06 Jan Christmas at Our Church: Fort Wayne, Ind.

Sam Ward (right), Pastor of Creative Worship and Drama, Emmanuel Community Church (Fort Wayne, Ind.)

It seems like we’re listening to more music than we ever have. We listen to music in our cars, on headphones, at the gas station, and even at the grocery store, but we make music less and less. We are singing together less and less. Think about it…50 to 60 years ago, it was a common occurrence for people to get together and sing on a Wednesday or Sunday night. But not anymore. Our music production values are getting better, but when do we join with a small group of believers to sing?

When I grew up, my Dad played guitar and led worship for our small church of 100 people or so. A close family friend would always call at Christmas and invite our whole family over. He would also always remind my Dad to bring his guitar. And then we would sing, eat, laugh, and tell stories for the whole night. That was it.

Thinking back to those times…what I found out is that there are not a whole lot of things that you really need to have a time of fellowship and worship. So we created times like this at Emmanuel Community Church this Christmas.

The ECC Worship Arts and Warmth Ministries joined forces and called it the ECC HOME TOUR. This was a time of us coming together to participate in something together. It wasn’t a time to come and be fed, but a time to sing, eat, laugh, tell stories, and celebrate that Jesus, God with us, was born in a barn. He wasn’t born in a palace or a temple or a synagogue or a church. He was born in a barn.

So we thought it appropriate that these happened in various homes, a log cabin and…even a barn. While all the events were similar, we had three different teams to pull off the 9 different HOME TOURS that took place on different nights and in different places.