For churches, this Christmas Eve will be different. But some find an upside to COVID-19

The title of the Rev. Stan Van Den Berg’s Christmas Eve sermon is “Not According to Plan.”

And believe it or not, it isn’t about 2020.

“We’ve had disrupted plans, right?” said Van Den Berg, senior pastor of Wichita’s Eastminster Presbyterian Church. “But if you’re Mary and Joseph, you didn’t plan on getting pregnant, right? You didn’t plan on this baby being born in Bethlehem. You didn’t plan on having to run away to Egypt.

“From their perspective, nothing went according to plan,” he continued. “But there was a plan behind all of it. If we have that perspective, we can get through things with hope, without panicking.”

In a year that has seen churches change their plans, make headcounts for crowd size restrictions, and embrace internet video technology as the only way at times to reach out to congregations, Christmas Eve 2020 will be a combination of traditions and adjustments.

Here’s how five area churches are capping a most unusual year.

Hope Community Church in Andover

A year ago, the Rev. Nick Martineau, senior pastor of Hope Community Church in Andover, was looking at 2020 as the year a major building project would be completed at his church.

“It’s quite the year to build, right?” Martineau said with a laugh. “Our project wrapped up in October. We had a lot larger space for a smaller group of people.”

Services were held outside for as long as possible and once moved inside, Martineau did what he thought at one time was unthinkable – encouraging church members not to attend in person.

“We’re trying to walk that fine line, honoring our community which we’ve served and called to love, as in love thy neighbor, and yet also acknowledging the mental and spiritual health aspect of this,” he said.

Martineau, senior pastor for the past four years and a staff member for 14, said he sees positives in the pandemic.

“Honestly, there’s been something really healthy about it,” he said. “Our mission has never been about a church service. Our mission has been bringing people closer to Jesus. It’s about loving our neighbor.

“We’ve always been able to say that, but we always had the service and the programs. When you take the service and the programs away, it really highlights what your true mission as a church is,” Martineau continued. “We’ve really able to hang there together and live in unity and focus on the community around us and be the love and light of Jesus to them and not focusing on a weekend service.”

Hope Community Church is offering a prerecorded service online on Christmas Eve, but offering an outdoor service on its 33-acre campus to all who want to attend.

“We thought, ‘Let’s make it memorable. It’s a unique year,’” he said. “People bundle up and put on their coats to go to football games, maybe they’ll do it for a Christmas Eve service.

“We can make ourselves a little uncomfortable as well,” Martineau added. “I think our church understands.”

Eastminster Presbyterian Church

Eastminster pastor Van Den Berg said his church was going to be conservative with the number of Christmas Eve services, but popular demand has won out.

“We started out with two and now we’re up to six services,” he said. “We just keep adding them.”

For overflow, the church is opening up a room with a video connection.

A Christmas tradition including a children’s performance and live animals had to be shelved this year. In its place is an interactive service for children with goodie bags that have props that go along with the sermon.

The church was shut out of in-person services from March 15 to July 1, with online worship only during that time. Since then, gatherings have been distanced, masked and meeting all requirements.

“No one’s gotten sick from anyone else in church, no one’s died from church,” Van Den Berg said. “We feel like we’ve managed this well.”

Westminster plans to have battery-operated candles and the singing of “Silent Night” in a darkened sanctuary at the end of the service. While that’s hard to replicate for people watching at home, Van Den Berg said he hoped those watching online can feel the presence of Jesus’ birth.

“Even if you’re home, He’s there too,” he said.

Greater Pentecostal Church of God in Christ

The Greater Pentecostal Church of God in Christ in Wichita is adjusting one of its Christmas traditions by canceling its children’s Christmas play or musical, always scheduled for the Sunday before the holiday.

The conclusion of every program came with a bonus – a giveaway for the children.

“Every kid walks out with about three or four toys,” said the Rev. Herman Hicks, the church’s senior pastor, said of the estimated 500 children who participate.

The present tradition lives on, though, and at noon this Sunday, the church parking lot will be the scene of a toy giveaway, with about 2,000 toys available.

A day earlier, church members were scheduled to distribute boxes of food to the community. Hicks’ wife Anadina led a Christmas sweater party online via Zoom that Saturday as well.

