Church enjoys 'messy' service in barn

There were no wooden pews, no plush carpeting, no stained-glass windows, no central heating and no cathedral ceilings for the Light of the Christ Lutheran Church Christmas Day service.

Instead, about 150 church members and visitors huddled into a small barn in Huntley, forgoing the typical comforts for a simpler, back-to-basics way of life.

For the second year in a row, the Christmas Day service was held at Leroy and Louise Fitzgerald's barn in Huntley.

Bails of hay replaced aisles of pews. Low beams forced guests to stoop as they entered one of the last standing barns in the area. The aroma of hot chocolate wafted through the cramped cow barn.

Families wrapped themselves in blankets and heavy coats, while strangers held hands to keep warm.

"It is good to be in a simple place on Christmas morning," said the Rev. Kendall Koenig during the Algonquin church's seventh annual Christmas Day in a Barn service.

In his message, Pastor Koenig said that the barn, like life, is a messy place.

"Last week when I came in here, I thought, 'We have to clean up the barn for worship; we have to have a perfect barn,'" Koenig said.

"But that undermines the purpose. We have come to the barn, a place that used to house animals and used to be messy, to remember that Christmas started messy and to show that God is not above the messiness of our individual lives."

Though the temperature inside the barn was frigid, those who gathered Tuesday morning said they would not have it any other way.

"This is a unique way for us to see how hard it was when Jesus was born," said Paul Ostrander of Marengo, whose in-laws Leroy and Louise Fitzgerald own the barn. "We could have been in a 70-degree church, but Jesus sacrificed a lot for us, and this is the least we could do to sacrifice a little for him."