THE FIRST COVID CHRISTMAS

People were understandably depressed when we got to Christmas 2020 and we still weren’t able to worship in person. We are a church of tradition, and filling the sanctuary and singing “Silent Night” while holding candles on Christmas Eve is a sacred moment for everyone. You can watch a service and light candles at home, but it’s not the same.

But even though it was going to be different, I still wanted it to be special.

We wanted to mix some Christmas songs into weekly worship, so I set out to design a set that would be as transportive as possible.

But it was Christmas Eve I really had my eye on. We were still shooting all of our music inside an empty sanctuary and multi-use rehearsal spaces, and with no one in the buildings, we had cut every bit of Christmas decoration out of the budget. How could we make it feel like Christmas was really happening?

I gathered up every bit of Christmas decoration I could from forgotten closets on both campuses and drove all of it out to the rehearsal space. My very understanding wife came along to help:

Then we got to work setting it all up.

We spent the better part of two days preparing, then filmed the Christmas special all in a couple of hours. It felt like magic.

Everything we recorded is below: