When people think “shepherds” at Christmas, they think, “keeping watch over their flocks by night” and angels singing, “Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth, peace, and goodwill towards men.” Those are the verses that are focused on, from the Charlie Brown Christmas special to Sunday school lessons. But the shepherds’ story still continues five verses after the most popular passage. You see, after the angels went back up into heaven, the shepherds looked at each other and decided that they had to head into Bethlehem. They had to see the baby that the angels were singing about.

When I was younger, my church always put on these big, elaborate Christmas plays that always required all hands on deck– or maybe more appropriately, all hands on altar. The Christmas cantata took many forms over the years, telling the same Christmas story through so many different perspectives: from the fictional viewpoint of the Little Drummer Boy or a modern-day family to the real, relatable accounts of those core roles we know and love.