Christmas is filled with traditions, and one of the favorites at Christ Community Church is the congregation singing “Silent Night” by candlelight.
“Christmas does play a big part in this story,” said Pastor Todd Hertz, spokesman for the church, which has a main campus on Randall Road in the South Elgin/St. Charles area and satellite locations in Aurora, Streamwood, DeKalb and Huntley. “Christmas has always been very special. We have a lot of traditions.”
This year was particularly special because it’s the church’s 40th anniversary and the final time founding Pastor Jim Nicodem, who is retiring next year, will lead the “Silent Night” rendition.
The six couples who helped establish nondenominational Christ Community were part of a prayer group that decided they wanted a different kind of church experience, Hertz said. Church felt irrelevant to their lives and wasn’t a place they felt they could invite others to attend; they wanted something they could enjoy, he said.
“The thinking was how can we reach people for Christ? How can we introduce people to Christ in a way that doesn’t feel old and stuffy?” Hertz said.
The new church made its debut on Dec. 16, 1984, with the organizers deliberately choosing the holiday season because studies show that people are more open to attending services at that time of year, Hertz said.
“It was a strategy to launch at Christmas. I think it had a lot to do with the growth,” Hertz said.
Nicodem was chosen as their first pastor. He and his family lived on the East Coast, but Nicodem was familiar with the area because he graduated from Wheaton College.
Getting the word out was done by going door to door to tell people about the new venture, passing out pamphlets, and inviting family and friends to attend. They had 150 people at the first service, Hertz said.
It grew quickly from there, and they began holding services at a St. Charles movie theater that was part of a shopping center anchored by a Kmart store. It didn’t take long for it to become known as the “Kmart” church and the “blue light special” church, the latter a nod to the store’s practice of announcing special sales by turning on a blue light,Hertz said.
Within five years, the church had 700 members. It was time to build its own meeting place. Forty acres of land — a former alfalfa field — at Bolcum and Randall Roads were purchased in 1990.
An extension campus in DeKalb followed in the early 1990s, and now there are locations in Aurora, Streamwood and Huntley as well.
Attendance at the St. Charles/South Elgin church is about 2,500 weekly with another 1,300 congregants worshipping at the other locations, Hertz said.
This year, Christ Community’s Christmas services culminated in a teaching series looking at the life of Jesus through the eyes of Mary, his mother, including the nativity story, he said.
“This series has been really impactful for the people in the church. I think whenever we lead up to Christmas, we want to focus on Jesus,” Hertz said. The series has provided a different perspective that created a lot of excitement among the congregation, he said.
Christmas traditions are special because “they tie us back to when we were young, to our families, to really good memories,” Hertz said. “I think they are really important, especially in hard times like the last several years. We’ve had political division and wars and things like that. I think these traditions do something to comfort us,” he said.
For 40 years, Nicodem has been part of those traditions. He will step down in May but will stay involved in the church, Hertz said.
“He’s handing the leadership to two other pastors on staff. He’s ready to let new voices lead,” he said.
And Christ Community will celebrate its anniversary from February through March with 40 days for 40 years. Among the events planned are comedy club featuring Christian comic Jaron Myers and a Feb. 21 concert by well-known Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman, who has 59 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, five Grammy awards and an American Music Award. (Tickets go on sale Jan. 1.)
The church also commissioned a documentary film about its founding that’s to premiere at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles in the spring.
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
