Music and storytelling shaped the Christmas Eve service at Gordon-King Memorial United Church, also known as the Big Red Church, on Dec. 24, as congregants gathered for a worship event to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Led by Patrick Woodbeck, the church’s ordained minister, the service was made up of short segments rather than a single extended sermon.

Woodbeck said he personally designed the layout of the service. The structure repeated a pattern throughout the evening in which a song was sung, a story was told and a reflection followed.

He noted music plays a central role in worship at the Big Red Church. “It was important for me to have a lot of music, but music that was authentic to who we are at the Big Red Church,” he emphasized.

According to Woodbeck, the reflections were written in response to the readings presented during the service. He said the purpose of these reflections was to connect faith to contemporary life. “If our faith doesn’t speak to our lives today, what is the point of it?” he asked.

“The Christmas Eve service changes each year,” Woodbeck said, as he noted musical leadership often influences the structure. Toward the middle of the event, the children were included in the service. They were taught the story of Jesus and his birth within the sanctuary. “The young ones need to understand that the Big Red Church is their place too,” he explained.

A play area was set up at the front of the sanctuary, reflecting the church’s emphasis on shared worship and participation rather than age-based separation.

Woodbeck’s leadership of the service is formed by his personal faith journey. Raised Roman Catholic, he stepped away from the church in his late teens and early twenties.

He said he struggled with the idea of the church’s wealth in the face of global poverty. He was also struggling with his sexual orientation and believed he was not accepted by the Roman Catholic church or by God.

Years later, Woodbeck returned to church life after attending a United Church service centered on music, meditation and art. “I started attending that church and they encouraged me to start reading scripture then doing liturgy, and eventually they asked me to discern a call to ministry,” he said.

Woodbeck first encountered the Big Red Church through a United Church presbytery meeting and attending the services online, which were being posted earlier than many other churches in Winnipeg. “What I saw was a service that was filled with the Spirit,” he explained. Later he saw they were searching for a new minister and applied.

“They have challenged me to live into my authentic identity as a minister, and they have encouraged myself and accepted both myself and my partner,” Woodbeck said.

“We are a community that is open, accepting, and inclusive,” Woodbeck expressed. He explained that the first thing you notice when walking into the church are pride colours, including the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) and transgender colours on the risers.

“This is not for show, it is a statement of who we are as a community,” Woodbeck said. “I believe that if people could experience the community, they would understand how valuable that is in one’s life.”