Hicks, a retired colonel at McConnell Air Force Base who has been pastor at the church for 17 years, said the church has not had Christmas Eve worship.

“To me that’s a time for people to be with their families and getting ready for the next day for Christmas,” he said.

Hicks and his wife were both diagnosed positive for COVID-19 in March. He said services have been conducted through Facebook Live, Zoom, and for those without internet connections, through a telephone number where members can call and listen to the service.

“I think we’re able to do a lot more than we’d normally do if we didn’t have it,” he said. “So far, we’ve been able to keep in touch.”

Hicks has preached from his living room in the online services, and said preaching to just a camera took some adjustment.

“It took some time to get used to. In the past, you’re used to preaching to people and having them respond,” he said. “It’s been a way to preach to not just my own members, but we probably preach to over 1,000 more people who are seeing our broadcast in a Sunday than were seeing it in our sanctuary.”

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church

Maybe pausing those traditions that people come to expect at a Christmas Eve service could be beneficial, the Rev. Sherman Orr said.

“Actually, this is kind of a good thing,” said Orr, pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Wichita. “We’re not going to be able to convey that. It’s a good thing that people are going to miss it. It does a great job of conveying the Christmas spirit, but this gives us a great opportunity to think that the Christmas spirit is more than singing carols that are nostalgic. It’s about helping the poor and realizing that God is with us.

“I hate it too, that we can’t sing and stuff because it means so much, but … it’s an opportunity,” he added.

The church will conduct three Masses on Christmas Eve – down from five in other years, including no midnight Mass this year – and two on Christmas morning. There will be a video feed in a church conference room where people can distance themselves.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton seats 1,000, and the two earliest services last year drew about 1,800 people total. This year, Orr is guessing about 300 will attend in person.

“My assumption is our numbers are going to be down because of the virus and such and the bishop’s dispensation from attending Sundays and Holy Days,” Orr said. “But we’re going ahead and doing our regular thing, but we’re also going to be livestreaming our 6 p.m. Mass.”

The church, Orr said, has stepped up its communication with its parishioners with messages such as “Don’t be isolated and live the Christian life,” and “Be kind, be generous, but more specifically reach out to the elderly.”

“Part of that spirit is getting out, even though the government and everybody else is saying hunker down, we should be cautious but not overly fearful and keep living the Christian life,” he said.

Orr said that once normality begins again, parishioners will be more appreciative of their Catholic traditions. He compares it to a church in Uganda where he preached last year, which only had services every three to four months.

“When I got to that small church, it was rockin’,” he said. “They all wanted to be there, and they all appreciated what I did to get there, and it was a phenomenal thing.

“This might be an opportunity for us to maybe suffer a little, so that we can recognize what a glorious thing we do have most of the time.”

Central Community Church

Rather than lament everything that has been taken away in the past year, the Rev. Bob Beckler says, he is proud of what his Central Community Church has accomplished.

The church partnered with Cargill to distribute 2,500 turkeys at Thanksgiving. It has strengthened its clothing ministry, suicide prevention work and its prison ministry.

“For our church, it’s really become a time where we can give, and through that giving we’re finding much joy,” Beckler said.

“A lot of people have said they can’t wait till 2020 is gone,” he added. “I’m kind of of a different thinking. It seems to me that when troubles and trials and tribulations come into our lives, for me, it presents so many more opportunities for us to be the church to the community.”

The church will have a “Christmas Eve Eve” service on Dec. 23 and two services on the 24th. The 2,500-seat sanctuary will be limited to about 800 people.

“It’s not like we have to do anything completely different, so we’re thankful we have the space,” Beckler said.

The service will continue its tradition of a live Nativity, including camels and donkeys. It will be livestreamed as well as in-person.

During the time away from live services, the church has remodeled its education area and built 60 more units for its senior housing ministry.

Beckler said the education mission of the church has changed as well, with nationally recognized authors, professors and experts conducting Zoom sessions with members of the congregation in Bible discussions.

The change in landscape for the world has been beneficial to the church, he said.

“We’re doing more in ministry from the inside now,” he said. “We’re coming up with creative ways to get the Good News out.”

This story was originally published December 20, 2020 at 7:00 AM.