» USA Today: Biggest U.S. churches 'contemporary, evangelical'

In the wake of the ... um, challenges ... with Church Report's old lists, Outreach Magazine sticks to some hard math in coming up with their annual report on church attendance. As it turns out, our count is the same as last year's.

Leading the list, as in 2008, is Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church, Houston; 43,500 attend weekend worship.

Lakewood could almost swallow the second and third place megachurches in one gulp.

But the newest trend in church growth is exemplified by the No. 2 ranked church's cross-country reach. Lifechurch.tv transmits pastor Craig Groeschel's worship services from the church's studio home in Edmond, Okla., to 13 locations, reaching 26,776 people in average weekend worship attendance.

"Multiple sites are the new normal for fast-growing and large churches. Lakewood is the exception. The next 10 all have multiple sites," says Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay. "They're contemporary, aggressively evangelistic and evangelical and they're moving beyond the 'big box' megachurch model. The best churches have very intentional systems to move people from sitting in rows to sitting in circles (in small groups) to going out and making a difference in the world."

I'll offer a few other thoughts after posting something on Christianity Today's feature on Joel Hunter's use of the internet for his church. But for now, I'll definitely say that the model employed by Hunter's Northland and Groeschel's Lifechurch is commendable. I usually take in a Northland sermon on Sunday during downtime between Lakewood services and there's a lot I think they do right in developing an online ministry.

Back in 2005, the Texas Monthly feature on Joel Osteen had some mention of what was then a possibility of developing a Lakewood Church in other major cities. Possibly, this was in line with what we see Hillsong doing internationally over the past decade or so. I'm not sure how feasible that approach is, but if there's one church that could pull it off, I suppose it would be Lakewood. It'll be interesting to see whether that goal is still on the list of things to do down the road, or if the newer model of online outreach is something being considered.