More than 5 million people now worship at one of America's 1,650 megachurches on an average week. But research by Leadership Network's Warren Bird, who has tracked the megachurch phenomenon closely, indicates that four U.S. states still don't have a Protestant congregation with more than 2,000 weekly attenders. Though megachurches only account for 0.5 percent of the 320,000 Protestant churches in America, nearly 10 percent of Protestant churchgoers attend one.

People can make an idol of a pope — any pope — and again, it’s because his ideas seem to validate us and our ideas. The danger in this is that we can fall in love with our idea of the pope without ever really hearing a word he is saying, or internalizing the lessons and adopting the habits of prayer, service, or humility that he is exhorting us to.

Standing before a crowd of 70,000 in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis called for an end to conflict in Syria, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Middle East. He also called attention to victims of human trafficking, the plights of battered women, and those displaced by natural disasters. Read the full text via the Associated Press. Going off script, Reuters reports, the leader of the 1.2 billion-member Catholic religion, reached out to atheists to join forces with the church – a stark break from his predecessor Pope Benedict.

About two dozen people gathered Monday night for a “Blue Christmas” service at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown St. Louis. It’s among many nationwide providing a special service aimed directly at those in need of spiritual healing — whether due to divorce, tough economic times, the loss of a loved one or whatever has them feeling down at the holidays.

I have singled out five distinctives that characterized the worship of the early Church, and have adapted them for consideration by contemporary Christian congregations. This list is by no means exhaustive, nor is it intended to suggest that the sole focus of the Church today should be to exactly imitate a chimeric vision of a monolithic early Church. Instead, this list illustrates what I have assessed to be just a few of the core theological components of primitive Christian worship that warrant reconsideration by the postmodern (or post-postmodern) worshiping Church.

Most Americans still prefer a real-live preacher to a video sermon, according to a survey by LifeWay Research. About a third (35 percent) say they will only visit churches with a live sermon, according to the research released Dec. 17. Three in 10 say a video sermon won't keep them from a church, but they still prefer live preaching. The same number say live or video sermons are fine. Less than 1 percent prefer to watch a video sermon.

A book making the rounds among evangelical pastors these days is called The Great Evangelical Recession. Written by John S. Dickerson, a former investigative journalist turned evangelical pastor, it chronicles in unsparing statistical detail how evangelical Christianity is hemorrhaging members, money, and influence. “The United States has shifted into a … post-Christian age,” he writes. “No one disputes this.”

Is it time for Spirit filled Christians to grow up? Here are 9 quirky things that Spirit filled Christians should think about before practicing them.

The Christmas holiday brings peak attendance for most churches, and an increasing number of U.S. religious groups are using the boom time to wow parishioners with virtual choirs on YouTube and Instagram advent calendars. More than 500 churches will stream Christmas sermons online this year, up from just a handful in 2007, said DJ Chuang, host of the Social Media Church, a podcast with church leaders about social media.

There are many issues the Church as a whole needs to address, such as creationism, activism, environmental stewardship and many others. But there are many more issues that individuals in the Church are dealing with—issues that the Church Body should be talking about. As people increasingly leave the Church, often over issues such as these, it is becoming more urgent that the Church talk about how to care for every one of its members. Here are the 5.