that church. When Meneilly retired in 1994, Village had 7,800 members. It was one of the largest churches in the area and one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the country.

Meneilly's flock grew in the 1950s, during the postwar baby boom. Back then, families went to church.

"Village Church grew more out of a period of history," Meneilly says. "What Hamilton has done is more impressive. ... I wasn't the bright guy that Adam Hamilton is. I kind of had this bigness thrust upon me."

That kind of size draws attention, not all of it good.

"Even among clergy, you can get some jealousy," Meneilly says.

The Reverend Helen Liston has heard it, too, in part from her own congregation. Liston is deacon at Leawood United Methodist Church.

When her church hosted a special service led by preachers from Church of the Resurrection, the visiting clergy mentioned their employer just a little too often for some members.

"Any of the ministers who are speaking remind you several times they are Church of the Resurrection: 'At Church of the Resurrection we have, we do, we are.' That's where it comes across a little much," Liston says.

If any church has reason to be jealous, it's Leawood United. In the late 1980s, Liston says, her church turned down the opportunity to move about forty blocks south from its 95th Street parish. But the pastor and congregation at the time didn't want to invest the $1 million to build a new church. Instead they added a new sanctuary and a covered portico. Since 1993, Leawood's membership has dropped from 750 to 730.

Liston graduated from Kansas City's St. Paul seminary in 1991. In 1993, she and her husband joined Leawood United Methodist Church. But because of Hamilton, she also attended and volunteered at Church of the Resurrection, which by that time was meeting in a school gym.

"His enthusiasm. His sincerity. His energy. His presentation. Because he was so ready to build [that] church and was so enthusiastic feeding the people what they wanted," she recalls. "You could say he was on fire. His whole being was really wanting to spread the word of God."

In her more recent meetings with him, though, Liston says she has seen a change in Hamilton. He's become unusually aware of the time. When they performed a service together a couple of years ago, Hamilton showed up fifteen minutes before it was to begin. He was briefed by several staff members, and the service started and ended precisely on time.

"Everything was cut-and-dried, cut-and-dried," Liston says. "That's not a negative thing. When you have multiple services, they have to go on a schedule."

The time Hamilton spent on the service itself was sincere, Liston says. "Every opportunity he has to share the word of God is heartfelt. It's not a robot thing."

And the name-dropping is part of the Hamilton style. It's the same reason he always introduces himself at the beginning of his sermon, even at his own church. Hamilton says he's been to other churches where the lead pastor never identified himself.

He's been to other churches where he was never sure what book he was supposed to be reading from or what hymn to sing next or whether he should be kneeling, standing or sitting.

Because of that, and because he places an importance on reaching people who don't go to church, his services come with instructions.

Before communion, he explains what the bread and wine symbolize and how to partake of them. Same thing before a baptism.

He has so mastered the technique of making visitors feel comfortable that in October, 1,200 pastors and church leaders from across the country came to Leawood to learn how Hamilton's church had grown while other churches' memberships have declined. Promotional materials promised that the fourth Church of the Resurrection Leadership Institute would be inspired and would energize church leaders to "reawaken and transform" their churches.

They went away knowing about follow-up and direct mail and why it's important to do a good funeral.

"As was the case with weddings, we have had hundreds of people who first began attending Church of the Resurrection at a funeral and who eventually became members," Hamilton writes in his book. "A well-led funeral can move persons to want to reconnect with God and to visit your church."

So can a well-done Christmas Eve.

As the strains of "Silent Night" die away, Hamilton asks his congregation to raise their flickering candles.

"This is our picture of what it means to be Church of the Resurrection," he says. "Lots of us gathering together to allow God's light to burn in our hearts and lives. And you know the world has changed when that begins to happen."