The Creative Journey Behind a Christmas Eve Sermon

What does it take to craft a message for the largest audience of the year? In this unique episode, Adam Hamilton invites listeners behind the curtain to experience the intense creative process of preparing his 36th Christmas Eve sermon. Over nine drafts and more than 30 hours of work, Adam transformed the beloved carol “O Holy Night” into a compelling call to love one another—revealing surprising historical connections and personal stories along the way.

• The unique pressure of Christmas Eve preaching makes it unlike any other message of the year. At Church of the Resurrection, attendance swells dramatically on Christmas Eve, with roughly one in ten people in the Kansas City metro area joining across in-person, online, and television audiences. For Adam, this means carrying the weight of knowing that for many, this might be the one message that touches their heart and brings them back to faith. The sermon must speak to the head with new insights, touch the heart with inspiration, and call the hands to action, all while keeping a 2,000-year-old story fresh and compelling after 36 years.
• Adam discovered powerful abolitionist history hidden in “O Holy Night” that transformed the entire sermon. While researching at 2:20 in the morning, he uncovered that the song became an anthem of the abolitionist movement in 1855 Boston. The line “chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother” moved Christians to join the New England Immigrant Aid Company and travel to Kansas to claim it as a free state. This wasn’t abstract history. Adam spent hours searching for trail maps and discovered these faithful abolitionists passed directly across Resurrection’s current property on their journey west.
• The sermon evolved through nine drafts and five different presentations across four days. After preaching the first “traveler service” on Sunday night, Adam felt it was good but not quite right. He rewrote sections, recorded it again looking directly into the camera for television, then continued revising. He created a special children’s version with video clips from “The King of Kings” and interviews with kids at a lemonade stand. Each iteration refined the message, building conviction and tightening the emotional arc until the final 7:00 PM service captured everything he’d learned through the week.
• Every sermon is structured to speak to the head, heart, and hands—teaching, inspiring, and calling to action. Adam teaches something new (like the French history behind “O Holy Night” or the Greek word for “oppressed”), touches hearts through stories and film clips (including “Home Alone” and his own family’s 1967 Super 8 films), and issues a clear call to action. For Christmas Eve, that meant challenging people to love one another by reconciling with estranged family members, serving those in need, and giving generously, all principles that work whether you’re preaching to thousands or having a one-on-one conversation.
• The message connected past sacrificial love to present-day action, resulting in over $2.3 million given to families in poverty. By revealing how Christians 170 years ago gave up everything to travel across Resurrection’s land to liberate the oppressed, Adam created a bridge to today: “What are we willing to do?” The congregation’s response was overwhelming, with the entire Christmas Eve offering going to benefit children and families both locally in Kansas City and internationally, funding 24 projects that will impact thousands of lives. The simple refrain “truly he taught us to love one another” became more than words; it became sacrificial action.

This behind-the-scenes journey reveals that excellence in communication is an act of love. Whether crafting a sermon for the biggest night of the year or preparing for any important conversation, the willingness to revise, research, and refine demonstrates care for both the message and the people who will receive it. Adam’s process shows that meaningful insights often come at unexpected times (in this case 2:20 in the morning) when we’re willing to keep searching, that historical discoveries can transform how we understand familiar stories, and that at the heart of Christmas is a simple but radical call: to love one another as Christ loved us.